Now, her ranking matches her age (19) and what seemed like an impressively balanced all-court game hasn’t matured well; she’s never really beefed up a pitty-pat serve, and while she’s quick, she’s nowhere near as quick as the Williams sisters or world No. 1 Martina Hingis. She hits reasonably hard, but her shots seem like whiffs compared to the whacks from bruisers like Lindsay Davenport or Mary Pierce or, again, Serena and Venus Williams. She’s good, nothing more.

Yes, she’s lovely, there’s no getting around that. She’s a pretty young woman in the most conventional of ways: long blond hair, naturally pouty, with the body of a well-endowed woman who works out an awful lot. But the eye-batting girly routine she’s worked hard through the years feels more girly-show now; it’s hard to believe this woman — she’s been on-again, off-again dating Russian hockey star Sergei Federov since she was 15; he’s more than 10 years older — hasn’t been around the block a few times.

Attempts to portray her as a “Lolita”-like idol are forced; Frank Deford’s heavy-breathing paean to her in the June 5, 2000, issue of Sports Illustrated made the magazine pages feel sticky. John McEnroe even turned the idea that Kournikova could possibly still be a virgin into a rude little joke on Letterman last week.

Still, she’s by far the most popular tennis player in the world, and she deserves to be.

Not because she’s earned it, of course, but because no one else in the sport, male or female, seems inclined to want anything more than a big fat paycheck and to be left alone. The best American stars, including Pete Sampras, Davenport and now even Andre Agassi, have the passion of a self-actualized e-commerce entrepreneur: They speak mellowly of how they won because of the hard work they put into it, because they ate right or because they got a lot sleep. They seem to spend a lot of time explaining, with a twinge of defensiveness, why they’ve earned their money. (“It’s cool. I really earned it this week,” Davenport says. “I think I deserved it,” Sampras says.)

They have a right to be uninteresting, though Sampras often seems mildly contemptuous of attention. But Martina Hingis, remarkably talented and quite beautiful — arguably more so than Kournikova in a refined sort of way; kind of Jaclyn Smith to Anna’s Farrah — is clearly a pill. Her frequent tantrums and nasty side (she referred to a lesbian opponent as “half-man” once) make you want to see her get the Dr. Laura treatment, and with many audiences, she frequently does.

And Serena and Venus Williams, dynamic, flamboyant and two of the most interesting and outspoken athletes around, disappear for months on end and talk about their ability to take or leave the sport. “I tell my kids you have to get out while you’re ahead,” says their dad, Richard Williams. “The best time to get out is right now. They know too much about the real world to stay in sports.”

That’s fine; smart, even. But it’s hard to invest as a fan when a player doesn’t seem to be clocking in for the long haul. These aren’t people begging for your attention the way, well, Kournikova does. Sure, it’s a little cheap, and it’s an act that’s just going to look cheaper with age. But at least she doesn’t seem to mind.

Navratilova, once too controversial for TV ads because she talked openly about her love of both men and women, is today as well known for her intelligence and willfulness as for her tennis game. This is the joke behind the TV spots, in which Navratilova plays off the idea that only men know cars. “What do I know about performance?” Navratilova says with easy, tart sarcasm, and then, at the close of the commercial, featuring her and other prominent female sports stars: “What do we know? We’re just girls?”

Not so long ago, Americans saw Navratilova as the embodiment of otherness: the mysterious, left-handed Soviet-bloc athlete using her obviously state-manufactured prowess and strength to do battle with lovable blond American sweetheart Chris Evert and her wicked two-handed backhand. Like other athletes from Communist countries, Navratilova faced an inconsistent blend of bias — hatred and scorn mixed with resentful awe. Yet as far back as when she was growing up outside of Prague, twig-thin and tiny but even then ready to swing big, Martina in many ways thought of herself as American.

“I was so stubborn, so independent, that I was more American than Czech, even as a little kid,” she reflects in her autobiography, written in 1985 with New York Times sportswriter George Vecsey. “I didn’t feel I belonged anywhere until I came to America for the first time when I was 16. I’m not a mystic about many things — I tend to be pretty pragmatic about life — but I honestly believe I was born to be American.”

Now, long after she became a naturalized citizen, Navratilova’s American identity is firmly established, so much so that when she shows up in the Czech Republic, as she did last year to receive a medal from Czech President Vaclav Havel, it’s a big event. And that’s fitting, because Navratilova is as American as Jay Gatsby, self-created in the way of people who take seriously the idea that they are free to live as they wish.

Navratilova retired in 1994 with a record 167 singles championships, still the all-time women’s record, and was ranked No. 1 in the world seven different years, including 1982 to 1986 consecutively. She won the Australian Open three times and the French twice, but it was before the rowdy, vocal crowds at the U.S. Open (which she won four times) and the respectful, proper crowds at Wimbledon that she made her most enduring mark. Wimbledon intimidated her at first with its tradition, its all-white clothes and strawberries and cream, but she ended up winning there an amazing nine times, including every year from 1982 to 1987.

“Martina revolutionized the game by her superb athleticism and aggressiveness, not to mention her outspokenness and her candor,” Evert told Women’s Sports and Fitness magazine when Navratilova retired. “She brought athleticism to a whole new level with her training techniques — particularly cross-training, the idea that you could go to the gym or play basketball to get in shape for tennis. She had everything down to a science, including her diet, and that was an inspiration to me. I really think she helped me to be a better athlete. And then I always admired her maturity, her wisdom and her ability to transcend the sport. You could ask her about her forehand or about world peace and she always had an answer. She really is a world figure, not just a sports figure.”

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Navratilova’s parents divorced in 1959, when she was 3 years old, and Martina moved from a ski lodge in the Krkonose Mountains to her mother’s childhood home in the village of Revnice, just outside of Prague. These were Communist times, of course, and people did not have their own tennis courts. But Navratilova’s mother’s family had once had a 30-acre estate, and when the Communists took power in 1948, they took the land and left the family the house and a red-clay tennis court in the yard.

Tennis history owes a lot to the Czech Communists’ small show of restraint in leaving the court outside of what would be Martina’s window, but the loss of so much of what had been theirs left a mark on the family. Martina would sneak into the grove across the street and steal apples, consciously seeking to reclaim a little of what was lost. “I think my mother and my grandmother carried a sense of litost, a Czech word for sadness, that I picked up, a feeling of loss at the core of their souls,” Navratilova writes in her autobiography.

Agnes Semanska, Martina’s maternal grandmother, a tennis player herself, had beaten the mother of Vera Sukova in a national tournament. (Sukova reached the finals at Wimbledon in 1962.) Martina was athletic even as a toddler, and still remembers zipping downhill on skis when she was 2. Showing the local boys she could compete with them in ice hockey and soccer also made an early impression. But tennis was impossible to ignore. Her mother and father (her “second father”) spent most of their time at the town tennis club, except in winter, and Martina was given one of her grandmother’s old wooden rackets. It had no grip tape, was a little crooked and was ridiculously oversized for puny little Martina, but even at age 4 she would spend hours hitting balls against the wall as her parents played matches.

“I remember the first time I played tennis on a real court,” she wrote in her autobiography. “The moment I stepped onto that crunchy red clay, felt the grit under my sneakers, felt the joy of smacking a ball over the net, I knew I was in the right place. I was probably about 6 years old when that happened, but I can remember it as if it was yesterday.”

Martina’s father told her she could be a champion, and hit with her for hours every day. He pushed her hard, and could be tough and analytical about her technique, but he stopped short of becoming one of those tennis fathers or mothers who try to live their lives through their children. He made sure she was having fun and would say things like “Make believe you’re at Wimbledon.”

Martina was so boyish, short-haired and wiry, that when she turned 9 and her father took her to meet Czech champion George Parma for possible lessons, Parma looked at her warily and said, “How old is he?” Parma took her out and drilled balls all around the court, and she chased them down. Protigi and coach developed a close relationship, and Martina developed a big enough crush to wish she was old enough to marry him.

Parma had Martina ditch her two-handed backhand, which she had been using all her young life, so she could have more reach and make better volleys. He forced on her the good advice that a mastery of routine shots makes all the difference, and worked with her on strategy and the psychology of match play. Parma wanted her to have the foundation of training he never had, and the Czechoslovak system made that possible.

“In the mid-’60s, the communists could see the value of sports as a way of making people proud and keeping their minds off the less pleasant aspects of life,” Martina would later write. “The Communists more or less emphasized a different sport in each country: weight-lifting in the Soviet Union, track and field in East Germany, gymnastics in Rumania, tennis in Czechoslovakia.”

In 1968 she lived through the single largest event in Czechoslovakia until the country achieved its independence during the Velvet Revolution in 1989 — the Soviet crackdown on the Prague Spring. The Czechs beat the Russians in ice hockey in the winter Olympics in France that year, Alexander Dubcek had people believing in the possibility of greater freedom and even an 11-year-old girl felt the excitement in the air. Martina was at a junior tournament in Pilsen — famous for its beer — when the Soviet tanks made their move the night of Aug. 20. As much as the Czechs tried to maintain an independent spirit — unfurling banners like “Ivan, go home. Natasha has sexual problems” — “socialism with a human face” was history and more than 100,000 defected in the next year, many of them prominent writers, artists and athletes.

“When I was 12 and 13, I saw my country lose its verve, lose its productivity, lose its soul,” she writes. “For someone with a skill, an aspiration, there was only one thing to do: Get out.”

But she kept working on her tennis, and she even believes her resentment of Russians made her a better player. Offended that a Russian she had defeated wouldn’t shake her hand one time, Navratilova told her, “You need a tank to beat me.” The same would be true of her opponents when she hit her peak on the women’s tour a few years later.

“Martina is probably the most daring player in the history of the game,” legendary TV analyst Bud Collins said when Navratilova retired. “She dared to play a style antithetical to her heritage without worrying about making a fool of herself. She dared to remake herself physically, setting new horizons for women in sports. And she dared to live her life as she chose, without worrying what other people thought of her.”

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It wasn’t so long ago that Navratilova ruled women’s tennis; it just feels that way. Saying “Martina and Chrissy” has a way of making the late ’70s feel current again. Navratilova and Evert were rivals and friends, and one of the greatest sports tandems ever. “We’re matched like chocolate-or-vanilla, jazz-or-classical, two champions with opposing styles competing for limited space at the top of women’s tennis history,” Navratilova wrote in her book.

The two women played so many memorable games, they all roll together into one endless, up-and-down carnival ride. An intense, wild tennis match between opponents who know each other perfectly can have a transcendent appeal, but the best tennis, like the best novels or movies, has characters people feel they know, personalities who make us care. Navratilova and Evert did that like no one has since.

Navratilova had been Czechoslovakia champion, and she had played in West Germany and England in the West, and Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and East Germany in the Soviet bloc, but it wasn’t until she traveled to the United States in 1973 as an unknown 16-year-old that her life in tennis really got started. Her serve-and-volley game made an immediate impression. She gave former Wimbledon champion Evonne Goolagong a good match before losing 6-4, 6-4, and in the first round of a tournament in Akron, Ohio, lost 7-6, 6-3 in her first match with Evert, who had reached the semifinals at the U.S. Open in 1971 and been a semifinalist at Wimbledon in 1972.

It was Navratilova’s pairing with Evert that vaulted her into the realm of unforgettable sports stars. Evert did not just dazzle Navratilova with her talent, experience and easygoing personality, she also posed an obstacle that would eventually require the young Czech to reinvent herself. It wasn’t until their sixth match, two years after their first meeting, that Navratilova finally beat Evert. But later that same year, they met at the U.S. Open and Evert won, 6-4, 6-4 — one of many such victories in that early period that at one point gave Evert a 14-2 edge.

Navratilova was still just 16 when she returned from that first eight-week tour of the United States. She beat a top American, Nancy Richey, to make it to the quarterfinals at the French Open the next year before losing to Goolagong, and played in her first Wimbledon, the pinnacle of tennis. “Everything is Wimbledon,” Navratilova would write. She soaked up the atmosphere and won two matches before succumbing.

The Czech authorities let her travel to the United States again in 1974 and in Orlando, Fla., she won her first professional tournament, beating Julie Headman, 7-6, 6-4, in the final. That was enough to give Navratilova a clear idea of what she wanted: a free, unfettered shot at success in America. There was just one small problem: She lived in a Soviet satellite state. Soon she was colliding with the Czech tennis authorities, who called her “too Americanized” and criticized her for being too friendly with Americans like Evert and the great Billie Jean King. Sukova, now the Czechoslovak women’s coach, told Martina: “You’ve got to cool it. You’ll get yourself in trouble and everybody else in trouble.”

But by then Navratilova knew it was just a matter of time before she had to take action. She knew that at some point, she could lose her travel privileges, even though she was soon regularly winning tournaments. She made her firm decision to defect around the time of the 1975 U.S. Open, and spent most of that tournament sequestered in her hotel room with attorneys and FBI agents. After she lost to Evert in the semifinals, Navratilova met with the Immigration and Naturalization Service on Manhattan’s Lower West Side and ended up having to flee her hotel room the next day, while her asylum application was still being processed, when news of her defection broke.

The Czechoslovak government condemned her, and would soon do its best to rub out all traces of her existence. Neither was the transition to life as an American easy for Navratilova, who was no longer Czechoslovakian but not yet American. By Wimbledon the year after she made her move, she was “a candidate for a nervous breakdown,” as she put it. Back at the U.S. Open, exactly a year after the high jinks with the FBI and the INS asylum process, she dropped a first-round match to unseeded Janet Newberry, and broke down afterward, sobbing. Newberry said she’d never seen anyone so distraught.

The next day, she bought a house in Texas, so she could move from Los Angeles and begin turning herself into a polished pro athlete. She ran. She lifted weights. She watched what she ate. She dropped from 167 pounds to 144 over the course of the next year.

She was fit and confident and on a roll by 1978 when she started the year by winning 37 straight tournament matches and beating Evert for her first Wimbledon championship, which also vaulted her to her first No. 1 ranking. There were ups and downs, but the resolve and discipline that kicked in that first year in Texas renewed itself later when her career started faltering. She lost a match 6-0, 6-0 to Evert in 1981, the worst loss of her career, and soon began working out with Nancy Lieberman, a professional basketball player at that time. Even as the tennis press occupied itself with articles asking, “What’s wrong with Martina?” Navratilova dropped her body fat to 8.8 percent and her weight back down, and this time was ready to keep working at it. She even consulted with a dietitian, something then unheard of and now routine among top athletes.

This was the Martina who would become so unbeatable that women’s tennis became almost boring for a while. She worked with Dr. Renee Richards and former men’s pro Mike Estep and just kept getting better, so much so that it seemed a shame she couldn’t play the men. “My only regret is she didn’t play on the men’s tour,” said Ilie Nastase when she retired. “I would have liked the chance to play her.” But before she reached that highest plateau of her career, she had to face another huge disappointment — losing the 1981 U.S. Open final to 18-year-old Tracy Austin, who wore Navratilova down in the third set, leaving her devastated. But she discovered something in her moment of despair.

“I was still crying when the announcer called my name for the runner-up trophy,” she wrote. “But then something marvelous happened: The crowd started applauding and cheering. Their ovation lasted for more than a minute, and I stood there and finally started to cry, but I cried tears of appreciation, not sadness … It was really strange, not like tennis at all, but really something you expect to see in opera, where the soprano steps out of her role on the stage for a curtain call, and the crowd cheers and throws roses. That’s how I felt. They weren’t cheering Martina the Complainer, Martina the Czech, Martina the Loser, Martina the Bisexual Defector. They were cheering me. I had never felt anything like it in my life: acceptance, respect, maybe even love.”

“At least it isn’t raining” was about the only thing one could say, and so that is what we said as we made our way, on tubes and buses, toward the Holy Grail of tennis, with that chins-up cheerfulness that only a people who have survived thousands of years of miserable weather could muster.

I was hungry when I arrived at the All England Club, so I headed for the Aorangi Cafe, underneath Court One. Earlier in the week, it had been packed to overflowing. Now the place was almost empty. The reason was that most people assume that, unless they have a ticket for the “show courts” (Centre and Number One courts), there is no point coming to Wimbledon on the final weekend. In fact, it is one of the best times to watch tennis. For a grounds pass costing seven pounds, you can watch the stars of today on the giant TV screen that has been erected on “The Hill,” or see the stars of yesteryear (the Over 35s) and the stars of tomorrow (Junior Wimbledon) on the outside courts. If you keep your ears open and ask around, you may even get your hands on a Centre Court ticket — for face value, not at scalper’s price. You won’t have to battle the crowds. And you may even have, as I was about to, a surprising encounter.

I had just paid for that classic Wimbledon combo — a Styrofoam cup of tea, brewed so strong that it looked like coffee, and a pot of strawberries and double cream — when I noticed a man in the line behind me. He was in his late 50s, with thinning, black hair swept back off a prominent forehead, dark glasses, a blue blazer, tan trousers, white golf shoes and a burgundy Ralph Lauren sport shirt. In one hand he had two bottles of mineral water; in the other, one of the red seat cushions you can rent for the day. A fancy, carved cigar-holder poked out of his breast pocket.

“Mr. Nicholson! Good afternoon.”

The face that sent shivers down the spines of millions in “The Shining” turned toward me and smiled an edgy smile that could not quite conceal the actor’s irritation at having being spotted. By now, the girl at the checkout had realized who it was, too; and I was worried that if she did not breathe again soon, she would drop dead on the floor.

Nicholson pulled out a wad of pound notes held in a gold bill-clip, paid for his mineral water and began to amble back toward Centre Court.

“I am amazed that you can walk about like this … incognito,” I said, falling in beside him.

“Yeah,” he replied, in that inimitably gravelly voice. “It has to do with my former life as a bank robber.”

“Surely you can’t do that in New York,” I said, chirpily.

“I can do it anywhere.” He paused, eyeing me meaningfully. “Tell me: Were you the second person I saw in there?”

I felt like Darzee, the foolish bird, as it meets Nag, the cobra, in Kipling’s “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.”

“Yes … ?” I said tentatively.

“And did you say hello to me?” continued Jack, with that unnerving mixture of jocularity and menace that is one of the hallmarks of his acting.

“Yes … ?”

“You’re asking the wrong question then,” he said with a grin.

I decided it was best to come clean. So I explained to Nicholson that I was a toiler in the salt mines of journalism. Would he mind saying a few words ? He did not say no, so I pulled out the micro-cassette recorder I always carry with me. Naturally, this attracted attention, and I could sense Nicholson growing tense. A girl asked for an autograph. A steward extended his hand and invited him for a drink in the LTA Sponsor’s Lounge.

“See what I mean?” Nicholson said to me, dryly. “Isn’t that a silly question when you think about it?” He paused. “But I changed it,” he continued. “Like a bank robber. “

I let out a nervous chuckle. Then Nicholson bared those famous canines, threw back his head like a wolf and let out one of those long, howling, manic laughs that have made him a screen legend. It was as though a land mine had been detonated. It echoed off the walls. It shook the windowpanes. It sent the molecules in the bottles of mineral water Nicholson held in his hand crashing into each other, like particles in an accelerator.

I knew he was as much laughing at me as with me, but such was the infectious energy released by his laugh that I joined in. Seconds later, we were roaring like old buddies over a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

When the last tremors of his laugh had subsided, I asked him about tennis. He is a big fan (he never misses the U.S. Open, either) and spoke affectionately of some of the legends of the past. Ilie Nastase, he told me, is an old friend. Indeed, during the mad Romanian’s election campaign for the post of mayor of Bucharest, Nicholson had written him a letter of recommendation. “In Romanian,” said Jack, pulling a face.

I asked him what he thought about the bratty young kids who dominate the tour today. “Well, I’m a bratty old kid,” he said, with a chuckle. “What do you think I think of them?” After a pause, he added: “They’re good lads. Tennis needs people like that. It would be dead if McEnroe wasn’t in the commentator’s booth.”

And Wimbledon? “I love it,” he replied emphatically. Then, once more baring those famous teeth in a grin, he added: “I sell a couple of parking places to pay for the tickets.”

The second week of Wimbledon could be called “A Tale of Two Boys.” Tim Henman had steadily advanced through the early rounds, looking sharp and focused. But it was another British sporting icon, David “Boy” Beckham, the dazzlingly gifted playmaker of the English World Cup soccer team, who dominated the headlines in the early part of the week.
Beckham and Henman epitomize the newfound self-confidence and flair of “Cool Britannia.” In every other way, they are studies in contrast. Until his fall from grace, when he kicked a defender in England’s tempestuous second-round match against Argentina, putting an end to England’s chance of winning the World Cup, Beckham was a working-class hero with the style, and following, of a rock star: Sting in cleats. He drives a convertible BMW (registration plate: BECK 5), likes going clubbing with his girlfriend, Posh Spice, and doing silly, nouveau things like soaking in a Jacuzzi filled with champagne. Most of his friends have probably taken ecstasy. In other words, he is a Bad Boy.

Tim Henman, by contrast, is every middle-class British mum’s idea of what a son should be. He is good-looking, in a willowy, Peter Pan sort of way. He grew up in Oxford, and sounds like it (Beckham has a strong Manchester accent). He is squeaky clean, focused and articulate. His grandfather played at Wimbledon. His girlfriend, Lucy Heale, is a producer with the BBC. None of his friends, I am sure, has ever taken ecstasy.

“Henmania” has been spreading across England for some years, but it reached critical levels last week. In its ability to overwhelm the cerebellums of large segments of the population, it can be compared to another recent British malady: Mad Cow Disease. Henmania has been known to overcome retired colonels in Surrey and bowler-hatted stockbrokers in the City (though they tend to prefer the Lolita of tennis, Anna Kournikova), but its primary host group is women. Symptoms include the wearing of ridiculous hats covered in Union Jacks, a racing pulse, swooning at the sight of a tennis racquet and an inability to drink from a teacup without one’s teeth chattering against it.

No wonder, then, that as he walked onto Centre Court to face Pete Sampras, he was greeted with a cheer that nearly lifted the roof off.
To help you imagine the hunger the British have for a tennis champion of their own, imagine if, for 50 years, no American golfer had ever won the Masters. Since 1938, when Henry “Bunny” Austin reached the finals, British players have been little more than spectators at Wimbledon, a situation made even worse by the fact that it was at Wimbledon that the game was born. The last Brit to reach the semifinals at Wimbledon was Roger Taylor, 25 years ago.

Henman does not have the brute power of some players on the men’s tour — or, as they say in tennis parlance, he does not have a particular “weapon” — but what he lacks in muscle, he makes up in skill and strategy. He is also completely at home on grass, having played on it since he was 9 years old, and has the classic grass-court game. He gets into the net fast behind his serve. He has sharp reflexes. He can volley off his feet, and in the air, on both sides. He is also sporting in a way that the English like. During his match against Patrick Rafter earlier in the week, he conceded the final point of a game in the second set after Rafter’s serve had (wrongly) been called out by the linesman. Most players would have kept quiet (the Williams sisters would probably have punched the air), but Henman walked to his chair, giving the Australian the game.

The cheers for Henman were all the louder because, fueled by the tabloids, the British public had already begun to hang, draw and quarter the other Boy, the bad one, for his egregious behavior on the soccer field. The fact that Beckham, having fled the baying of Fleet Street’s tabloid hounds, was photographed exiting a Manhattan nightclub with Posh Spice two days after England’s defeat against Argentina (and the day before the Henman-Sampras match), only increased the country’s affection for the well-behaved Henman. Boy Beckham had let England down. Now, it was up to Tim to restore the nation’s honor.

It is a shame that Degas, who captured the colorful pageant of English horse racing at Epsom Downs, was not alive to paint the Centre Court that day. The sun had come out. The stands were a mass of pointillist dots of color. The stripes on the grass were as precise as the pattern on a silk scarf from Liberty’s. The light color of the grass was set off by a palette of other green tones, from the olive green blazers of the officials to the green and purple striped shirts of the ball boys, the moss green of the roof and the dark, hunter green shade of the stands.

Not surprisingly, a change in the weather signaled Henman’s demise. For most of the match, Centre Court had been bathed in sunshine. But shortly before 7 in the evening, as the power and consistency of Sampras’ game began to overwhelm Henman, the sun went in, the doughnut-shaped ring of sky above the court went dark, a cool, blustery wind came up and London once more slid under a thick crust of cloud. Moments later, it was all over. Henman had lost. But as with England’s World Cup players, there was honor in defeat. In truth, it is how we Brits prefer it. We respect winners like Sampras — but we do not love them.

On Sunday, at the men’s final, it was another loser who won the hearts of the crowd. And again, the World Cup, being played across the Channel in France, provided the subtext. The night before the Sampras-Goran Ivanisevic match, tiny Croatia, a nation for only seven years, had derailed the German soccer juggernaut with a stunning 3-0 upset in the semifinals. So as Ivanisevic, a son of Split and a Croatian patriot, walked onto Centre Court, the red and white checkerboard flag of the mini-Balkan state was everywhere.

Ivanisevic is the Arthur Rimbaud of the tour, an erratic genius who swings wildly between poetry and pathos. Sporting a purple bandanna, a full beard and flowing locks, he had stalked his way through the early rounds with a mixture of brute power and a gossamer touch at the net that few players can match. His epic, three-and-a-half-hour semifinal against Richard Krajicek — Ivanisevic eventually won the fifth set, 15-13 — was one of the tournament’s most memorable matches. And on Sunday, for a while, it looked as though the best player never to have won Wimbledon was going to have his day.

All in all, though, it was the women, not the men, who dominated this year’s Wimbledon. With “veterans” like Jana Novotna and Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario, Monica Seles and Steffi Graf and a host of Wunderkinder like Martina Hingis, Kournikova, Mirjana Lucic and the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, women’s tennis has rarely been so exciting. A sign of this was that, on the last Wednesday, two women’s matches, Hingis vs. Sanchez-Vicario and Novotna vs. Serena Williams, were scheduled on Centre Court. Normally, the women would play their quarterfinal matches on courts One and Two.

There were some marvelous games. Best of all was the semifinal between Jana Novotna, the prototypical grass-court player, and the Swiss Miss, Martina Hingis. Many young players (the Williams sisters come especially to mind) think with their muscles. Hingis is the best in the world because she is smart. With Novotna, she put on a display of grass-court tennis at its best (“sheer delight,” the BBC commentator enthused). The sixth and seventh games in the third set, in which both players matched each other, shot for shot, in long, chess-like rallies, were two of the finest games ever played on the Centre Court.

Women’s tennis has always had a sexual component. Suzanne Lenglen, the legendary French Flapper, drew huge crowds at Wimbledon in the ’20s with her diaphanous skirts and plunging necklines. And today, “knicker shots” — those mildly salacious, up-the-skirt pictures that reveal not only the color and type of underwear worn by the women players, but often rather more — are a regular part of the tabloids’ coverage of the tournament. No wonder, then, that as Kournikova withdrew from this year’s tournament, a howl of pain was heard on Fleet Street.

The BBC’s television coverage is slightly more discreet, but the cameramen never miss that moment when a girl’s skirt flies up as she serves or goes sprawling across the turf. Indeed, as I watched the Hingis and Novotna doubles final, I noticed that the camera on the other side of the court from the chairs where the players rest at changeovers is exactly at crotch level. Novotna and Hingis seemed to be aware of this, too, because both of them draped towels between their legs as they sat imbibing fluids.

Knicker shots, I also discovered, are extremely selective. Pictures of the underwear worn by nubile teen stars like Hingis or Kournikova are regularly beamed into British homes, but we rarely get to see up the skirts of players like Lindsay Davenport, or her doubles partner this year, the wacky Belarussian Natasha Zvereva. I think this is unjust. But thanks to the marketing strategies of Nike and coaches like Nick Bollettieri, sexual allure and women’s tennis have become fused as never before. Indeed, together, they have managed to create the illusion that to be a good tennis player, a woman does not just have to be a good athlete — she has to have blond hair, a figure like a Barbie doll and, of course, wear Nike. Above all, she should be a minor. Pedophilia is rampant.

So it was wonderful to see a women’s final that had about as much sex appeal as a box of dry biscuits. In her severe green and white shirt and old-fashioned pleated skirt, Novotna looked about as sexy as a hospital nurse. She did open the zip of her shirt a bit, but the chest it revealed was almost as flat as the plains of her native Bohemia. Her French opponent, Nathalie Tauziat, was every bit as un-Nike. Indeed, if she were not a tennis player, it would be easy to imagine her selling saucissons and tripes in a boucherie in her hometown, Bayonne. Both players looked more like schoolteachers than schoolgirls.

But this is the land of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and the tailor of Gloucester, so Kafelnikov greeted the appearance of a mouse on Centre Court with the same bemused indulgence that foreign players treat Wimbledon’s other eccentricities — its unpredictable grass and mercurial weather, its baffling line calls and obscure codes of manners. He walked over to the mouse and, politely waving his racket, shooed it away. Still, the incident clearly unnerved him, for a few hours later he was packing his bags, having been knocked out, in four sets, by the bullet-serving Australian. For its part, the field mouse disappeared down its hole, and has not been seen again.

It is not the first time that nature has intervened at Wimbledon. Some years ago, a pigeon got into Centre Court and play had to be suspended as the bird flapped around the stands. Another year, a pied wagtail landed on the grass and began hopping about, setting off Cyclops each time it stepped on the lines. And this year, as it nearly always does, the weather has played as important a role in the outcome of the first week’s matches as the mental preparedness of the players or their first serve percentage.

The rain in Spain may stay mainly on the plain. In England, it falls on SW19 — right where Wimbledon is located. Indeed, a whole section of “The Wimbledon Compendium,” by Alan Little, is devoted to the weather at Wimbledon since the tournament moved to its present location in 1922.

It makes depressing reading: “The first meeting at the Church Road ground was plagued by rain each day” begins the entry for 1922. “Much of the fortnight was dogged by wind and rain” (1939). “One of the wettest first weeks ever” (1958). “A cold miserable meeting” (1963). There are occasional memories of fine weather — 1964 is lauded as “a fortnight of warm and sunny weather” — and even the occasional back-to-back run of sunshine: 1983′s “wonderful weather” is followed by “superb weather” for 1984. But only four years — 1931, 1976, 1993 and 1995 — receive the supreme accolade, italicized for emphasis: “No rain during meeting.”

As the District Line train pulled into Southfields tube station, the mercury was barely into the 50s. (One more eccentricity is that you do not get out at the station named Wimbledon, or even Wimbledon Park, if you want to go to the tennis tournament of that name, but at Southfields.) People were dressed in anoraks and pullovers. Everyone had an umbrella. And though the rain had not actually started to fall by the time I reached Court 2, where Goran Ivanesevic was two sets up against the Czech, Daniel Vacek, the sky looked like the horizon in one of William Turner’s more tempestuous seascapes.

With his full beard and purple bandanna, Ivanesevic looked more than ever like a member of some obscure, Balkan guerrilla group that survives in the woods by skinning rabbits and holding up travelers at gunpoint. His tennis looked very sharp. Ace after ace came blistering over the grass, to land with a thud against the tarpaulins at the back of the court or be swatted away, like wasps at a picnic, by the stout-calved lady line judges who stared down the chalk, their leaf-patterned, shirtwaist dresses — “English boarding-school, circa 1933″ is how a colleague from The Daily Mail described the style — billowing in the breeze.

I had watched only three games when a chill wind began to blow, and the first raindrops began to fall. Moments later, play was suspended and that familiar Wimbledon ritual, the rolling out of the tarpaulins, began. Slinging his bags over his shoulder, Ivanesevic sprinted off the court, presumably to go and skin a few more rabbits. I headed out onto the South Concourse, which had already turned into a sea of umbrellas that jostled and snagged against each other.

Among the waterlogged crowd, I spotted the mother of Venus and Serena Williams. The week before, she had accidentally fallen down the stairs at her rented Wimbledon house and broken her ankle, so she was being propelled around the courts in a wheelchair. Though she had the hood of her anorak up, it could not hide the fact that she was completely miserable and hating every minute of her time in damp, chilly England. By Wednesday, her daughters would be even more miserable, Serena going out to Virginia Ruano Pascual, of Spain; and Venus dissolving into a cauldron of boiling teenage emotions as she was bumped off Centre Court by Jana Novotna — thus robbing an eager London crowd of the chance of hearing not one, but two sets of beads rattling simultaneously.

Coping with rain delays is one of the toughest challenges that Wimbledon poses for the players. Bjorn Borg used to play cards and backgammon in the locker room. Pete Sampras, whose second-round match against Thomas Enquist this year turned into a three-day roller-coaster ride, whiled away the time watching golf on TV. Players have even been known to read a book, though the locker rooms are not exactly famous for their literary conversations. An exception to the general philistinism was Boris Becker. During a rain delay one year, he sat in the stands on the Centre Court reading a novel by Camus. The ground staff evidently has its own strategies for passing the time. One year, when the tent was removed from Centre Court, officials found an empty bottle of champagne and a used condom.

The greatest challenge Wimbledon poses, however, is the grass itself. Most players, particularly at the beginning of their careers, hate it. But as Andre Agassi learned many years ago, you either humble yourself to the grass, or the grass will humble you. For prima donnas like Marcello Rios, the idea of humbling yourself to anything is, of course, anathema. So, like many underachievers before him, he blamed his failure at Wimbledon this year on the green stuff. “Grass is for cows,” he said, as he was bounced out of the tournament in 1997. This year, he declared that grass produces “boring” tennis.

In so doing, Rios not only confirmed his reputation as the most arrogant player on the tour, he also showed himself to be dumb. Because if there is one thing that the grass of Wimbledon does not produce, it is boring tennis. That distinction goes to red clay, where the balls swell, and become heavy, and where the tennis becomes a war of attrition with two players pounding the ball from the back of the court with heavy topspin, back and forth, back and forth, until one of them makes a mistake.

Grass, by contrast, is the fastest, most mercurial and most challenging surface there is. The ball does not so much bounce as it shoots, rarely rising much above the knee (clay courters are used to hitting the ball at shoulder height) and losing little of its speed. Many players simply cannot cope with the pace (not to mention the occasional uneven bounce) or the particular exigencies that it requires. Even the way one’s foot lands on grass — a light dab, rather than the full-weight landing and sliding as one does on clay — is different.

Above all, the grass forces players off the baseline and to the net. The back of the court, particularly in the second week, when the grass starts to get cut up, spells death. Consequently, serve and volley is the name of the game here: getting to the ball before it bounces, not afterward. This is why all the great Wimbledon champions of the past, such as McEnroe, Navratilova and Laver (Borg being the sole exception) have been natural serve and volleyers. Baseline sluggers like Agassi or Courier — or Rios — generally fare badly.

Wimbledon has seen and heard it all: the racket throwers and spoilsports, the bad losers and crybabies. But deep in his heart, every player knows that this is The Big One; that if he wants to be considered one of the greats, he will have to have his name etched onto the silver Challenge Cup, which, since 1877, has borne the name of every men’s champion, or the Ladies’ Singles Plate, also known as The Venus Rosewater Dish, which, since 1886, has been awarded to the women’s champion. Wimbledon is the crucible of tennis, the place where the game was born and where the cumulative weight of its history and traditions are that much more imposing than anywhere else. Ultimately, there are only two tennis tournaments in the world: Wimbledon, and the rest.

As I arrived at Gate 1 on my second day at the All England Club, I found myself staring at a tall, majestic-looking Jamaican man in a gray top hat. He was collecting for charity, and as the crowd shuffled past him, people would drop a coin in the tin he held out for the victims of cancer. With his crinkly, white beard, fine features and sensual mouth, he looked like one of the ancient kings of Ethiopia.
“Is that a real beard?” I asked.
“Tug it and see,” said the man, with a grin. So I did. It was. We laughed. Only in England …
What impressed me most about the man was not his beard, though, but his magnificent, scarlet “mess” jacket, an ornamental jacket that officers used to wear to dinner in Kipling’s day. It had gold braid on the shoulders, and a panel of black silk lined with brass buttons at the back.
Wimbledon highlights the British love of uniforms, insignia and military regalia of all kinds. Only here will you find yourself being shown to your seat by an elderly man hung with gold braid and medals, who looks as though he has just arrived back from the Crimean War. But as well as these volunteers from the so-called Corps of Commissioners, there are dozens of uniforms, both on and off the court: from the olive green blazers of the line judges, to the dark blue jackets and trousers of the London Fire Brigade (who puts out the fires while they do crowd control?), to the purple and green shirts of the ball boys and girls. Guarding the entrance to the Clubhouse were people in four different uniforms, including that of the Royal Air Force (gray jacket and trousers) and the army (khaki jacket and trousers).
As you would expect in England, a complex web of social distinctions operates at Wimbledon as well. At the top of the tree is, of course, royalty. There has been a royal connection ever since 1895, when the Crown Princess Stephanie of Austria and her beau, Prince Batthyany Strattman, came to watch the Gentleman’s Doubles Challenge Round. Today, the President of the Club is H.R.H the Duke of Kent K.G, G.C.M.G, G.C.V.O, A.D.C., on the shoulder of whose gracious wife, the Duchess of Kent, Jana Novotna wept so touchingly. Past vice presidents have included Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian K. Burnett, G.C.B, D.F.C, A.F.C., R.A.F (ret’d), and the Marquis of Zetland.
Below these acronym-heavy hitters come the 375 members of the All England Club and the 200 or so temporary members. These typically include VIPs from the world of sport, such as the chairman of the Olympic Committee, Juan Zamaranch, and icons of the British entertainment world like Sir Cliff Richard, the singer, who has become something of a Wimbledon mascot (Mick Jagger would never, ever be offered temporary membership). On days when play is rained off, Sir Cliff is wheeled out to keep the soggy fans happy.
Below them are the 2,100 Debenture Holders. Issuing debentures, which cost 9,900 pounds and entitle the holder to a reserved seat for five years, is one of the ways the All England Club generates revenue (the last debenture, for the years 1996-2000, raised 35 million pounds) for expansion and improvements.
When they are not watching tennis, Debenture Holders can use their own, exclusive lounge, on the north side of Centre Court. Opposite, on the south side of Centre Court, is the inner sanctum of the All England Club, the Members’ Clubhouse, where, on the upstairs balcony, sprightly septuagenarians in Moss Bros. suits and ladies in hats savor their complimentary cream teas and a bird’s-eye view of Courts 3 and 4. Below them, on the South Concourse, Joe and Joanna Public jostle their way along the South Concourse in search of Guinness or strawberries (and often both together) at what is still, quaintly, called The Tea Lawn, though there has not been a lawn here since 1985 when the grass was paved over.
The buzz on the afternoon I mingled with the crowd, pressed against the railings in front of the Clubhouse, was that either Will Smith or Prince Charles was about to come out. Korean tourists with Nikons mingled with shopgirls from Huddersfield. There were dowdy middle-aged women from the Home Counties with Marks and Spencer shopping bags, and Beautiful Young Things in Versace jeans. But there was no Will Smith, and no Prince Charlie. There was only a luxury taxi (“First Class to Wimbledon” said a sticker above the windshield), which pulled up in front of the Clubhouse. It waited for several minutes, then drove off again. The Italian girl in front of me excitedly said I had nearly seen Pete Sampras.
Later that afternoon, I made my way down to the practice courts in Aorangi Park, in the northeast corner of the complex. There are 14 of them in all, and in the morning, before play starts, the walkway along the back of the lower three courts is jammed with spectators as the likes of Monica Seles, Pete Sampras and Mark Philippoussis work out. In the afternoon the crowds thin out and you can watch from behind the fence, only a few feet behind the baseline. As I arrived, Mirjana Lucic, one of the current crop of teenage stars, was hitting with a young Hungarian girl who was getting ready for the Junior Tournament. They practiced serve and volley. Usually, they both ended up at the net, trading volleys at close range, the ball pinging back and forth at eye-popping speed.
Explaining that I was writing an article about Wimbledon, I asked Lucic, as she walked off the court, if she would mind chatting with me for a few minutes. With a chilly smile, the 15-year-old, no. 47 in the world, said, “I can’t speak to anyone without asking my manager.” Then she disappeared up the stairs to the Competitor’s Pavilion. A few minutes later, a portly, middle-aged man with long, lank black hair and a broad, Slavic face, came down the steps in a white track suit top and shorts.
Lucic was not even born when this man played Connors and Borg on the Centre Court, and many of the brat pack would not even know his name or care who he was. But in his day he was not only one of the greatest players in the world, he was also its greatest entertainer, a man who made us weep with laughter as he cavorted about the grass, pulled faces or jumped into the stands.
“Mr. Nastase,”I said, extending my hand. “This is a great honor.”
He eyed me quizzically.
“I am from the press …”
“You’re depressed ?” he said with a quick grin.
Ilye Nastase did not talk for long, but the difference between his attitude and Lucic’s was like the difference between night and day. But then again, he comes from a more innocent era, a time when people played the game because that was just what they did, and loved to do: a time before entrepreneurs like Phil Knight and Rupert Murdoch began to feed off, and orchestrate, our love of sports (not because they love sports, but because they love our money). And though he was an extreme case, Ilye Nastase’s happy-go-lucky attitude makes a telling contrast to the grim seriousness and obsessive image control that is squeezing the fun out of today’s game. More than anything, it is the pressure of money. Soaring prizes (this year, the winner of the men’s singles at Wimbledon will take home a cool 435,000 pounds) and the immense subsidiary earnings to be made from endorsements mean that there are big bucks at stake every time a player hits a ball. And that makes it hard to enjoy playing tennis.
After Nastase left, a group of young, male players came onto the practice courts. None of them was famous. All of them were amazingly good. And with no pressure on them, and, above all, no money to win or lose, they could play with happy abandon. For half an hour, they did, for real, what a bare-chested Pete Sampras, in that famous ad, is paid millions of dollars by Nike to pretend: that he is just a kid having fun bashing a ball about a court. They burped and roared. They hit balls against the fence or bounced them on their heads, like soccer players. They cussed and pulled faces. They tumbled about on the grass. As one of them missed a shot, he belted a ball 50 feet into the air. While it hung above Wimbledon, a yellow spot against a sea of clouds, they even did something you almost never see anyone do on the tour these days. They laughed.