Month: June 1999

Lawn Tennis At Queen’s, In Which I Inadvertently Deployed Gamesmanship Masterfully, Yet Still Lost, 24 June 1999

I was reminded of this incident in June/July 2019 while Lord’s is too busy with the cricket world cup to allow us to play real tennis there, so several of us are playing in exile at Queen’s.

A Five Set Epic At Queen’s Followed By A Jam With DJ, 26 June 2019

The recovered memory arises because these 2019 visits, like the 1999 one, are occuring just after the ATP tournament has finished at Queen’s, making the place a bit of a maze/building site. This is not a complaint, btw – I think it is very generous of Queen’s to let us real tennis addicts play there at such a disrupted time.

My 1999 visit at the same time of year was an invitation for an after-work game of tennis by my friend/client Abe Koukou, who was a member of The Queen’s Club and who knew that Janie and I play modern (lawn) tennis regularly.

I told Abe, truthfully, that I had never played at Queen’s before and that I was delighted to be invited.

Which was true.

What I omitted to tell Abe, because it seemed irrelevant at the time, was that I did know The Queen’s Club rather well, having done some advisory work for the Club back in the early 1990s. At that time, I was still laid up with my multiply-prolapsed spine and had been unable to play. Indeed had that not been the case, I might have got addicted to real tennis back then. I do remember Howard Angus showing it to me when there was a major tournament on, being fascinated by it and feeling regretful that I was not fit enough to give real tennis a try back then.

Some 27 years after my first look at real tennis at Queen’s…

…but I digress.

Point is, although Abe was hosting my first go at playing tennis at Queen’s in June 1999, I knew the place pretty well.

On our arrival, Abe was discombobulated by the cordons and the fact that his usual route to the changing rooms was blocked off. But I knew multiple ways around the complex.

That’s OK, we can get there this way instead

..said I, going into automatic and taking the route past the squash and real tennis courts.

I thought you’d never played here before?

…said Abe, quizzically.

I explained.

After our tennis match, my first experience of playing on carpet as a surface as well as my first experience of playing at Queen’s, we retired to the bar.

There, by the bar, was Jonathan Edwardes, then the Club Secretary (a role now called the Chief Executive Officer).

Hello Ian, how lovely to see you here. So sorry I wasn’t able to accept Michael’s invitation onto that sailing barge of his. I’d have so enjoyed that…

At this juncture, Abe’s eyes widened a little, so I introduced Abe to Jonathan.

It then dawned on me that I had inadvertently, but comprehensively, deployed a version of gamesmanship, known as guestmanship.

The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship, or the Art of Winning Games without Actually Cheating by Stephen Potter 

I have long been a fan of Stephen Potter’s books and especially like the Gamesmanship one.

In the Guestmanship section, Potter explains that the host at a sports club is at an advantage…

He is playing on his home ground. He knows the ropes…there are plenty of opportunities for making his guest feel out of it…

…so the seasoned gamesman finds ways to reverse the advantage, by mugging up on the host’s club. The prepared gamesman ensures that the host:

would wonder whether he was a host in any valid sense…indeed he would begin to wonder whether he really was a member of his own club.

Potter then gives some examples of what the gamesman might do to deploy guestmanship masterfully…

…but I must say that none of Potter’s examples seem to me quite as masterful as my guestmanship at Queen’s that day in 1999. Indeed, I believe that my application of the art of guestmanship one-upped Stephen Potter’s original example. Having one-upped the one-upmanship chap, even inadvertently, is quite a thing.

So did my guestmanship result in Abe succumbing to my dark arts of tennis? Did it heck. Abe thrashed me in the first set (which reminds me, I need to go out to get some bagels). I did a little better in the second set.

And did the combination of my guestmanship and my comparatively limited skills at tennis make this the first and very last time I ever played at Queen’s with Abe? Of course it didn’t. Abe is such a genial, friendly and good-humoured fellow, he simply found the whole incident very funny. My subsequent visits as Abe’s guest were mostly with two other players making up a doubles that would be well matched. In real life, give me good sports (like Abe) over gamesmen any day.

But the book Gamesmanship, though over 70 years old now, is still a hoot; I do commend it.

The Day Charley The Gent And I Witnessed The Tied World Cup Cricket Semi Final At Edgbaston…On A Screen In Barcelona, 17 June 1999

Image “Diving For A Tie” produced in collaboration with Dall-E

The headline is a little deceptive, because Charles “Charley The Gent Malloy” Bartlett and I were not in Barcelona the City, but we were, along with a great many Z/Yen people and one or two other Children’s Society people, in Barcelona, the tapas and wine bar in The City.

Twenty years later, at the time of writing, Barcelona is still there – click the image for a link.

I had spent the whole day in the City. My diary says we had a PAYE inspection that day. I think it might have been that magnificent day that the inspector challenged us for claiming that we had an expenses procedure dispensation (which of course we did have) as he could find no record of us ever having been issued with such a dispensation. Linda Cook went to the archive files and dug out our dispensation letter which happened to have been issued by “Phil”, the very tax inspector who was before us that day. He almost apologised, claiming that files had been lost in an office move. He didn’t stay long after that.

But of course you don’t win tax inspections; the best you can hope for is an honourable draw or a tie.

Which brings me to the World Cup Semi Final.

But before that I need to explain why Charley The Gent was at our offices that day. You see, Teresa Bestard, who was one of Z/Yen’s first employees and who had done a great deal of work for The Children’s Society under Charley’s auspices, was leaving Z/Yen that day.

Teresa was (is) a Catalan with roots in Barcelona and Majorca. She chose the Barcelona tapas and wine bar as a suitable venue for her leaving do.

I arranged to meet Charley and Tony to go through some business stuff at Z/Yen around 16:00, so they could conveniently join the leaving do afterwards.

Nobody had been thinking about cricket at this juncture. Not even Teresa, who was good pals with Bob Willis, following a different wine bar incident (with me and others) in a different part of London – see relevant Ogblog piece by clicking here or below:

An Evening With Teresa Bestard, Bob Willis & Others, Albertine Wine Bar, 19 August 1997

On arrival, Chas did ask me if I was aware of the Australia v South Africa semi-final score. I wasn’t. He told me. I said it sounded close, but edging towards South Africa. Chas said he fancied Australia for the match. He wanted to bet. I said I don’t like to bet. He suggested a one pound stake. I accepted, with the proviso that if the match was a tie, both pounds would go to The Children’s Society.

Chas doing his Children’s Society cricket captain bit, back in 1998

We were not expecting to follow the latter stages of the World Cup Semi-Final, but Barcelona had other ideas. They were pumping the match out on big screens throughout the bar.

Great…

…said the cricket tragics, e.g. me and Charley. Teresa did not seem well pleased. She was already vocally irritated with us for a supposed slight; we had invited Mary O’Callaghan along to the event. Teresa saw this as Z/Yen inviting Teresa’s replacement to Teresa’s own leaving do. Actually we had hired Mary before we even knew that Teresa was leaving and had asked Mary along to several events to meet the team before she joined; this was the one she could make.

Some neutrals, such as Jacqueline Goldberg, Michael Mainelli and Linda Cook, used the language of indifference towards the cricket, but in truth couldn’t help but become more and more interested in the final overs of the match, as it became clear that the result was on a knife edge and the match was a real thriller.

Here is a link to the scorecard and Cricinfo resources.

I hope The Children’s Society made good use of the £2 it scored from that bet. The charity benefited from our subsequent charity matches to a much greater extent than this wager.

Below is a video of the highlights/denouement of that match:

Teresa’s leaving do went on for hours after the cricket finished and everyone relaxed into the wine and tapas. It was a very good leaving do for a very special member of the team.

But I’m afraid the cricket tragics amongst us will remember the evening primarily for that astonishing tied World Cup Semi Final, as we lived every moment on those big screens in Barcelona.