Two pints of lager and a match of tennis

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It was gone midnight. An awed hush filled the pub. The bar had stopped serving, but the few dozen punters remained, eyes glued to the screen.

But they were not watching a lacklustre England football team or an insignificant Premier League clash. They were watching tennis.

The greatest accolade the surly Andy Murray can take from this past fortnight is to have turfed the British sporting faithful out on a Monday night. At 10pm. To watch tennis. And not even Wimbledon, but the US Open.

Last night, the Larrick in North London was a pub full of people who, you could tell, were not entirely sure exactly how to go about watching tennis in a pub. With football matches, everyone is used to shouting useless platitudes like “Go on, my son!” while waving pints angrily at faded big-screens and jeering at inept referees. But with tennis? No-one was sure.

A quiet fell with the start of each new point, as if our chattering might disturb the players. When Murray won a game, a great cheer went up, but does one cheer when he is 0-40 down and wins one point back?

Tennis is like a closet obsession in this country. Everyone goes bananas for two weeks during Wimbledon every summer, but shows no flicker of interest as the Australian, French and US Opens go by, largely unnoticed, through the rest of the year.

Tennis courts are packed with enthusiastic amateurs during Wimbledon fortnight, but for the other 50 weeks the courts are deserted, even on the sunniest Saturdays and most blistering bank holidays. Everybody owns a tennis racket, it seems, but has forgotten whether it is in the back of the wardrobe or in the attic under the deck-chairs.

So to be in a North London pub on a distinctly Septemberish Monday night watching the US Open final was quite an experience. To have a British finalist, the first in 11 years, was also an experience. And, sure enough, the whole evening turned out to be a very typically British sporting experience.

An overdose of hope

It’s the hope that’s the worst. Everyone knew that Roger Federer would be a bridge too far for Murray. We all knew it would be a bit too much to ask for Andy to beat the greatest player to ever raise a racket. But we saw him beat Nadal. And Nadal beat Federer. Therefore… Uh oh. There’s the hope kicking in.

Tim Henman did it to us year after year after year. People who would never call themselves tennis fans can remember screaming at their televisions as Tim valiantly fought, and lost, against Sampras, Hewitt, and Ivanisevic. Oh, Ivanisevic. In among the England penalty shoot-outs and Ashes collapses, there will always be that five-set 2001 semi-final, that Henman fight-back, that infernal rain-break, and that familiar heartbreak.

Yet Andy Murray has done what Henman never could: reach a Grand Slam final. And he’s only 21. Surely that bodes well. Both Federer and Nadal are predicting great things for the mercurial, bumfluffed lad.

But let’s not get carried away. If there’s one thing the British sporting press is wonderful at, it is building people up to knock them down. It is never one step at a time, but eight at once. Murray reaches his first Grand Slam final, and suddenly there’s talk of him being one of the greats, of him remaining at the top of the game for years. Poor old Fred Perry’s ghost is given another jab in the ribs. 1936 has become the 1966 of tennis.

A loveable grouch?

Towards the end of last night’s final, the atmosphere in the pub grew quite jovial. The cheers became rather more ironic as hope was replaced by realism as we watched Federer’s masterclass. One Wimbledon defeat and the “best player ever” had suddenly become “faded” and “jaded” and “on the way out”? Nonsense.

The hope didn’t die until that final Murray shot crashed into the net, however. Even at 0-5 in the third set, Murray’s last-gasp break of serve got the ridiculous among us excited again, albeit fleetingly.

But it's an ill wind. At least we got to bed on time. It would have been somehow worse to have sat up until three in the morning just to watch Murray lose in five sets and then feel like death in the morning to boot. And at least no-one in the crowd shouted "Come on, Tim!" this time. Hilarious jokers though they are.

You see, Andy Murray excites a different range of emotions from Tim Henman. It was easy to support Henman: the way he punched the air in that awfully middle-class way, with his clip-on hair and squeaky-cleanliness.

Murray is more of a dilemma. He is moody and grouchy and petulant. He growls unpleasantly from beneath his cap and hides behind his patchy adolescent beard. He mumbles his way through press conferences and greets each point won with a feral snarl.

But that’s all so brilliant. The British love something to complain about. They hated Henman for being so reserved and they hate Murray for being too fiery. Or for being anti-English. Or for wearing a hat. Or for…oh shut up. Just watch the tennis, will you?

If you want to hate something, hate Roger Federer. Hate his success. Hate his stupid floppy hair. Hate his inscrutable robot face and, especially, hate that horrible way he falls to the floor on Championship Point every bloody time. He clearly rehearses that in his bedroom. The bastard.

It’s all sour grapes of course, but then the British have rather a taste for those too. Americans crowds will always cheer on the favourite, as they did last night, but the British will cheer the plucky underdog every time. Handily, most British sportsmen and women are, generally, also plucky underdogs, so there’s no conflict of interest.

The end of the world will come when Murray suddenly becomes the Wimbledon favourite and Roger Federer the underdog, at which point a black hole will open over SW19 and suck us all to our inevitable doom.

Until then, however, let’s just see what Andy Murray can do in the Australian and the French, before getting hopelessly carried away on the Wimbledon lawns in nine months’ time.

Brace yourselves.


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ps: this article conclusively proves that it is possible to write about Andy Murray without mentioning his Caledonian country of birth. You know. Scotland. Oh drat.
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