With no tennis to show, the Tennis Channel has been replaying classic matches, and the other day I caught some of the 1975 Wimbledon gentlemen’s final between Arthur Ashe and Jimmy Connors. The racquets were wood, the balls white, the shorts short. The lines judges were older men wearing glasses and – even more oddly – sitting in chairs. But perhaps the most striking thing was the way the chair umpire, at one point, pleaded with the crowd for silence. It was in a schoolmasterly voice that carried notes of dismay and disappointment that he even had to make the request.
