KEY POINTS:
When a woman's gotta go, she's gotta go. Except that when Serena Williams was offered the chance to take a "comfort break" in her remarkable third-round match against Daniela Hantuchova at Wimbledon she suddenly did not need to go after all.
Williams' selective need to visit the bathroom has prompted allegations of gamesmanship. Some critics have even suggested she also faked the calf injury that added such a dramatic air to her victory.
The last charge is ludicrous. Williams' yelp of pain, and her collapse to the turf, was obviously genuine. That she only wanted to go for a toilet break when her opponent was about to serve (which is no longer permitted), does seem more Machiavellian.
If so, it was hardly a new development, nor even an extreme one. Forget the strawberries and cream image. At its professional heart, lawn tennis is as devious as any other sport. This is a sport where many players, of all levels, keep a copy of Brad Gilbert's Winning Ugly in their kit bag, a book which devotes 63 pages to "mind games, psyching out and gamesmanship".
Nick Bollettieri, the legendary coach, has seen most of the tricks in his half-century in the game. "There is no way on this earth that Serena's cramp had anything to do with gamesmanship," he said. "Her calf was swollen like a grapefruit. As for the toilet break, I don't know. It's a thin line. I'm sure she needed the bathroom, and I can accept that as she took control of the match, she wanted to stay on court.
"There was more obvious gamesmanship in Rafael Nadal's match with Robin Soderling. Nadal was playing with his pants, pulling up his socks, bouncing the ball 30 or 40 times or something ridiculous."
Many in the game feel Nadal's timewasting is gamesmanship. Players are supposed to play at the speed of the server, but Nadal dictates his own tempo. So does Maria Sharapova who, between every point, turns to the back of the court, fiddles with her racquet strings, then deigns to serve or receive. It would be a bold player who served regardless to someone of the stature of Nadal or Sharapova.
The men can only take toilet breaks at the end of a set. But that is also open to abuse. Eyebrows were also raised at the eight-minute break Feliciano Lopez required after losing the fourth set against Tim Henman. The delay broke Henman's rhythm and Lopez won the fifth.
The use of Hawk-Eye challenges, and injury time-outs are other potential sources of gamesmanship but, adds Bollettieri, "in a historical context, this is Mickey Mouse stuff compared to the great gamesmen. I mean Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, Ilie Nastase. Now that was gamesmanship, and the crowds loved it. These guys knew what they were doing."
In Winning Ugly Gilbert recalls an encounter in a Chicago tournament.
In the final set Gilbert, with match-point on Connors' serve, hit a winner. He recalled Connors was "so mad stuff was coming out of his nose and he was spitting at the mouth". Indicating a supposed mark he screamed abuse at the line judge and umpire. To Gilbert's shock and horror the umpire suddenly announced an overrule.
Gilbert, to no avail, protested. He failed to win another point as Connors won the match.
This appears closer to cheating than gamesmanship, the art of which was first defined (and labelled) in Stephen Potter's 1947 book, Gamesmanship: The Art of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating.
Potter describes how to interrupt an opponent's flow, or distract him, ideally while appearing sporting. Thus, though fidgeting while your opponent addresses the ball at the tee-box is unsporting, asking loudly for quiet so your opponent can concentrate appears sporting but achieves the same effect.
But surely golf, the game in which players police themselves, is clean? Downright cheating is extremely rare but gamesmanship occurs, albeit more often among club players than pros.
Such behaviour is "just not cricket", except cricket is hardly exempt. If appealing when the batsman is not out, or claiming a grounded catch, is really cheating, bowlers going off for a breather after a long spell, or creating footmarks for their spinners, are more akin to gamesmanship.
Other sports are similarly affected. Footballers dive, and habitually appeal for a throw-in, or corner, when they know the ball went out of play off themselves. And what of the dark arts of the rugby scrum?
How, too, do we categorise the more infamous shunts in Formula One? When Alain Prost drove Ayrton Senna off the track at Suzuka in 1989, and Michael Schumacher crashed into Damon Hill at Adelaide in 1994, in both cases ensuring they took the championship, was it gamesmanship, or a reckless disregard for safety?
Such acts make Serena Williams' request look mild. Besides, Hantuchova should have had the steel to ignore her.
"In pro sports, small margins matter, so players use any advantage within the rules, gamesmanship included," Bollettieri concluded. "But the bottom line for any pro is get the job done. If you're good enough to be out there, you have to be strong enough, focused enough, to think only of the ball, the point, the match. Block distractions out and they're not going to hurt you."
- INDEPENDENT
