Ringing the Changes! - 6 July 2001

"Let there be fireworks and bells rung on this day and universal rejoicing throughout this new republic."

So wrote John Adams, first vice-president, second president of the United States, after the 4th of July had been proclaimed as the official date celebrating the independence of the 13 colonies.

They don't ring bells much anymore, though in Philadelphia, where the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they produce a ceremonial clang on the so-called Liberty Bell - an old, cracked 18th Century bell - made in London, by the way - that was rung at the first reading of the Declaration of Independence.

Fireworks certainly blazed from sea to shining sea, under the official auspices that is of state or city officials.

The 4th used to be, as late as the Second World War, a day on which just about every city and small town in the country held a parade or an assembly in a public park where the mayor or the local congressman made the fanciest speech he could concoct about the blessings of liberty and of simply being an American.

The president of the United States still makes a public speech to the same effect and the newspapers dutifully print, or used to, a tribute to Thomas Jefferson, who everybody knows wrote the Declaration of Independence, became the third president of the United States, bought one third of the land area of America from Napoleon - for four cents an acre - and saved the nation from conquest by the French.

Down the years, the centuries, Jefferson has become specially identified with the character of the republic because he had positive and very vocal ideas about the things, the practices, that should distinguish it from the monarchy that they'd shed.

During the debating and writing of the Constitution he was in London, but he kept as closely in touch with Philadelphia as the shipping schedules would allow and was always dashing off little notes about what a republic should not have.

He was dead against the suggestion that the new chief executive should be called "His Excellency". "Mr President" would do.

As for titles of nobility: "Not to be granted by this republic. A very great vanity," he called them. And don't copy the English custom of having judges wear wigs. Let us on our benches have no mice peeping out of oakum.

He was appalled when the Constitution was finished and had composed no bill of rights and it was mainly at his insistence that this error was corrected.

However, this year, along with the general celebrations, there has appeared across the country a rash of pieces demeaning Jefferson.

His memory has been under a cloud ever since a very old rumour appeared to be confirmed that he'd fathered at least one child by one of his black slaves.

An early report on DNA evidence seemed to clinch the matter and suddenly he was a famous hypocrite who had many slaves, never freed them, swore he would die to ensure the liberty of man - provided he was not black.

A dozen famous scholars protested the haste with which the DNA testimony had been published and they went over it with forensic lawyers.

And it comes out that what the DNA evidence shows is that that particular slave child was fathered by an unidentifiable one of 24 Jeffersons living in Virginia at the time of the conception. The 64-year-old Jefferson living in Washington was the least likely suspect.

It will take time, as always, for the truth to overtake the luscious rumour.

Meanwhile here in Brooklyn a whole team of sculptors are busy preparing statues of the 39 men who signed the Constitution and the three men who dissented.

The artists have almost nothing to go on by way of impersonating in bronze or clay these worthies, most of the time only a name and his age. But they are determined to finish the job and install all 42 images in Philadelphia by Independence Day 2003.

Incidentally, a Californian congressman has presented to Congress a bizarre bill, very unlikely to pass I should think, proposing that every state in the Union should erect a statue of Ronald Reagan.

Oh and, oh yes. Another monarchical fol de rol Jefferson said a republic must not have: "No public statues".

Well he won on the wigs and the titles but lost handsomely on the statues, as a jaunt through any American city will tell you.

The first week in July I have to say always strikes a wistful note these days. It's the last week of Wimbledon and for many years it meant for me being present always on the Thursday for the women's semi-finals and again on the Saturday for the women's finals.

As for the men, I chose to stay beside the tele and stay with it as long as it was interesting, which was very rarely five sets.

Why this preoccupation with the women? Is it because in general I like women better than men? Well yes that's true, but it's not the reason for my indifference to men's tennis at Wimbledon.

I shall tell you a couple of stories and soon all will be made clear.

A few years ago an American friend who watches a good deal of tennis went, for the first time, to England during the fortnight dedicated to the All England Lawn Tennis Club. Every time he turned on the tube - tennis, tennis.

He came back his eyes gleaming, his head shaking with disbelief.

"By god," he said, "the British are crazy about tennis aren't they?"

"Well no," I said, "they're crazy about Wimbledon. It's a national festival. Like the Derby, where everybody drops a bob or two whether they know one end of a horse from another.

"Old ladies watch Wimbledon every year who've never seen a tennis racket anywhere else."

Second story. About 10 days ago an old English friend of mine, who sees very little tennis through the year but regards Wimbledon as an annual religious requirement, as atheists attend the church funeral of a friend.

We talked about this and that and the coming excitement, from my point of view, of seeing how Kuerten and young Lleyton Hewitt and the Belgian girls - Claysters and Henin - would do at Wimbledon.

And my old friend said: "The women yes but I've given up on men's tennis."

As Max Wall used to say: "Pourquoi?"

"Because," he said, "it's so dull."

This is such an old story in England that I didn't go on and say, which is true, that so far this year I've watched the quarter finals, semis and finals of, I should say, 15 tournaments and the indelible memories are of royal battles between the men - too many to particularise.

The pros - men and women - play about 40 tournaments in the year. Thirty nine of them are played on hard courts. The four or five tournaments leading up to the French Open on clay.

So? So Wimbledon is played on grass. And compared with all other surfaces which arrest the landing of the ball and let it bounce, by comparison a man's very fast serve on grass can be more like a bullet zipping through a marsh.

What this means is the men - and by now there are a dozen of them who can serve at a 120 miles an hour or more - simply serve - bam - and half the time the opponent can't possibly return it.

I recall a Wimbledon final - oh, it must be 10 years ago - between the two Germans, Michael Stick and Boris Becker. I had the grim pleasure of seeing it through in the flesh.

It was achingly dull because over the whole three and a half or whatever hours the average rally was four strokes.

Serve - slam, bang - a sputtering or decent return - a withering slice - a return into the net.

Because of this very plight there was then a tremendous to do in tennis circles in Britain which coincided, not accidentally, with the arrival of the new rackets and the thunderbolt serve.

What to do? All sorts of serious as well as wild suggestions were made. Reduce the size of the service box.

The most daring and impossible suggestion was: Why not limit the game to one serve?

In golf, we chasers of little white balls remarked: "You don't drive a ball out of bounds and then say 'Oh too bad, I'll watch the next one'."

I believe the hullabaloo has died down because I'm told that Wimbledon has a new type of grass which slows the ball.

And what with that and the hot, dry weather during the past two weeks it has shown a marked improvement, though I'd say not yet enough.

So why do I recall so many marvellous men's matches along this year's tour - in California, in Florida, Rome, Hamburg, and, my goodness, Kuerten coming from two sets down and match point to a heroic victory in Paris, the clay capital of the world?

Because the average rally between the men in the 15 or so tournaments I've watched was 12 to 15 strokes - four or five at Wimbledon.

I remember one set-to between the young Roddick and the young Hewitt that went to 32 strokes as thousands wept and cheered.

In simpler words: Men's tennis on any surface other than grass reveals the whole game, not just the serve and return, of a man at full stretch.

Need I say that nowhere else in the world, I believe, has there been any debate on what to do about men's tennis.

And this leads back, does it not, to the dreaded word: Grass.

And if you say, by the way, how about Kuerten and Corretja - the finalists in the French Open - why weren't they at Wimbledon?

Well they withdraw, citing - I love the word "citing" - injuries. Let's not go too clinically into the "injuries" of all the Hispanic players - the Spanish especially - who did not appear at Wimbledon.

They were brought up on clay, they hate grass and, in effect, boycott Wimbledon.

When the British hassle was at its most contentious Peter Sampras said: "It's simple, if you want rallies abolish grass."

And just before this year's Wimbledon the recent number one in the world, perhaps spoke too soon, but Marcelo Rios put it more succinctly: "Grass," he said, "it's for cows."

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