Sue Barker and John McEnroe strolled on to centre court while chatting idly about Wimbledon’s history — and with that, there was a deafening crash of thunder from the clear blue skies above them, the pair possibly fearing it was Nick Kyrgios having an argument with the roof.
But what, mercifully, proved to be a mere sound effect heralded the arrival of an 81-year-old Cliff Richard in the stands, him singing a cappella version of “we’re all goin’ on a summer holiday”, while a piano sat unused by the side of the court.
By then you’d have been looking at your soup and wondering if it had been constructed from mushrooms of the magical kind, the spectacle a bit mind-altering.
Until we learnt that this was all part of the CCCC – not the GAA’s central competitions control committee, they had enough to be doing last week, the BBC’s Centre Court Centenary Celebrations.
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And very lovely they proved to be too, especially the parade of champions and the bits where the Beeb proved yet again that no channel on earth does sporting montages quite like them.
Once Cliff was done crooning, John pointed to him, then looked at Sue and grinned a little. And every one of us howled, Don’t go there!
John: “Didn’t you have a thing with that guy?”
He went there.
Sue: “Stop, stop, stop, stop.”
He persisted.
John: “Tell me about that?”
“Once a brat, always a brat,” Sue didn’t reply, but was severely tempted.
She was admonishing him again later for reminding the centre court crowd that she would be retiring after this Wimbledon, so deserved a humongous ovation. She did too, and got one, and became almost as teary as ourselves watching the telly box.
Some of us have only just come to terms with Des Lynam’s retirement, although those wounds were reopened when Sue pointed him out in the centre court stands, and now we have to deal with losing her too.
The parade of champions would have had you reaching for the Kleenex too, all the time marvelling at the likes of Chris Evert and Stefan Edberg looking younger now than they did back in the day, dealing with wobbling knees when Bjorn Borg was introduced, and chuckling at the awkwardness of Margaret Court’s arrival, the somewhat provocative opponent of same-sex marriage greeted with applause that only just about bordered on the polite.
“Martina boycotts Wimbledon parade,” was the gist of the rumour, Navratilova said to have refused an invite because of Court’s presence, until she said “na”, she would have been there, but testing positive for Covid banjaxed her plans. Fake news, like.
Notable by his absence too, was an inmate of Her Majesty’s Prison Huntercombe. Boom Boom Boris — Becker, not Johnson — your heart left in smithereens.
And then Freya Ridings sat at the piano and sang Lost Without You, another BBC montage taking to the screen, and you were reminded of how many epic contests this tournament has given us over the years. Gorgeous.
Mother of God
This years’s Wimbledon had, alas, been a touch tame. Until Kyrgios played Stefanos Tsitsipas on Saturday.
Three words: mother of God.
When Billie Jean King talked to Sue after the parade of champions, she told her that tennis adds 9.7 years to the average lifespan.
You’d be guessing, though, that the sport subtracted that from the lives of the officials on duty for the Kyrgios v Tsitsipas match, the contest proving to be a touch, well, tense. “Casualty will be following the tennis in just a few minutes,” Sue told us, and that’s where you reckoned said officials might end up.
Nick, as we know, is kind of the Armagh of tennis, a man who has paid more in fines — about €500,000 — during the course of his career than quite a few professional players have earned in theirs.
The Beeb’s Andrew Cotter didn’t know quite where to start with the Australian’s behaviour during the game, but noted that “he’s physically fine … not sure about the rest”.
After the match, Tsitsipas called Kyrgios “a bully”, Sue having already told us that he’s “a bad example for youngsters” but “we’ve all been sitting here absolutely glued to it”.
This is true. “He divides the crowd,” Sue added, as the crowd rose as one to salute the fella who had woken the tournament from its slumber, those who were appalled by his behaviour frantically scouring the schedule to see when he was up next.
“He does things with the racket that you just don’t think are possible,” said a pre-Covid Martina.
Hard not to set aside the (many) misdemeanours of a bold boy if he shoves you towards the edge of your seat. Like a fair few of those in the parade of champions. And that McEnroe fella who introduced them.
