Michael Keane – Ian Louis Harris

A Couple Of Hours Of Real Tennis At Lord’s, The Second Of Which Partnering Michael Constantinidi, RIP, 4 January 2019

I haven’t written about real tennis for a while. I am motivated to do so now (February 2019) due to the sad news that Michael Constantinidi, one of the MCC’s most senior players, passed away, aged 90, last week.

I partnered Michael in a game of “senior doubles” only a few week’s before he died and saw him on court just a few days before his sudden and unexpected departure.

Michael was an extremely likeable and charming man. It was always a pleasure to share the tennis court with him, either as his partner or as one of his adversaries.

Partnering Michael was almost like having a lesson. Not only because Chris Swallow, one of the professionals, was very often on the other side of the net trying to make life difficult (but not too difficult) for me, but because Michael would gently help me with praise and/or with context for my mistakes.

If I berated myself or apologised for a miss, he might say…

no, no, that was a very difficult ball, you did well to almost make it

…or if I missed a straight-forward shot, as oft I do, he might say:

never mind – you haven’t missed many all day.

On that day we played together in early January, I sensed that I was flagging a little towards the end of my second hour – I had played a rigorous game of singles against the actor Michael Keane (another delightful playing companion) before joining the seniors for doubles. But you wouldn’t have sensed any frustration from my doubles partner as my performance dipped late in the hour.

Michael Constantinidi was also a delightful gentleman with whom to chat in the locker room after a game. He’d led an interesting life and could discuss a great many subjects with insight and warmth.

He had been keen fives player – he had chaired the Eton Fives Association for many years. My fives game had been the Rugby Fives variety, but it transpired that Michael had spent much of his time with the Eton Fives Association building bridges between the two versions of the sport. Indeed, he had opened the refurbished fives courts at my old school, Alleyn’s some years ago.

Here’s a video that shows one of Michael’s pet Eton Fives projects, at Westway:

Whereas here is a promo video about Rugby Fives – no buttress but there is a back wall:

Michael Constantinidi used to joke with me that he was no use at taking the real tennis ball off the back wall because of his Eton Fives background, which presumably means that I still have ever so much more to learn about the tambour (the real tennis buttress) as a former Rugby Fives player.

I never did get to tell Michael about my historic fives victory in June 1975, described here and below:

An Uneventful Day Playing Fives, 9 June 1975

But returning to Michael Constantinidi and real tennis; for a gentleman in his late 80s and latterly over 90, Michael was a remarkably good player still, moving around the court with surprising ease and speed.

But the thing about Michael’s real tennis play that I simply must write down and try to describe for posterity was his serve. It was bizarre…almost defying description…quite simply unique.

There are a great many different serves at real tennis, all with quirky names: giraffe, boomerang, railroad, bobble, demi-piquet and piquet (my own favourite)…

…but Michael’s serve was seemingly from another lexicon, or even from another planet.

Try to imagine an exaggerated version of a lawn tennis over-arm serve motion, not a million miles different from a “T-serve”, broken down into a couple of dozen individual, jerky, stop-frame motions, before the racket finally makes contact with the ball…

…Michael’s serve looked a little like that.

The coaches are encouraging me to try to simplify my serve, to minimise the amount of pre-impact movement, to concentrate on the essential part of the serve – where the racket impacts the ball – trying to get the desired amount of force, spin and length onto the ball. That is excellent advice, I understand, but it is entirely contre-Constantinidi.

And the extraordinary thing is, that not only did Michael’s Heath-Robinson-looking wind up to serve tend to transfix, hypnotise and confuse his opponent…

…it was on most occasions consistently accurate and surprisingly tricky to return. Like much in real tennis, it made little or no sense but somehow it worked for Michael. And probably only for Michael.

I don’t think we’ll see the like of Michael’s serve again, but if by some strange quirk of fate someone, somewhere decides to serve in that manner, I think it should be known for ever more as “The Constantinidi Serve”.

One can only assume the near-spherical symbols indicate “hard balls”.

Like the vast majority of real tennis players, Michael Constantinidi loved his hard ball sports, yet he was the softest, gentlest fellow with whom to play sport and delightful company off the court. His cheerful and charming demeanour will be fondly remembered and sadly missed around Lord’s.

Edinburgh Day One: Angry Alan by Penelope Skinner, NewsRevue, BattleActs & Dinner At Chop House Leith, 17 August 2018

We rose quite early, to be greeted by the sight and sound of miscellaneous gulls outside our window and even a bevy of eight swans, which graced our view daily throughout our stay. They even came to say goodbye just as we were leaving, a week later.

We found our way to Leith Links on foot (less than 10 minutes walk away) and played tennis there. Three courts in good condition; quite similar to our regular arrangements at Boston Manor.

Then we returned to the flat to wash, change and sort out bus/tram passes. Once we were “appy” with that, we set off into Edinburgh. First stop, to collect our tickets for today at the High Street Fringe ticket shop.

Then we headed towards Underbelly, to get our bearings & find some lunch. An Underbelly usher recommended Let Me Eat Too, where we had giant “Balmoral” panini wraps of chicken, haggis & cheese. There we met a nice English family – the son was in a show & the parents had some good ideas/suggestions for us.

We subsequently decided that places like Let Me Eat Too and their portion sizes were a bit “over belly” for us at lunchtime ahead of shows at Underbelly and the like, so we lightened up our subsequent post-tennis/lunchtime arrangements.

We saw the only play I had pre-booked for the trip: Angry Alan by Penelope Skinner. It was a superb piece, very well acted by Donald Sage Mackay, whom we had seen quite recently in White Guy On The Bus at the Finborough. Angry Alan has been very well received, on the whole, in formal reviews. By chance, we got to meet Donald Sage Mackay & Penelope Skinner afterwards in the Underbelly cafe.

Then we hunted down tickets for the shows that nice family recommended, &/but took sanctuary in the Checkpoint cafe on Bristo Place. I went on a bit of a fool’s errand from there to try & get tickets in person – app/collect works much better and cheaper it seems.

Then we strolled on to George Square to see NewsRevue; the other show I had pre-booked before we set off for Edinburgh.

I have been hanging around NewsRevue since the early 1990s and had material in the show, including the Edinburgh “best of” shows, for most of that decade. Of course I had often seen previews of the Edinburgh show at the Canal Cafe, but this was the first time I had ever seen the show in Edinburgh. The show has a different vibe in a 500-seater auditorium with the performers miked up and the audience in “early evening Fringe” mode rather than “late night cabaret” mode.

But it is still a very good show, as it has always been; and oh boy was it packed the day we saw it; probably the case every day. NewsRevue really has become an Edinburgh Fringe institution now.

Then we strolled back to High Street to collect those appy show tickets for tomorrow. Then back to Cowgate for quick drink at Underbelly & then on to Three Sisters (Free Sisters) to see Michael Keane (a friend of mine from the real tennis community) & his pals in a comedy improv. show named BattleActs.

Not really our sort of thing; improv. shows, but this one was done very well and had packed out a fairly sizeable room at the Free Sisters.

We bussed back to Leith, stopping for dinner at Chop House Leith for some excellent aged steaks and a couple of glasses of very quaffable red wine.

We’d had a super first day at the fringe.

If you want to see all the pictures we took on this Edinburgh trip, you can find the album by clicking here or the picture (Flickr Album link) below:

Reflections and Links After c6 Months of Real Tennis, 24 July 2016

Jesmond Dene Real Tennis Court (Newcastle-Upon-Tyne) Seen From Hazard End. Photo by Horacio Gomes on a GNU Free Documentation License.

I took up real tennis at Lord’s about six months ago, having some lessons in January before disappearing to Nicaragua for much of February and then starting to play in earnest on our return from holiday.

At the time of writing, I have probably played some 40 competitive hours on court. Or, as Chris Swallow, one of the coaches at Lord’s puts it:

in real tennis terms, Ian, you are still in nappies.

Background

Real tennis is the ancient game from which most modern court ball games (squash, lawn tennis, fives) derived – the Wikipedia entry – click here – gives a very good overview.

Here is a link to the Tennis and Rackets Association site, where you can find lots more information about the game and video footage of recent big matches.

It is an asymmetric game in many ways, not least the service end and the receiving end (known as the hazard end) have very different characteristics.

Even the rackets are asymmetric (see photo below). The balls are hand-made, therefore not completely round, solid and hard. The game can seem more than a bit strange to the uninitiated. Alex Bowden, aka King Cricket, who joined me for the first day of the Sri Lanka test this year, described it (in his “report” – click here) as:

…an almost entirely baffling experience. As far as we can work out, those who commit to real tennis from an early enough age must at some point hit some sort of sweet spot where they have had sufficient time to attain a rough grasp of the rules without yet having been consigned to a wheelchair through old age.

The actor Michael Keane – for his details click here, who plays real tennis at Lord’s, says with characteristic wit that:

real tennis originated in medieval times and we are fortunate to have some of the original players still playing the game with us at Lord’s.

That quip is a little unfair, but we do have at least two gentlemen playing at Lord’s, approaching the age of 90, who are determined to continue to turn out next year as the world’s first nonagenarian tennis doubles pair. I hope that, by then, I am good enough to be selected to play against them.

My progress

It’s hard to tell really. I started with a handicap of 77 and currently have a handicap of 67. I am told that I am making decent progress but won’t be satisfied unless or until I get that figure below 60. As long as I stay fit, I expect that my handicap will continue to fall for a couple of years at least while I come to terms with the many aspects of this fascinating, addictive game.

Of course, I play a lot of modern tennis with Janie and have played that game since I was a nipper. In time I think my modern tennis experience will be a help rather than a hindrance, but for the time being if anything it adds to my confusion. The shots that do best for me at modern tennis, such as slice and in particular top spin, are anathema to real tennis, which requires well-weighted chop or cut shots for maximum effect (i.e. to minimise bounce).

In a way, real tennis shots have more in common with cricket shots than modern tennis shots. Head still, foot to the ball, side on, firm wrists, timing the shot…all characteristics with which I have always struggled at cricket…so perhaps it is unsurprising that I am finding real tennis difficult too.

Added to which, my unusual habit of playing modern tennis off both arms has some interesting implications for the real tennis, where there are some real benefits to playing left-handed in many circumstances, not least when playing on the hazard side with all those pesky nooks and crannies to defend. But it does also mean that I shall probably need a fair bit more court time than most to get the requisite muscle memory in both arms and to learn when and how to switch hands in various circumstances.

When I started I played once a week, but I soon realised that I would need to play at least twice a week to make real progress. Initially I planned to take some more lessons after about 20 hours of court time, but I now realise that I need to find my own way around the court for 40-50 hours before I would be able to benefit properly from more formal instruction.

The good news is that more or less everyone at Lord’s seems to be so very welcoming and encouraging. In particular, some of the more senior players from whom I can learn a great deal about the game seem keen to play with me and also keen to advise – usually AFTER teaching me a lesson in competitive play on the court, of course.

Some More Links And Plans To Report On Further Progress

I have created an Ogblog category for Tennis, which covers real and modern tennis, playing and watching. A search on that will find all I have written so far on all forms of tennis.

I tag everything I write about real tennis – often a paragraph in a diary piece about my day, as “real tennis” so a click on that tag cloud phrase (or a search on the phrase “real tennis”) should uncover all references but exclude the modern tennis. Within those pieces are also links to other pieces where I have mentioned real tennis (e.g. those published on King Cricket).

Photo taken on May 4, 2005, by Peter Cahusac at the Falkland Palace Royal Tennis Club. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Periodically, I shall report on my progress and occasionally report on my games, usually as part of another memorable day. For example, 19 July 2016, after playing a particularly sticky afternoon game, I cooled off by sitting in the shade catching up on my reading while the MCC played Nepal at cricket – see Cricinfo write up here. A useful and enjoyable afternoon. Were it not for this piece, I might have given that afternoon an Ogblog entry of its own.

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