Courting Utopia
In defence of elitism, strawberries, and the last working meritocracy on Earth.
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For two weeks each summer, Britain forgets it is falling apart. To unschooled eyes, Wimbledon is a blot on the schedule. For devotees, the world’s greatest tennis tournament reveals a glimpse of earthly Utopia.
At its essence, tennis is just a game like Beethoven’s Ninth is just noise. A convoluted way to pass the time. Two or four players whack a ball over a net. They’re governed by unseen gods; puppets to arcane rules and ancient customs. Fans talk in secret dialect—fifteen-love, thirty-love, let, and deuce. In London’s plush SW19 postcode, Wimbledon fans eat strawberries and cream, and wash it down with Pimm’s and champagne. On Sunday, we’ll watch Carlos Alcaraz, the gentleman warrior, lift his third Wimbledon trophy in as many years. For a brief moment in a Great Britain marked by strife, tribalism, and rage, all will be right with the world.
Alcaraz is impossible. His punishing forehands betray his dove-like dropshots. En route to the semis, the young Spaniard dismantled the very decent British hope, Cameron Norrie. The usually partisan home crowd fell in behind the balletic bull as he deboned Norrie over three bloodied sets. Alcaraz is Wimbledon. Even his faults are of a cosmic frequency. Playing with child-like liberty, Alcaraz skips the efficient point for the difficult and beautiful.
Tennis and Utopia
Tennis is the closest we will ever get to Utopia. Our mortal attempt, meritocracy, apes the guttural aspects of the Gilded Age. Our warlike societies condemn entire generations, who, having done everything right, realise the ordinary to be increasingly extraordinary. Tennis is meritocracy. The timeless arithmetic of flourishing societies, here, remains: talent plus effort equals reward.
Yes, the top 30 players rake in millions. But the lower and middle ranks earn a rather comfortable living. Tennis is one of the few sports in which the middle-class still thrives.
Under this gilt-edged social contract, the elite respect the ordinary. Champions honour the moderately blessed, knowing that on their day, the ordinary player can scalp the champion. Tennis embodies that ancient notion that not everything is about you. The higher values—beauty and civility—depend upon the foundations of stability and dignity.
Those admittedly lofty ideals provoke modern suspicions. Any suggestion of distinction and hierarchy will do so in 2025. Tennis suffers from, as most institutions do, charges of ‘elitism.’
Familiar and frankly boring critics wheel out their lame accusations: Tennis is too white, too rich, too exclusive—elitist. The postmodernist finds elitism in an empty bed, shagging his wife.
Of course, charges of elitism provoke a snigger. Professional sports are, by their very nature, elitist.
Not so long ago, elitism was mere personal cultivation. Labour prime ministers openly declared their love for Mozart. Working men and women debated Plato and Homer in book clubs and on factory floors. Elitism was then a preference for high standards over low, for excellence over apathy, for merit and reward over victimhood and entitlement.
Today, ‘elitist’ translates to ‘Prefers a standard higher than my lowly one.’ At least irony prevails. The postmodern murder of standards didn’t liberate but enslaved. Despite the corrosive efforts of indecipherable French philosophers, to distinguish between better or worse remains as vital as to mate and multiply.
In Defence of Elitism
Is tennis inaccessible or—heaven forfend—exclusive? Yes. Tennis demands talent, time, commitment, effort, sacrifice, and of course, money. Not everyone has talent. Not everyone has money.
But here’s the thing. Every campaign to correct human nature ended in mass graves. Ask the twentieth century. That’s how it is. Few want what anyone can have.
Despite its bourgeoise demeanour, tennis isn’t starchy or prim. It isn’t Hyacinthe Bucket (It’s pronounced boo-kay, dear…). Wimbledon crowds chant and quip much like football or rugby fans—but only when time allows. These raucous moments between play release the crowd’s animal spirits. But when the umpire says ‘please,’ the crowd returns to silence.
In tennis, as in any functioning civilisation, we submit to rules so that we may be free. That old-world civility: bowing to the crowd, following the dress code, shaking hands, temper raw competition with respect.
I love tennis because it is one of the last redoubts in which things work. Players wish to win but never to humiliate. The crisp lines, the perfect angles, the hypnotic back-and-forth of serve and rally. The rules are clear. Tennis rewards effort and prizes beauty over efficiency. Win or lose, players shake hands. Here, unlike today’s Britain, all the pieces matter.
But barbarism always looms close. Its representative on court is the mightily talented Nick Kyrgios.
A teenaged Kyrgios humbled the imperious Rafael Nadal. The brash, brutal Greek Australian, his reserves of natural talent that generation’s deepest, was the next collector of grand slams. Kyrgios is now 31. He’s known chiefly for his colourful language, babyish tantrums, and criminally squandered gifts.
Kyrgios will tell anyone with ears that he doesn’t love tennis. It’s just a game. To fritter away his god-like talents on computer games and booze is, to the burdened Kyrgios, no big deal.
On court, Kyrgios is not merely uncouth but profane. He smashes rackets, goads the crowd, swears at umpires, and jabbers to himself. The night before the biggest match of his life, Kyrgios ensured camera crews clocked him downing pints and pissing about in a pub until the small hours. He lost.
To riot in irony, Kyrgios is anti-tennis. He’s the orphan armed with a jerry can of petrol and a box of matches who’d sooner burn down the village than risk its rejection. He is a paradox. His self-sabotage is worship. Kyrgios pours scorn on the only thing he loves more than himself.
Strapped to his fate, Kyrgios is the doomed puppet of the tennis gods who smite him at will. Burdened with impossible gifts, Kyrgios reflects our broken meritocracy. Another lost boy crushed under the weight of his own promise. In this sense, he mirrors the revolts on our streets and in our voting booths. Angry, insatiable movements motored by those shut out by an illusory ideal which promised much and delivered little.
For the next few days, though, the tragedy of Kyrgios retreats into myth. He’s not at Wimbledon. For now, the utopia of SW19 endures, a fleeting reminder that the world can, for a moment, still work.
It is the curse of those who have natural talent, or to have things come easily to them, to sabotage themselves. Our species was built for struggle. Remove the struggle, and we create it.
I used to follow Wimbledon religiously in the days of Connors and McEnroe, and into the Bjorn Borg era (it seemed he could never lose on grass). Even in to the era of Federer, though I think once Djokovic kind of became THE guy I sort of drifted away from tennis and all sport in general.
It's interesting that sport remains the one place where a true meritocracy exists; the scoreboard, as it were, does not lie. And individual sports like tennis, or boxing, or weight lifting, or even golf are the purest form of meritocracy. You're either good enough, or your not, and there's no hiding your lack of ability behind that of a teammate.
This idea of that true meritocracy is the promise of the Enlightenment-influenced liberal order. Some have great talent and squander it; some over-achieve through hard work and effort. Everyone has a shot at success (hey, no good at tennis? Try golf, or wrestling, or a host of other endeavors).
The point is you have to try. It seems these days the idea of having to try has fallen into disfavor, maybe? And then there's the people who argue that it's a rigged game, and not everybody gets a fair shot at success...which is true to some extent, but you can't punish those who succeeded in the arena just because some were excluded from competing...you have to fix how people get in the arena in the first place.
I dunno, there's a lot in this article to think about.