Listening to the Australian Open

Hopes riding on Andy Murray, the early part of today was scheduled for savouring or agonising over each point played in the Melbourne tennis tournament final – otherwise known as the Australian open

Mr. Murray didn’t have a good day. His third tennis grand slam final and third loss. Not much consolation, but that makes him by far the best male tennis player Britain has produced in three generations. And he’s only twenty-three.

Now there were various options for my vicarious participation. The BBC has a web-page where each game is summarised by a paragraph, but there is a delay of about four or five minutes, so although good, it’s hardly live ball by ball commentary. BBC 5 do a live broadcast of many sporting events, but instead of broadcasts of the main tent items of tennis' big four, there’s a recorded message that says “due to contractual reasons, you are not allowed to receive this program in your area”. Eurosport with Arabic commentary is one of the channels my cable provider offers, so that gave me a visual. And then I had an idea …

Google Australian Open, go to web-site, find AO radio button and lo! and behold, real-time live commentary. That’s it then, EuroSport picture and AO commentary. Except that the AO delay over the internet was just long enough that the voice over was pretty well always for the previous point to the one I was watching. Not too bad as I could then play a game with myself to see if I could spot what the commentators were going to say. Sadly I could – "Murray’s not playing at his best". Weeeell maybe not, but Kolya wasn't letting him either.

While things still seemed pretty equal, the Aussie commentator read out an email from someone in, I think, Macedonia and mused about the number of countries that must be listening. I couldn’t resist it, off goes an email from me “Thanks guys, keep talking, I’m sitting here in Lebanon, able to visualize the match between a Serb and a Scot in Australia – great commentary” or some such. A good hour later when the writing was well and truly on the wall in day-glow paint and hopes gone so far South that penguins were sighted round them, the commentator read out my email “Hey here’s another country to add to the list, Graham in Lebanon says [my email] … pity he can’t visualize Murray turning this round.”

There’s the (probably apocryphal) story of another famous Scot, Robert the Bruce, watching a spider re-build her web and vowing to learn from her determination and come back from a reversal. He learned the lesson so well, he became Scotland’s King.

I hope Mr. Murray knows his Scottish folk lore as, ever hopeful, I’m looking forward to Roland Garros – the French tennis open – and another chance for Britain’s number one men’s player.