Coach's Corner

by Andy "Coach" Cotton To flee the smothering heat of the comedy critic's luxurious garden retreat in the prestigious "04" area of town, aka South Austin, someone suggested we go to the Laff Stop. The critic promised to pull strings for a "reduced cover charge." It was, after all, her "beat." It was the comedy critic's omnipresent battery of two aggressive, young, Jewish attorneys who suggested, after two unfunny hours, we tarry forth to the Yellow Rose.

Once inside, the duo of heretofore sullen solicitors bounce to life. Immediately one leaves the table, returning shortly with a pile of 50 one-dollar bills. If the steady stream of handshaking visitors weren't evidence enough, the pile of cash suggested the two barristers had been here before. While our legal protection had momentarily disappeared into dark corners of the club, resurfacing only briefly to grab another fistful of legal tender, the comedy critic and I reflected.

Calling on a vast store of dimming pornographic memories, I regale her with tales of the days when these clubs were not so clean - when small overhead fans cooled the putrid, rancid air. Frigid clubs (to make nipples more erect, according to our barristers) with monster air conditioning systems did not exist. Personally, I prefer sweat, but I digress.

This is really about food which, considering the terrain - healthy, buxom, naked young lasses everywhere - is quite pathetic. I'm hungry, not for sex but for food. I demand a menu. The "waitress" considers me with less interest than a cat has for flying an airplane. I am without doubt their first food ticket of the day. While our immediate area is engulfed by nubile and acrobatic women engaged in various forms of lap-dancing, I rant to the uncharacteristically mute comedy critic and the two attorneys currently being occupied in gynecological studies how my salad was the best I'd ever tasted. The chicken sandwich wasn't bad, either.

I do like watching girls. My mind, however, was on a different kind of girl- watching. I was pondering the entertaining women's finals that afternoon at Wimbledon between Steffi Graff and Arantxa Sanchez Vicario. Women's tennis is frequently criticized as boring and lifeless. It's always male ex-professionals saying this. As a tennis player myself, I often prefer watching the women play.

The women's game is a game I can relate to. If my imagination is running really amok, I picture myself warming up with Steffi, rallying a little with Tracy Austin, and trading backhands with Mary Pierce. The women must hit forehands and backhands to win points - occasionally even a volley. They hit serves I might return.

The men, on the other hand, play in a place far beyond even my hyper-imagination. Groundstrokes are hit at a racquet-bending pace. Serves by the "soft hitters" are, at 109mph, basically invisible. Overheads are never missed. I rarely hit an overhead in bounds, which is why I, like many of the women players, let it bounce first. I, of course, still hit it out.

The Graff-Sanchez Vicario match was great theater because they both, even the great Graff, have to play a form of tennis most of us hackers, in theory anyway, understand: Serve/return/groundstroke/groundstroke/approach/run back to return lob, all the while hoping desperately your opponent will miss so you won't have to hit another shot. The 11th game of the climactic third set is already being hyped - justifiability for a change - as one for tennis clinics of the future. The game itself lasted 20 minutes. It had 13 deuces, six break points, eight game points. It gave me plenty of time to speculate on why, with absolutely nothing at stake except the right to graciously say, "Nice game, Dick" in my own weekly match against my partner of 15 years, I don't have the courage to hit out at the damn ball. These woman showed courage to spare.

In an era when tennis is about the only way a superior female athlete can make a good living as a professional, I've yet to hear or read a plausible theory as to why women's tennis is so uncompetitive, why its history is dominated by one or two players at a time. No doubt the impending return of the great Seles is much needed. This is the very definition of understatement. I don't look forward to the media frenzy it will provoke, but if any player can handle this attention it will be the publicity-ravenous Seles.

The essence of any sport is, naturally, competition. This means the fan believing the ultimate winner is not preordained; too often not the case in women's tennis. Last year's Wimbledon winner, Conchita Martinez, hobbled this season by injury, showed flashes of real talent. Sanchez Vicario - who comes from a family sporting two other professional playing brothers - although not in the class of Graff, is an entertaining, colorful performer.

Finally, the obscene pile of dollar bills is gone and the economy of my home town is enriched. The comedy critic's attorneys return to the table and jolt me out of my incongruent reverie. The young Darrows ask if I've reached such an advanced age I no longer enjoy watching girls. I do, I quietly explain, I do enjoy watching the girls. n

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