So Serena would be 700th, reckons McEnroe. It’s all pointless | Victoria Coren Mitchell | Sport
When John McEnroe commented, last week, that if Serena Williams played tennis on the men’s tour she would be “like, 700†in the rankings, she replied on Twitter thus:
“Dear John, I adore and respect you but please please keep me out of your statements that are not factually based.â€
What a shame. She should have replied: “Dear John, you’re right. I probably would be about 700 in the rankings. But then, I am six months pregnant.â€
What an opportunity missed! (It’s a version of what the 87-year-old Don Bradman said when asked what his batting average would be against modern fast bowlers. I haven’t looked at Twitter but I hope at least some people have made this joke on Serena’s behalf.) It’s also a shame because I didn’t have John McEnroe pegged as an idiot. He seems bright, funny and quite liberated. Only a couple of weeks ago, he posted a great vlog about equal marriage in reply to some dodgy comments about lesbians by Margaret Court.
But Serena Williams is right, albeit not as funny as she might have been: his statement is not factually based. 700th? Where did that come from? McEnroe was meaning to say, “She needn’t think she’s all that; there are plenty of men in the world who could beat her†but he overegged it with the number 700, which is a rather hysterical guess.
If it weren’t hysterical â€" if the amazing Serena Williams would really be 700th in the world if playing against men â€" this would mean that skill, technique and hand-eye coordination have become effectively irrelevant in tennis compared with brute strength and force. And if that’s true, John McEnroe might want to consider piping down about it, for fear of turning off the audience and jeopardising his revenue stream.
Even if he had got the theoretical ranking correct, though, what’s his point? That physically stronger tennis players have an advantage over smaller ones? Like, duh. Serena Williams is competing in a different class. You might just as well say Ricky Hatton wouldn’t have done so well if he had to fight Anthony Joshua. Or Bradley Wiggins couldn’t cycle over the finish line faster than Lewis Hamilton could do it in a car. What’s the point of saying it? Just to belittle a fellow sportsperson’s achievement? It doesn’t tell us anything about the player’s innate ability.
This is why I say McEnroe’s an idiot. I hesitate because it’s possible he was just trying to say something interesting â€" an unfashionable impulse, these days, and one to be treasured. You don’t want to slap down everyone who says something stupid in the heat of the moment, while trying to spice up a broadcast or interview, lest we hurtle even faster towards an entirely empty and monotonous public discourse.
So, I hope I can celebrate the old legend’s instinct to amuse and stimulate, even as I say that in this case it’s led him to idiocy.
In my life as a poker player, I’ve met a lot of men who say that women “will never be as good as men†â€" and that’s a card game! Not just any card game, either; a card game that relies on patience, craftiness and guile. Do these strike you as particularly masculine qualities?
It is my regular observation that the men who say “Women will never beat men at poker, they can’t mask their emotions, they just can’t bluff†are exactly the same men who say: “My wife is impossible! Constantly saying one thing and meaning another! Like I’m supposed to magically know what she’s thinking!â€
But what the hell, they enjoy saying it. I don’t know why, but they are simply made happy by the noise of themselves saying that women aren’t as good at something as men. And I’m happy for them to be happy, as I pocket their money.
I suspect that something similar was going on for John McEnroe. The fact that women, like welterweight boxers, compete in a separate physical class does not make them “worse†(or “betterâ€) players, but he framed his observation as if it did â€" as if Serena Williams were worse than his randomly selected 699 men â€" because he rather liked the sound of it.
And now he’s called for men to compete openly against women, in order to prove… what? Nothing at all. Why does he want to see female players losing to vast, dangling male players? To embarrass them? I notice he doesn’t call for Paralympians to compete openly against Olympic gold-medallists. Is that because he respects the different classes in that case, recognising that weight and strength divisions don’t equate to quality divisions? No, it’s just because he wouldn’t so enjoy the sound of himself saying it.
Here’s the ultimate glitch in his argument. If you extrapolate logically from John McEnroe’s suggestion that 699 people are better at tennis than Serena Williams, then there’s no real point in her competing. And if there’s no point her competing, there’s certainly no point any other women competing.
Problem is, John, there’s no point anybody competing. It’s all pointless. It’s just whiling away the time with a bit of entertainment before we die. It’s not like there’s a great pile of tennis needing to be played, God bless the volunteers who step up for it.
The knocking back and forth of balls between arbitrarily drawn lines has given rise to a massive edifice of money and gold cups and fast cars and jetting around the world, silkily lucrative lifestyles for everybody involved, all based on goodwill and enjoyment and nobody asking too many questions about whether there’s any point to all this.
John McEnroe has done very well out of it, and he might do well now to move on from this subject before someone says: “My goodness, you’re right! What a waste of time it all is! Now get out of that commentary box and start cleaning those bins.â€
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