Janice Owen celebrates the history of women’s tennis here:
Tag: Confessions of an Ageing Tennis Player
A Waiting Story: We’re not getting any younger these days
So said the heavy athlete slumped on the bench in the men’s changing rooms, gazing at his cracked up trainers, sodden t shirt and pale blue shorts strewn across the floor. He’d had a difficult match on a squash court, being raced around by just a strip of a lad who had humiliated him over 3 games, 27 minutes and never ending memories of how things used to be, back in the day.
True, we sympathised. There was a time, back in the day, when we did indeed get younger with the passing of the days.
There was a time, way back when, when getting older really did feel like you were getting younger: as the days passed, your skin shone a bit more, your hair grew faster, and your torso shed pounds quicker, the longer you stood looking at yourself in the mirror.
At what point did the days do a volte face and far from getting younger as we got older, did we actually get older as we got older?
The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player
“Tennis belongs to the individualistic past – a hero, or at most a pair of friends or lovers, against the world.” (Jacques Barzun)
What happens after you believe you’ve won Wimbledon, conquered your local tennis club, and crowned yourself a sporting legend — when none of it was quite true?
The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player picks up where Confessions left off: with Lord Andrew John Paul George Ringo Murray of Kirkintilloch rescued from a burning raft of tennis rackets, arrested, and facing the small inconvenience of reality. Undeterred, our gloriously unreliable narrator sets his sights on an even greater prize — the Australian Open — while simultaneously navigating the far more dangerous terrain of love, obsession, correspondence, and self-delusion.
Told through a wildly inventive mix of match reports, fan mail, court transcripts, newspaper cuttings, ornithological “sightings,” and illustrated interludes, this is a novel that treats tennis as theatre, romance as combat, and ageing as an extreme sport. Along the way, real-world tennis mythology collides with fantasy, bureaucracy, and pataphysical logic, as Andy encounters rival “GOATs,” prison systems, phantom coaches, and women who may — or may not — be in love with him.
By turns absurd, tender, infuriating, and unexpectedly moving, The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player is a comic novel about the stories we tell ourselves to survive the fine line between confidence and delusion masculinity, ageing, and desire under pressure and the strange ways love refuses to follow the rules
Illustrated throughout by Paul Warren, this sequel deepens the world of Confessions while standing confidently on its own as a bold, original, laugh-out-loud meditation on ambition, attachment, and the enduring hope that the next match — or the next letter — might finally change everything.
Next stop: Melbourne. Love all.
£19.99
The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player: dropping just in time for the Australian Open!
“Tennis belongs to the individualistic past – a hero, or at most a pair of friends or lovers, against the world.” ( Jacques Barzun)
Published in 2021, ‘Confessions of an Ageing Tennis Player’ tells the story of a man of a certain age – known to himself as ‘Lord Andrew John Paul George Ringo Murray of Kirkintilloch’ – who lived out fantasies of sporting super powers when he was young and never quite moved on as he grew up.
By the end of the story, he has (he thinks) succeeded at his final and most demanding quest of being elected Chairman of his local club: but in the minds of most of the rest of the world, he has become a complete social misfit who causes nothing but chaos everywhere he turns. Far from ‘preparing for government’ of his club in the New Year, Lord Andrew has in everyone else’s eyes been issued with a lifetime ban from the club and been arrested for arson.
‘The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player’ picks up from where ‘Confessions’ left off.
What’s the next challenge for the tennis player who’s just won Wimbledon? It’s to win the next Grand Slam in Australia. So, he goes back to his tennis roots, bades farewell to his club and sets off on his journey over the equator to Melbourne (also known in the ‘real’ world as HM Prison North Sea Camp in Lincolnshire.)
His desire to win the Australian Open in ‘Melbourne’ however is not as straight forward as he would like. He has an open prison regime to contend with, opponents who don’t play by the book and the ongoing attentions of another champion tennis player, ‘Serena Williams’ who has taken pity on Lord Andrew due in no small part to the guilt she feels about her role in banning him from their club in the first place. And lurking deep in the background is his spurned coach, Mrs Hacienda Buscando Stanley Carter (Hac) who has several scores to settle.
The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player brings our characters back together for another epic tennis final played out in the tennis courts of Melbourne, the magistrates courts of Liverpool and eventually the romantic wilderness of the East Lincolnshire coast line.
As with Confessions, we’re delighted to be working again with our illustrator, Paul Warren, who is producing yet another collection of memorable illustrations for the book.
You can order your copy here:
Confessions of an Ageing Tennis Player: I AM Andy Murray and have beaten Carlos Alcaraz at this year’s Wimbledon Championship (albeit vicariously).
Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you all. I can’t believe that this afternoon has ended in such a thrilling style, with so many decisive moments, nerve tingling decisions, and life changing choices.
Novi was an incredible opponent this afternoon, but I agree with him when he says the best man won (i.e. me).
So, congratulations to him for putting up such a spirited fight, and congratulations to me for pulling out all the stops and astounding everyone.
While now is not the time to crow, it is worth remembering those who fell at an early stage during the competition and for the valuable contribution blah… blah… blah… they have made to the upper echelons of the tennis fraternity.
So, here we can remember the likes of Rafa (N), the Pole, Maria Sharapova and of course my mentor, leader and nemesis, Roger (F) – all as you can see at the peak of their physical prowess.
But holding the trophy aloft will stay in my memory for the rest of my life and I would like to finally thank you all, my supporters, my coach, my advocates and my enemies for the encouragement you have given me or the motivation which has spurred me on to prove you all wrong. This year’s Wimbledon has proven to me that anything is possible, with the right attitude, guts, determination, and fertile imagination.
My club, my tennis, my world, will never be the same again!
Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you.
Next year’s Wimbledon already beckons.
(You might like to know that you can follow Lord Andrew John Paul George Ringo Murray of Kirkintilloch’s journey to fame and infamy in ‘Confessions of an Ageing Tennis Player’ . You can see it here.
Confessions of an Ageing Tennis Player
“I don’t like your attitude!” snaps “Serena Williams” as we square up over the club’s dubious grass courts. But I am “Andy Murray”, the greatest tennis GOAT ever, no really I am and you “Serena” are blocking me from my ultimate goal: chairman of our local club.
A riotously funny illustrated comic guidebook about obsession, ageing, sporting fantasy and the gap between imagination and reality.
Follow a man of a certain age — self-styled as “Andy Murray” — on his spirited, surreal journey through dreams of Wimbledon glory, club politics, and the absurdities of success that never quite arrives. The first in the Confessions series.
£19.99
From the Confessions to the Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player
When I was younger, I used to watch the tennis on the TV and especially the guys like McEnroe, Borg and Nastase. Round about Wimbledon time, my brother Alex and I would play a kind of tennis out on our grandfather’s lawn. I would take on the role of John McEnroe and he would enact Jimmy Connors. I would invariably win.
Ah, these words, dear reader. These dear, dear words, dear, dear reader.
Little did I know when starting my chronicles of my lifetime tennis achievements that such a modest turn of phrase would lead to such a momentous turn of events. How was I to know? How was anyone to know? And so dear reader, if these opening sentences find you bemused and perplexed, confused and convexed, then fret no further for I am about to regale you with a chronicle of ambition and achievement of modern times like no other which has left other commentators aghast and astounded.
There is so much to tell. From how I excelled at teaching tennis, to how my lucky wild card to Wimbledon led to a very public humiliation of Roger Federer and my very first Grand Slam Championship win at Wimbledon; to how I was propelled to fame and fortune by collecting – in the face of some furious hostility from the sporting hoi polloi it has to be said – the coveted Sports Personality of the Year Award from the BBC, to the biggest accolade and challenge of my life time: winning the public vote for the Chairmanship of the Dunblane Tennis Club, the Holy Grail of all serious tennis players.
If you have not been following that incredible story arc and the countdown to that final challenge dear reader, then fear not for I am about to reveal to you for the very first time what happened on the fateful first day of January when everyone in the club waited with bated breath for the results of the voting process.
Imagine the scene!
It’s icy cold out out on the cricket pitch. Stumps left there in August and which were never retrieved due to the wicket keeper Smyth’s inability to hold his balls and bails simultaneously have been frozen into the earth like 3 Excalibur Swords, daring all who pass by to try and extricate them from their stony embrace. 3 urchins try their best to release the stumps but are thwarted at every step. They soon realise the time and come scampering back to the clubhouse, ready for the announcement which will herald a brand-new dawn for club, country and yours truly. Cricket will be played there again but not in my lifetime.
Wandering in nonchalantly from underneath rugby posts steps Spoty, the club moggie, feigning disinterest in the proceedings but secretly harbouring a desire to wreak feline havoc amongst the membership. Spoty has never forgiven the Club’s Handyman, Trefor, for mis-spelling his name when it came to writing it on the door of the cat flap which gives Spoty carte blanche to come and go as he pleases. Trefor demonstrates dyslexia, especially in the early hours when one too many Gimlets means he can no longer read or write in a straight line. So Spotty the Black Cat -so called due to its one black spot amongst all that black fur – becomes courtesy of Trefor, Spoty. The vote for the Chairmanship is the opportunity he has been waiting for.
And deep in the inner sanctum of the Clubhouse itself, I am dressed to impress, invest and to gracefully accept everything that is about to be bestowed upon me. I look in the mirror, fiddle with my bow tie, adjust my boater, cough discreetly. There’s a knock at the door.
“Enter!” I call out magnanimously.
And in she crawls, sideways, Mrs Serena Williams, cap in hand, tugging her forelock and waving the results of the vote under my nose.
I have, not to put to fine a point on it, won the vote by a complete and utter devastatingly huge landslide. ‘Landslide’ doesn’t do the scale of my victory justice. This is more a case of ‘Annihilation’. ‘’Humiliation’ is another bon mot. ‘Total and utter’ isn’t even close.
I thank her quietly and with dignity and follow her out to the assembled hordes, ready to make my first speech of my reign as Club Chairman. It is important to set the tone on these august occasions and I have prepared for this moment with due diligence and with an eye on the appropriate tone of phrase which pays due respect to my opponents whilst thanking all the officials in the time-honoured tradition of throwing bags of cashew nuts at them as they cravenly step away from their hallowed spot of propping up the club bar.
The rest of the day, I have to admit, dear reader is a bit of a blur. Winning Wimbledon was something, succeeding at SPOTY quite another but claiming the crown of the club? Even I – yes, even I – was unprepared for the emotional roller coaster that followed that moment when I was handed the ceremonial tennis bat, a couple of fuzzy balls and a Nike baseball cap and shown the back door.
It was clearly time for me to stroll around the grounds of the club, shaking hands with members of the public who had so patiently been waiting for my appearance out in the Car Boot sale car park. To the massed cheering of those on the Club balcony, I waved. To the scruffy oiks who were practicing throwing up in the cricket nets, I reprimanded them in a good spirit which suggested that this would be the last time they would be doing that on my watch. And last but no means least, to the Tennis section who had laid on a guard of honour down at the entrance to the grass courts, holding their rackets up high to form a tunnel through which I processed; I thanked them one by one and stepping forward, received the golden pick axe.
The tennis player lines parted, and the smiling captain beckoned me forward, pointing to the base line. I stepped forward, swung the axe several times over and over and over again. Briefly, there was silence.
And then a roar when everyone realised the enormity of my act. The grass courts were no more.
Astroturfing could begin and my reign as club chairman had begun in earnest.
Want to read more of The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player? Then just subscribe here!
Subscribe to get access
Read more of this content when you subscribe today.