#6 - JRL 6597
From: "Peter Calder" <petercalder1944@ozemail.com.au>
Subject: Russian tennis triumphs
Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002
Russian tennis triumphs.
Peter Calder
Freelance
Moscow
petercalder1944@mtu-net.ru
So Russia wins the Davis Cup for the first time, so what!
The recent census indicates that there are about 143 million potential tennis players in the country, plus or minus a sampling error of about 5 million. Surely out of such a large selection pool you could scratch up half a dozen world-beaters. Why, out of a population of fewer than 20 million, Australia has managed to win the coveted cup, on innumerable occasions past, but not this time though.
There must be a reason for this lack of ability to bring home the big trophy. Are tennis rackets so hard to come by in the former USSR?
Are there no vacant spaces left on which to build a few tennis courts?
In my hometown in Australia, there are 6 tennis courts available for a population of 801. Drive around the leafy suburbs of our cities and you will find tennis courts in abundance.
When I was much younger, many people of only moderate means had their own private tennis courts. Now of course, with increasing real estate values, they tend to install swimming pools instead but still we regularly produce world class tennis players.
Of course Russia has a few problems in the sporting departments. Anyone who has the talent will find that there are much more profitable places to reside abroad where the lure of the big money is difficult to resist. Who can blame the emigrating sporting class if they decide to change environment and nationality? Sport is not a life time occupation, at the very best ten years is all you can expect, more likely, fewer than five.
Drive around Moscow suburbs and count the number of tennis courts you can find and a part of the answer becomes apparent.
Wander off Volokolampskaya Schosse, out near Bolnitisa MPS, and you may be lucky to stumble across ‘my’ tennis club. It is found on Sosinava Ulitisa close by the big gynaecological hospital where I have been told that you can buy a sex change.
Surrounded by a decrepit, rust eaten, cast iron palisade fence, over grown with forest trees and camouflaged by thick undergrowth, you find the remains of a grand sportsmen’s club. Once the recreational retreat of a long since impoverished defence institution, the club occupies over 20 acres of ground, all of it in a woeful state of disrepair. Yet here there flourishes a tennis club of sorts. Not the sort of club in which your average western sportsperson would be eager to seek registration.
The informal membership ranges from 7 or 8 year olds up to the near elderly like myself. One common feature of the members is that they can all beat me, effortlessly. Another thing is that they all take an active and constant part in the general maintenance of the facilities, such as they are.
The enterprise is presided over by one Vladimir Vladimivich, a thin, gaunt man of indeterminate age but of an industrious and resourceful nature. How he manages to coax the Stalinist era, motorised court roller into action, is an achievement of some mechanical merit.
This manager / caretaker, lives alone on the premises in a sort of upstairs, one roomed flat situated over the main entrance and its dilapidated adjacent office. His domestic domain is accessible by a rickety pine wood ladder and the unit appears to provide only the most basic of comforts. I would speculate that it provides no comforts at all, especially during the winter.
I have no idea if he is paid a stipend as a manager or whether he is a free enterprise, brave new age entrepreneur. Either way, he is most evidently not on his way towards an early and comfortable retirement, as the use of a court goes for only 90 roubles an hour.
In the now defunct office there lives a mange afflicted dog of uncertain pedigree. This canine sentinel offers a half-hearted challenge to all that seek entry, but you can tell that her spirit is not really with it and she is, by and large, a relic. What she has to defend on territorial lines is really not worth much commitment and her rewards are most certainly meagre.
Sometimes this animal is reinforced by a uniformed security man whose general attitude to his lot in life, is similar to that of the dog’s.
Of the five courts, four are adequately serviceable and one is overgrown with weeds and shrubs. One court has a thirty-foot pine tree growing within its enclosure but not within the playing lines. Still, you need to remember that it is there when you run back over the serve line with your attention on the ball.
The nets are old and frayed. Some have holes in them that would allow the unimpeded passage of a soccer ball. To keep them horizontally aligned, they are propped up with pine wood stakes. The court furniture is in an advanced state of depreciation and the sideline shelters are falling down. Although all court entrances are secured with massive and ancient padlocks, a determined intruder could kick his way through the rusted wire netting that surrounds the playing areas.
Adjacent to the courts there are two practice walls. One is made of timber and it leans backwards at an acute angle to the ground and is worthless for anything, except perhaps firewood. The other is made from concrete of the Great Economic Leap Forward era. One suspects that it was a pretty lean mix at the time of pouring, as in places the reinforcing protrudes from the surface. The bitumenised playing surface is thrown up into bumps and undulations by the subterranean passage of tree roots, and after rain, these depressions form small ball drowning lakes that take days to dry up. Even on a good day, the undulating surface imparts an unpredictable bounce to the ball and the constant risk of an ankle sprain or worse.
Amid all of these impoverishments, there is an amazing display of both talent and enthusiasm amongst the players, something that commands a large measure of both sympathy and admiration. If this club and its supporters had available to them the amount of daylight, sunshine and playing days that Australians have all the year round, who knows what would occur within the competitive ranks.
I suppose I could just possibly afford to join another club of better address and more provident facilities. A club with indoor courts, secure parking places and a members’ sauna and bar. Somehow I don’t think that after Socinava Street, I would quite fit in.
I like my club and although the members cannot work out how a westerner seeks their company and, as a result, are a bit circumspect about me, I shall remain with them because it’s all very Russian and endearing. More realistically, it is a constant reminder to me of the great Russian ability to survive and endure, attributes that some of my fellow western, Moscow dwellers will never appreciate nor could ever emulate or endure.
So Russia won the Davis Cup and that’s probably how some of the players started out.
Brava!
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