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2001-07-08 - 2:33 p.m.

'E come se non bastasse...'

I do not find complete satisfaction and fulfillment in glaring at my shy terrestrial superheroes as they corrode un-fantastically. I must write.

If ever there was a sport for me, tennis would be it. It is an essentially solitary pursuit. Throwing around one body - point after point - the points as beats on a metronome. Love-fifteen. Love-thirty. Love-forty. Game, _____ (to be completed with the name of my current nemesis).

But it is not solace. No guts-and-glory for me, I'm afraid. In any of my tennis-playing incarnations, would I ever have rose above the constraints of a country-club player? I would present myself, head bobbing up and down, unable to look my instructor in the eye. I'm twenty-two years old and yet in some sense permanently thirteen.

For a moment, though - let us say that I do stoop to conquer. Wimbledon, here I come! The grass. Strawberries and cream. Toast and tea and that shameless English sense of fair-play. Wimbledon - my natural habitat. SW19 - my home.

Tennis as a temple. The various cormorants of Wimbledon as high priests. Fred Perry. Rod Laver. Martina Navratilova. Boris Becker. Stefan Edberg. Pete Sampras. Billie Jean King!

Who shall I choose to be for this hypothetical transubstantiation? Will I stare up and into a pantheon and choose comme ca?

No. I am but a mere troglodyte. Bradley Pearson. Charles Swann. My namesake.

I am Tim Henman, 'destined' never to succeed, and it is totally apropos.

Game, set and match.

troilus

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