As a consequence their match began ten minutes late with a great deal of mutual goodwill and a Nova Scotian in the chair. There was some suggestion that Nova Scotia is not in Africa although this was dismissed by Krishnamurti who does not accept the term ‘in’. The Indian played ‘good shot’ tennis in the first set, strayed into an amount of ‘bad luck’ in the second and lost some precision in his serving for rather a lot of ‘sorry’ in the third. The match was therefore ‘won’ by Russell, who is travelling nicely and now goes on to meet the Spockster in what even the mystical Indian is prepared to concede might be the next round.
Tonight’s Centre Court match was again fraught with an increasingly familiar tension. Russian authorities want victories but feel threatened by the players who achieve them.
Ukrainian Sergei Prokofiev was national junior champion at the astonishing age of eight. He looks tentative and watchful.
‘It is true,’ he said. ‘I am a tentative and watchful person.’
Is he worried about anything?
‘Nothing in particular.’
Has he been happy playing here?
‘I love playing anywhere, yes.’
Is it true that, while he was playing, his room was searched?
‘I’m not sure about that. I might have left the shutters open. It is possible a breeze entered the room from below and blew all my stuff out the window and up five floors and in through the window of the suite where the Russian Tennis Federation are staying.’
At the other end tonight was the man known on the circuit as the Count, the oldest player in the tournament. Leo Tolstoy was Russian Army champion as a young man, won the French two years before his opponent today was born and went on to rewrite the record books. He twice won the Grand Slam, both times taking men’s and mixed doubles titles at all four majors (with Warren Pearce and the late Anna Karenina). He fought for better conditions for players and spectators, was instrumental in the development of youth programs and, in a move which ultimately brought about the break-up of his marriage, recently announced that he would no longer be receiving appearance fees, tournament winnings or other income from any source. The Centre Court crowd included dignitaries from all over the world, including Mahatma Gandhi and the French president. Tolstoy is adored here in France even though he has never lost to a French player and regards the French, as a nation, as ‘vermin’.
Sergei Prokofiev wasn’t just playing the Count, he was playing the history of the sport. He lost the first two sets but took the third 6–2 with some of the most commanding tennis we’ve seen all week and big old Leo must have wondered how many Prokofievs there were. In the fourth set Tolstoy opened the throttle in the eleventh game to break Prokofiev and then served out the match 7–5. An hour later Prokofiev was called to a crisis meeting with the Russian authorities and was dropped from the Davis Cup squad.
The day finished with thirteenth-seeded Austrian handful Sigmund Freud hustling well against Pablo Casals, although not everyone agreed with his description of Casals as ‘a big girl’. Casals, he said, was operating within a structure provided by his own formative experiences, highlighted by the memory of seeing his first coach, his mother, playing in the mixed doubles with his father, probably in Spain. Casals pointed out that his first coach had been a friend of his grandfather, a fact dismissed by the Doc as ‘wrong’, and that he had never actually seen his parents playing. And that, if he had, it would not have been in Spain but in Catalonia.
‘Missing the point,’ said the Doc. ‘You don’t have to have seen your parents in the mixed for the prospect of it to prey on your mind.’
‘I really must go,’ said Casals.
‘You big girl,’ said the Doc.
Day 19
Auden v. Armstrong • Waller v. Crane • Duchamp v. Isherwood • van Gogh v. de Kooning • Pasternak v. Stravinsky • Nabokov v. Lardner • Kafka v. Runyon
A single image dominated this afternoon. It was all over the television and will sell newspapers around the world. Wystan Auden stands at the net holding aloft the hand of Louis Armstrong, the man who had just knocked him out of the tournament. In the match of the round so far, Auden put up a mighty fight to hold the American out until late in the third set when he started cramping. But take nothing from Armstrong. He came out steaming, hit the ball at the speed of sound, banged his serve in deep and covered the court like a blanket. When Armstrong hit a forehand winner down the line to win the match, the Englishman walked around the net, put his arm around the American and then led the applause.
The crowd can’t get enough of Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller and their joy continued when Waller came out an hour later and dispatched his countryman Stephen Crane. Marcel Duchamp didn’t look like dropping a set against Chris Isherwood and goes on to meet Mandelstam, who was all over Sartre like a rash in their encounter and is shaping as a danger to shipping.
The much awaited meeting of fellow lowlanders Vincent van Gogh and Willie de Kooning was a new sort of tennis altogether. Van Gogh dragged himself from point to point as if the world had forgotten his birthday. At 3–5 in the second set he got two bad line calls and had to be convinced
