THERE are those among us who might believe the staging of a world championship of real tennis would involve a match in which the combatants must serve-and-volley on both deliveries while wearing Dunlop Volleys and using those old wooden Maxfli racquets with the Union Jack stamped on the throat.
But the most genuine form of real tennis dates back to the 1200s, grabbed the attention of William Shakespeare, has been crowning World No 1s since 1740 and is the oldest contested championship in world sport.
A London-based Australian with an unrivalled record of achievement will chase his 12th world title this week. The 46-year-old Rob Fahey and American Camden Riviere will go best-of-13 sets at the Royal Melbourne Tennis Club from Tuesday. Fahey has been the World No 1 for more than 1000 weeks after tumbling into the sport from his pursuit of the most coveted commodity for most prospective university students: the amber fluid.
“I answered a job ad in a newspaper in Hobart,” he told The Weekend Australian. “It was to work at the real tennis club in Hobart. I’d never even heard of it, but it seemed like a good option for a bit of beer money at the time. It turned out to be a bit more than that.
“Most of my adult life has been spent as the world champion, so it’s become a pretty big part of me.”
Fahey and Riviere will don white clothes. Depending on their progress, the match can continue on Thursday and finish on Saturday. Fahey’s 11 world titles, 11 British Opens, eight US Opens, 13 French Opens and 13 Australian Opens make him the most successful real tennis player of all time. Which is a long, long time. “That’s always been one of the fascinating things about it for me — how a sport can survive from as far back as the 1200s and 1300s,” he said.
“The clubs and palaces you get to play at around the world are pretty amazing. Each one is quirky in its own way.
“I’ve become an honorary life member at Queens in London after I won there, so I get out on the grass courts there and have a hit of what you call your regular tennis. I’m not quite as proficient.”
Lawn tennis. Real tennis. Compare and contrast. “They might look quite similar but they’re amazingly different,” he said. “We’ve got such a hard ball, small racquet and walls. It’s almost more like cricket than tennis because you’ve got the ball skidding on to you. There’s more of the element of control. The lawn tennis ball pops off the surface. You can absolutely leather it with heavy topspin.
“Our stuff is very deliberate positional play. You’ll get a loose ball you can wind up on, like a squash shot when it’s coming off the back wall. You can hit that ball ridiculously hard.
“When you see lawn tennis and real tennis side by side, they do look quite similar. But in all honesty, they’re not.”
source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/tennis/tennis-world-champion-for-1000-weeks-and-counting/story-fnbe6xeb-1226903849099#
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