Brian Viner: Tennis jester smashes golf right out of court

It is not inappropriate, with the pantomime season upon us, that the organisers of the Honda Challenge – the Champions Tour tennis spectacular at the Royal Albert Hall, which concluded yesterday – should gather together a bevy of journalists (I know of no better collective noun) to cross rackets with some of the game's all-time greats. After all, not even Frank Bruno as Widow Twanky could present a more absurd spectacle than me trying to deceive the 1998 Australian Open champion, Petr Korda, with a topspin lob.

We gathered last Wednesday morning at Queen's Club in west London, taking care to mind our Ps and Qs. A misplaced P here, or an untimely Q there, let alone the volley of Fs that John McEnroe once let loose at the chairman's wife, and the very foundations of these places can begin to shudder.

I'm all for standards of dress and decorum, but certain institutions do themselves no favours by imposing them too rigorously. I've shared this story with you before, but it bears retelling. One midweek afternoon a few summers ago, I met a bunch of friends at Aldeburgh Golf Club, where we had arranged to have lunch before playing. I arrived late, and as I strode from my car towards the clubhouse, I could see my friends gesticulating at me through the window. I was smartly dressed in black trousers and a blue polo shirt, but they were telling me that, to have soup and a sandwich in the bar, I needed a jacket and tie.

I didn't have a jacket and tie with me, so the secretary kindly provided them, as he had for several of my friends. The jacket was an elderly brown tweed job with leather elbow patches; the tie was red. My friends were similarly kitted out. We'd turned up looking smart, and now anyone poking their heads in would have assumed us to be a golfing society of circus clowns about to play for the Charlie Corroli Cup.

At Queen's the very air contains particles of élitism. In the same event last year, Henri Leconte and Mikael Pernfors turned up early for a knock-up and were reprimanded by one of four venerable ladies playing a doubles match on an adjacent court. She told them that they were not yet entitled to the court and were putting her off. Leconte looked her straight in the eye. "Are you having fun playing tennis?" he asked, which apparently upset her even more.

The story reminded Jeremy Bates of when he was a promising junior, and was given special dispensation to practise on the indoor courts at Queen's. He too was told off by a member – doubtless a member who also grumbled about Britain's inability to produce tennis champions – for making too much noise with his feet.

In fairness, however, the members present last Wednesday seemed highly delighted to see the likes of Korda, Bates, Ilie Nastase, John Lloyd, Mats Wilander, and the arch-entertainer of the Champions Tour, the 46-year-old Iranian Mansour Bahrami, who on Friday at the Albert Hall hurdled the net and returned his own drop shot.

On Wednesday I had the pleasure of playing with Bahrami. One of his stunts is to take a mad swish at the ball and miss it completely, which is actually something I can do as well, except that he somehow contrives to hit it on the follow-through.

He was huge fun to play with but even more fun to play against. My friend Doug opposed him in a doubles match and, of course, Bahrami didn't play at anything like full tilt, but at the end he told Doug and his partner that they could both try to receive his serve, together, and that he would serve six aces past them. Which he promptly did.

Afterwards, I got chatting to Bahrami about the Champions Tour, which has gone bust in the United States, and is now reduced to only a handful of global events. Which is mystifying, because it is still thrilling to see men such as McEnroe and Nastase play tennis, arguably more enjoyable than watching the heavy artillery of the regular men's tour. In fact, that is plainly part of the appeal of seniors golf, I said, that the old pros play a game which is marginally more familiar to the club golfer than that played by Tiger Woods. "Golf," hurrumphed Bahrami, "golf is not a sport. It is a hobby. Look at those big, fat guys. And John Daly, an alcoholic, and he wins the US Open. In a sport, you need to sweat."

Actually, Daly hasn't won the US Open, but I took the point, which was eagerly seized upon by John Lloyd.

"Some people talk about Tiger Woods being the greatest athlete in the world," said Lloyd. "That is absolutely laughable. If you talk about cardiovascular fitness, he wouldn't last five minutes on a tennis court. And look at these guys, Montgomerie, Mickelson, they haven't seen their knees in years. But I envy them. They can play for ever, and when they stop earning a fortune playing, they can earn a fortune designing golf courses. What am I going to do, design a tennis court?"

Why not? He could start by patenting an indoor tennis court, for posh clubs in Britain, that stays silent underfoot.

b.viner@independent.co.uk