Two cases of culpable homicide (1)
Kenneth Roy
Two cases of culpable homicide (2)
Bob Cant
Photograph by Islay McLeod
He started having some group tennis coaching as something to do in those August weeks before school resumes and his mum was back at work. He was nine, and I remember teaching him to pick up the ball using the racket.
One time the group had a little tournament at the end of the week’s coaching and to everyone’s complete surprise, our boy won. Did it go to his head? It led to his joining a club which plays against other clubs on Saturdays in the summer. Mums combine efforts to provide pizza ‘teas’ afterwards. At some point when about 12 he was assigned a ‘rating’ of 10.2. Four years on, his rating is now 6.1. Each number has two rating points. Andy Murray’s is 1.1. This is like a golf-handicap: to improve, you lower your rating number.
To do this you have to play and win a certain number of matches under tournament conditions within a given time-scale against a player who is equally or better rated than you. To lose against someone not so highly rated risks cancelling one of your wins. It is a slow and emotionally painful process. Somewhere along the line ambition/determination is born and strengthens so that it bears disappointment.
Meantime, a few tennis-nut friends want to play with him and there begins the obsession – playing two or three times a week and matches or tournaments at weekends. Some of the tournaments last a week and involve travelling far and wide, staying with friends or in a hostel or a B&B, or in some cases in campervans. At least two expensive rackets of the right weight and balance are needed, as well as balls, shoes, shirts and shorts, and a special bag to carry it all. The rackets frequently require re-stringing. Shoes wear out. Travel to tournaments is not simple for a non-car-owning, single-parent family. Very often, he is the only entrant who has arrived by public transport. Mother and siblings have to spend long, long hours of long, long days accompanying the tennis-playing child until he is old enough to travel and manage on his own.
At 15 he begins to travel on his own on buses and trains, changing at stations all over the UK, which he somehow manages, even if he loses phones or sweat-shirts and leaves sandwiches mouldering in his tennis bag. By this time he plays every day after school, taking his kit with him on the bus in the morning. The state school has no courts, so it means another bus trip after school to where he is playing, which involves joining a sports centre for the winter months and a club for the summer.
For this tennis-nut, in the 16-and under section, this is what it cost for the year 2012: a racket comes in at as much as £135, and each restringing – about every six weeks – is £20. Shoes set you back £95; tee-shirt and shorts around £25 each. To join a smaller club for the summer, the fee for a junior is £20. Membership of an indoor sports centre for the winter ranges from £35 – £55 a month. Individual coaching costs £30 an hour. In 2011/2012, the cost, without coaching and not counting all the accommodation, was £2,500. If you don’t live in a city which has these facilities, such as indoor courts, you might have to drive hundreds of miles to find them. To enter a tournament costs £16 plus the travel and accommodation.
All this effort and cost and determination however, are for someone who is only in the middle range of competitions. In the higher range he would be competing abroad, attending a Tennis Academy (there is only one in Scotland, at Merchiston Castle School), and on a reduced timetable at school. This goes to show how difficult it is for a ‘normal’ family to participate in sport at a medium to high level, especially if there are other children with other interests and the parents themselves have busy lives. It makes Andy Murray’s achievement all the more outstanding.
The tennis community is friendly, and obsessional. No-one talks about anything else: who is coached by whom; who has had an injury; whose mum or dad is fanatical; who has also done well at exams; who has staying power; who loses his temper on the court; who tends to cry if he loses; who is a joy to watch. For a strong, athletic teenager, an obsession with tennis is surely a healthy one. It provides plenty of physical exercise, indeed endurance, as well as friends, and builds independence. And it trains and tests strength of character on and off the court.
Tessa Ransford is a poet and founder of the Scottish
Poetry Library
