If the pessimism and gloominess of society is starting to get you down, let me usher you into the weekend with a bolt of bright, beautiful and brash optimism: according to a recent survey, 5% of British people who “occasionally play sports” believe that they could win a tennis match against Serena Williams.
Of course, I should tell you that this survey was taken by a sports betting website in the UK, which means most of the people who answered it have the gambler’s deep, unshakeable and thoroughly deluded faith that they are special and can overcome impossible odds.
Still, I must admit that I admire their optimism. I even share it.
My wife laughs at me whenever I tell her this — and I tell it to her very often — but I remain supremely confident that, given the right circumstances, I could score four runs in a cricket Test match, those circumstances being that the bowler is tired and clocking in at somewhere under 120km/h, doesn’t aim at my body, head, or anywhere near my stumps, bowls it full and wide enough for me to nick, and there’s nobody in the slips or on the boundary at third man.
It’s far better to watch the greats from a safe distance and understand that they’re great for a reason.
Tennis, however, is a very different game, not least because you can’t score by nicking a serve into the stands behind you or flinching the tennis ball off body and lumbering to the other side of the net.
One of sport’s great delights is that anything can happen. Japan can beat the Springboks and Kenya can beat the West Indies. Minnows can, and sometimes do, eat orcas. Sporting lore sparkles with these fairy-tale moments, and whenever a tiny runt of an underdog shuffles out to face a mountain of muscle and gold medals, all of us allow ourselves a moment of wondering: yes, but what if?
Should Satan and the fates ever conspire to put me at the other end of a tennis court from Serena Williams, however, I know with 100% certainly what would happen.
She would beat me like dusty carpet.
The only tennis ball I’d smell all day was the one that hit me in the nose at 200km/h.
Honestly, without hyperbole, I don’t think I’d come within half a court width of a single one of her serves, except for the ones she hit directly at my body to see how fast she could make me cry (spoiler: pretty damn fast.) And the less said about my serve, and the human rights abuses she would commit against it, the better ...
No, it’s far better to watch the greats from a safe distance and understand that they’re great for a reason.
And yet, isn’t it good to know that the world still has some dreamers in it?
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