Tennis: the most perfect combination of athleticism, artistry, power, style, and wit. A beautiful game, but one so remorselessly travestied by the passage of time.
Interpretation
Tennis combines physical skill and artistic expression, but its beauty is often overshadowed by time and change.
Martin Amis describes tennis as an ideal fusion of physical prowess and artistic elements, showcasing both strength and creativity. However, he also reflects on how the game is affected by the inevitability of time, suggesting that its qualities can be altered or diminished as it evolves.
In practice
In a speech discussing the art of sportsmanship, one could quote Amis to highlight the multifaceted nature of tennis.
Oh Christ, the exhaustion of not knowing anything. It's so tiring and hard on the nerves. It really takes it out of you, not knowing anything. You're given comedy and miss all the jokes. Every hour you get weaker. Sometimes, as I sit alone in my flat in London and stare at the window, I think how dismal it is, how heavy, to watch the rain and not know why it falls.
Sometimes I feel that life is passing me by, not slowly either, but with ropes of steam and spark - spattered wheels and a hoarse roar of power or terror. It's passing, yet I'm the one who's doing all the moving.
You know how it is when two souls meet in a burst of ecstatic volubility, with hearts tickling to hear and to tell, to know everything, to reveal everything, the shared reverence for the other's otherness, a feeling of solitude radiantly snapped by full *contact* - all that?
All my adult life I have been searching for the right adjective to describe my father's peculiarly aggressive comic style. I recently settled on 'defamatory.'
Love is an abstract noun, something nebulous. And yet love turns out to be the only part of us that is solid, as the world turns upside down and the screen goes black.
Jane was my wicked stepmother: she was generous, affectionate and resourceful; she salvaged my schooling and I owe her an unknowable debt for that. One flaw: sometimes, early on, she would tell me things designed to make me think less of my mother, and I would wave her away, saying, Jane, this just backfires and makes me think less of you.
We know that hockey is where we live, where we can best meet and overcome pain and wrong and death. Life is just a place where we spend time between games.
The essence of football was blocking, tackling, and execution based on timing, rhythm and deception.
There are teams that wait for you and teams that look for you: Espanyol look for you. I feel very close to their style of football.
Golf is a puzzle without an answer. I've played the game for 40 years and I still haven't the slightest idea how to play.
Test matches to me are the caviar compared to the fast food stuff. Having the ability and the constitution to triumph over five days is what it's all about.
One reason golf is such an exasperating game is that a thing we learned is so easily forgotten, and we find ourselves struggling year after year with faults we had discovered and corrected time and again.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.