A voice against silent treatment
The question is this: how much of it is really needed?
Many years ago, I came across an interesting piece in an American publication about tennis, and specifically the bad manners of the top players.
Misanthrope that I am, I gleefully gulped down the little sins of omission and rudeness, none of which I can now remember.
One point was made that I remember, though. The writer pointed out that some of the top players insisted on a safe-room-in-a-chemical-laboratory level of silence at games, a pitch of stillness unachievable outside the stark nothingness of the Milky Way (galactic, not chocolate, version).
He then asked why this was necessary.
In the majority of sports a torrent of abuse, cheers, screams and general white noise accompanies every action: why should a game like tennis — see Wimbledon — or golf — see the Irish Open — be treated with reverential silence? This is a valid question.
Every year you sit down to watch tennis players slap the ball back and forth with only the occasional cough or belch disturbing the cathedral-like atmosphere. Likewise, the slightest whisper on a golf course draws down opprobrium on the spectator responsible.
You’re missing out if you believe in polite noiselessness.
It’s hard to think of a single sports event that would enjoy a boost in atmosphere or appeal if it were played out a la Mel Brooks’ Silent Movie.
Tracing the various stages in crowd reaction is an inexact science, but there are recognisable elements: the appreciative murmur, the falsetto recognition of danger, the Phil Spector-like wall of sound when a significant play is made. (Before you mention the silence in Thomond Park for kickers, by the way, consider the obvious: that those brief periods of quiet serve to accentuate the noise accompanying the action for the rest of the game.)
I acknowledge the tradition argument without accepting it, and I accept that the silence at golf and tennis events don’t seem to impact on people’s enjoyment of those sports. I just wanted to point out that there are alternatives. Choices. Maybe even a better way.
You hear?
I don’t want to leave tennis altogether, not yet. At home at the moment I have Speak, Memory on my nightstand (translation: the mound of clothes next to the bed).
Vladimir Nabokov’s memoir is one of those books so annoyingly well-written that it makes you want to hang up your pen, or decommission your mouse, or chop off your Tweeting finger, or whatever decisive action denotes despair in the face of an infinitely more talented writer. (Leave to one side the fact that the great man was a native speaker of Russian; you don’t want to go off the deep end totally.)
Every now and again you stumble over a phrase that was clearly dashed off before the morning coffee-and-scone but which gleams with class: Nabokov remembers his son Dimitri, a very small boy, standing next to him as they waited for the ship to take them to America, and safety.
Nabokov père describes the son’s tiny hand as resting “starfish-wise” on his as they waited for the ship: the kind of apparently effortless flourish that makes this writer look up at the ceiling and exhale very loudly.
Anyway: though he refers to boxing in his memoir, he was also a soccer fan. As a goalkeeper he lined out for his Cambridge college and he likened the keeper to the flying ace and the matador. He took boxing lessons. Mountaineering was another outlet.
Above all, though, Nabokov was a tennis fan. The game recurs in many of his works, notably in Lolita: “The exquisite clarity of all her movements had its auditory counterpart in the pure ringing sound of her every stroke. The ball when it entered her aura of control became somehow whiter, its resilience somehow richer, and the instrument of precision she used upon it seemed inordinately prehensile and deliberate at the moment of clinging contact.”
Not bad, I hear you say.
I was surprised, therefore, to come across a dissection of Nabokov’s tennis game recently: he was described as having “superb ground strokes... long, deep drives, varied with the occasional chop or slice, Nabokov could force an opponent to charge across the court shot after shot.”
This according to Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years by Brian Boyd, a bracing, detailed counterpart to the dreamy magic of Speak, Memory.
Give Boyd his due, he also spells out Nabokov’s tennis weakness: an unwillingness to chase the ball. His long-time tennis partner, Milton Cowan said: “When I needed a point I would go into the net. Our play settled down to long rallies and a deuce set which went on until we were ready to quit...”
Vladmir Nabokov: gifted writer. Vulnerable to being moved around the court, though.
I’m away for a few days. Thanks, thanks. It is well deserved, now that you mention it.
If you were one of the people who applied for the free lunch, don’t despair. I am assembling a shortlist and expect to come to a decision as I sip mojitos in Havana over the next week, or, as Bearla, as I try to find a bottle of Brooklyn Lager somewhere in Dingle.
I don’t want anyone to feel that this process is in any way as corrupt as (insert whatever comparison you like here with Anglo Irish Bank).
But in the event of a tie-break, the authorities, namely me, will look kindly on the person who can answer this question.
What inter-county team was once sponsored by that same Anglo-Irish Bank?
Spare a thought this morning for one man, please.
It’s bad enough losing one 80-minute thriller by a single point, but two on the same day? On Saturday morning the British and Irish Lions lost to Australia by a single agonising point in the second Test. That evening the Cloyne intermediate hurlers lost to Blarney in an extra-time thriller at Páirc Uí Rinn by a single agonising point as well.
The common thread? Dr Eanna Falvey is team doctor for the Lions, and a member of Cloyne GAA club; so there was no consolation even when he checked in with home.
Incidentally, one of the biggest cheers in Páirc Uí Rinn came when the PA announced Kilkenny’s defeat at the hands of Dublin in the Leinster championship, and there was a concomitant buzz of conversation as the ramifications were discussed. The notion that either the Cats or the Premier will be gone out of the championship by Saturday evening clearly had some of the natives dreaming . . .
