‘Can we get a drink?’ asked Jean Rhys after dropping her serve for the second time in the first set against the dextrous Millay.
‘A proper drink,’ agreed Millay. ‘We’re not children.’
‘Can’t play without a drink,’ said Rhys. ‘I’m here to play. I’m here because I play. There seems no point whatsoever in not doing it properly.’
‘Quite agree,’ said Millay.
The pair sat down to await a ruling. After conferring, officials informed the players that the beverages in the court-side fridge had been approved in accordance with regulations and sponsorship arrangements. The players were to drink them.
‘I must go the toilet,’ said Rhys.
‘Me too,’ said Millay. ‘Is that really the time?’
Suitably refreshed, the players returned and the second set featured some stupendous tennis. Both were sharper, more energetic, and their skills were on open display; Rhys out-manoeuvring Millay and then moving in for the kill, the tactical Millay playing the big points superbly, building her strength to pull away in the third.
‘That was great,’ said Rhys afterwards. ‘I didn’t feel a thing.’
‘Thank God we got a heartstarter into us,’ agreed Millay.
‘Don’t mind if I do,’ said Rhys. ‘Just a small one.’
And how would they describe their match?
‘No idea,’ said Rhys. ‘I haven’t seen it yet.’
‘Two slatterns and a net,’ said Millay.
Bessie Smith arrived late for her match against Christina Stead and had trouble hitting the ball. During the warm-up she sat down twice, and when the first game started she waited to receive service without a racquet. Stead and Darwin had a word with her and all agreed the match should be postponed. At the press call Stead acknowledged, ‘Bessie wasn’t well. We’ve been rescheduled for tomorrow.’
‘What was wrong with her?’ asked Mailer.
‘No idea,’ said Stead.
‘Was she drug-tested?’
‘Any other questions?’
Fats Waller is a remarkable customer. When all this is over and the caravan moves on, a lot of people are going to realise they’ve never seen anything quite like him. Some will shake their heads with a smile and say, ‘Natural rhythm. Natural talent. Could do it in his sleep.’ But the more we see of Waller, the more we see of his thinking. The planning might not be obvious—today, for example, against Big Bill Yeats, he missed a lot of forehand winners in the first stanza. Time and again the ball sat up and, instead of putting it away, Waller took the pace off and just got it back in play. Later, when Yeats began to tire in the crucial fourth set, he relied on playing to Waller’s muted forehand. Waller wound up and nailed winner after winner.
In the second set, with Yeats firing them in, Waller made no attempt to get his first serves back and even asked a linesman if he could borrow a chair while receiving. ‘If I’m going to be a spectator,’ he said, ‘I might as well sit down.’
This caused great amusement but, again, there was method in it. He stood right up to the second serve and punched it low at Big Bill’s feet or drove it back past him as he came in. Yeats was being told, ‘You must get your first serve in to win the point. Miss it, and you’re in trouble.’ Pressure on the Yeats serve was being dressed up as admiration for the first serve. The percentage of first serves in began to drop. From 87 per cent at the beginning of the set it dropped to 63 per cent by the end. Waller’s own game is solid and he hustles well but he won today with self-control and smart thinking.
Yeats, who rewrote the record books as a youngster, was given a standing ovation as he left. He looked older, but heads still turn when something magnificent walks by.
When Eliot met Wittgenstein (not a bad title for a film) and they were tossing before their match, SuperTom was diffident and Wittgenstein was guarded. Eliot had heard so much about this opponent and had seen him, in practice, taking apart the sort of game he himself had spent years developing. His serve-and-volley approach would be put under serious examination and might well be shredded. For SuperTom to stay on the baseline and try to slug it out would be to flirt with catastrophe.
Wittgenstein looked at Eliot and asked him whether he would like to serve.
‘But you won the toss,’ protested SuperTom.
‘The toss is nothing,’ said Wittgenstein. ‘I’m seeking your preference because I do not have one.’
‘I don’t know that I have one either,’ replied SuperTom.
‘Not knowing you do is not the same as knowing you do not.’
‘I don’t dispute that.’
‘Not disputing it,’ said Wittgenstein, ‘is not the same as agreeing with it.’
‘Jug, jug, jug, jug,’ said SuperTom, ‘la plume de ma time and death.’
‘Thought so,’ said Wittgenstein. ‘You serve.’
‘I am not Prince Hamlet,’ said SuperTom. ‘Nor was meant to serve.’
‘Which end do you want?’ asked Wittgenstein.
‘End?’ queried SuperTom. ‘Maybe drowning.’
The match had a similarly disjointed character, on top of which, at 3–2 in the second set, Wittgenstein noticed Karl Popper in the stand and shook his racquet at him. ‘Bugger off!’ he advised.
‘Ah!’ Popper called to the crowd. ‘Aggression! Did you see that? He threatened me!’
‘Sit down, you twerp,’ said Wittgenstein.
‘Twit twit twit,’ said SuperTom.
‘Good man,’ said Wittgenstein and relaxed his grip on the matter. His concentration in the next two sets was astonishing. He hardly looked up, muttered to himself constantly and paid no attention to the scoreboard. Then, at 3–0 up in the final set, he apologised to Eliot and said he ‘had completely misunderstood the question’.
At 3.45 this afternoon Ring Lardner became the longest-priced quarter-finalist anyone in the press box could remember. He beat Bill Faulkner in four, disguising his game craftily and allowing Faulkner to think he had it won until the last. ‘I was strong at the beginning,’ Faulkner asseverated, ‘and, following the beginning was, persistently (yes) strong in that section beyond
