By Bill Simons

Read more … Venus Williams Roger Federer

It’s not nearly as grand as the ChampsÉlysées. But Wimbledon’s St. Mary’s Walk has a promenade feel suggestive of Fifth Avenue, though, as it swells with fans, it seems more like Times Square. The walkway begins at the notorious Court 2 - the Graveyard of Champions - passes the vastly overrated tea room, goes under pedestrian bridges and cuts between Centre Court and the media room, then rises past the Broadcast Center and Court One, dog-legging right under Henman Hill before it peters out by the practice courts. It is simply the greatest walkway in sports.

Here you’ll spot John McEnroe - head down avoiding the imposing masses - or Jimmy Connors, quietly beaming. Here Rafa will be swarmed or Bollettieri will gush ‘n schmooze, Gilbert will chatter or Richard Williams, after posing with Lithuanian students, will detail the wonders of the Royal Air Force. Here, the mix of conversational sound bites delights. Whether it’s the Air Marshall, Sir Brian Burnett, chatting with Baroness Billingham of Banbury, or just a couple of kids comparing Wimbledon with Manchester United - it all blends into a quite proper and well seasoned verbal stew.

Beyond this, Wimbledon’s promenade is a glorious (“Where’s my atlas?”) celebration of the global village. Two young Thais, Indian women in saris, a computer whiz from County Sligo Ireland sporting a University of Texas cap and a Roman car dealer showing off to his girlfriend all give texture to this moveable feast.

Here, over one shoulder, you see Ai Sugiyama, fresh from a recent conquest on an outer court, being tailed by a cadre of twitchy Japanese teenage girls who squeal ‘n leap as they each collect treasured autographs from their idol. Sinatra, Elvis and the Beatles never had more devoted fans.

But then, over the other shoulder, you see the exact opposite. Alize Cornet, a French teen, weeps and heaves inconsolably on her perplexed mother’s shoulder: her loss to Sugiyama a crushing implosion. Even her mom’s gentle strokes and sweet words can’t stem the torrent of French tears. And I think: an elated veteran from Tokyo and a dejected wannabe from Nice, such a sport of ranging emotions, what a global game.

Of course, for us (“we once had it so good”) Americans, there are some hefty downsides to tennis globalization. Just ask any aspiring high school prospect who lost his college scholarship to the third best player out of Latvia. Then there are those waves of tongue-twisting names (our favorite this year: the young Thai Kittiphong Wachiramanowong) that we parochial/mono-lingual Yanks repeatedly tangle with. Plus, tournaments that once camped out in Scottsdale, Washington or Jersey have quietly been outsourced to Doha, Dubai and Leipzig. In the 80s, 65 percent of the WTA’s tournaments were in North America. Now it’s just 32 percent. Oh, and the second week of Grand Slams used to be a jolly American party. Now, any Yank not named Williams who lasts that long seems like a bold survivor.

Still, the internationalist nature of tennis is the very fabric of a game that, despite its fierce competitiveness, implicitly expresses a poignant, “we’re all in this thing together” ethos. Era after era, tennis delivers tales of enchanting players from around the globe. In 1971 in the Cameroons, Arthur Ashe discovered an 11-year old, Yannick Noah, playing with a handmade wooden racket, who, in time would win the French Open and enchant the tennis universe before becoming a French pop icon. Leander Paes, a Catholic Indian with a penchant for yoga, has for years been an ongoing doubles whiz. Younes El Anouyi, a Moroccan with a quick smile and a fondness for solitary retreats in the Saharan outback, delivered excitement and charm.

At this year’s Wimbledon, international stories were bouncing off its storied ivy at all points. There was Tamira Parzek, a 16- year old Austrian with a Chilean mother, a Canadian father and a Brazilian coach who speaks four languages, who reached the fourth round. There was the shock finalist Marion Bartoli who promised, with continental charm, that immediately after the woman’s final, with all it’s hullabaloo, she would immediately return to her home in Le Puy-en-Velay, a lost-in-time village in central France where she confided, “I will be in my garden alone with my cat and everything will come back as usual.”

In contrast, there has been little calm in the tennis life of Aisam Ul-Haq Qureshi. Ranked No. 276, he both inspired and got himself into deep trouble with his home federation for playing doubles with Israeli Jew Amir Hadid in ‘02. This year he returned, becoming only the second Pakistani to win a singles match at Wimbledon.

Then there is the enigmatic Sania Mirza. Not since Mats Wilander fled from wearing the mantle of being No.1, with all its perplexing razzmatazz, has a player so fervently distanced themselves from their core story.

Proud and defiant, the 20-year old Indian Muslim bristles with offense when anyone even tries to attach a whiff of significance to her playing Wimbledon doubles with Shahar Peer, a sergeant in the Israeli Army. Clearly, she isn’t bothered by that nasty, irrelevant detail - life beyond tennis. Then again, it’s easy enough for us to say. No menacing Ayatollah has ever issued a fatwa against us. Still in a world whose prime political problem since the demise of the Soviet Union has been the (“where have all the peacemakers gone”) cycle of violence between Israel and the Islamic world, the fact that a brown Muslim with a potent forehand would - without pause or fuss - play with a white Jew with a jewel of a backhand is worthy of note -a fleeting (yet still hopeful) example that despite the intransigence of strife - decades of destruction - young athletes can still come together in friendship on the neutral fields of sport; that tennis can not only amaze and delight, but subtly inform.

But the international story at Wimbledon and throughout the year has been all about Serbia. After all, sizzling Novak Djokovic, 20, has had a stunning break-out year like few others in history. Ana Ivanovic reached the final of the French Open and the Wimbledon semis and giggle-meister Jelena Jankovic, who’s No. 3 in the world, charmed every tennis softie in Britain with her free-form blast ‘n tease antics en route to the Wimbledon mixed doubles championships. But it was a littleknown, deep-thinking Serbian with two tattoos and many a piercing who most intrigued me. Without even taking a breath, Janko Tipsarevic can expound on backhand volleys, the ravages of war and the profundities of philosophy. Few others so graphically tell the sobering tale of Serbia’s emergence from backwater chaos to tennis transcendence.

“All we have in [Serbian] tennis comes from mud, from nothing,” recalls Tipsarevic, who upset fifth-seeded Fernando Gonzalez on Centre Court to reach the fourth round. “It’s only by chance that I am here today playing tennis. When I started playing I lived in a house with my family - my brother, mother, father, my aunt, her husband, her kid and our grandmother. And my father - with his pay check for one month we could buy one kilo of carrots. That was it, nothing else.

“Our political situation was a complete mess. [Slobodan] Milosevic not only destroyed the country, but completely ruined our sport. Nobody in our country invested one dollar or euro in our players - no sponsors, no Federation, no nothing. Just a few years ago the top-ranked Serb was 700 in the world. Our courts were a disgrace. People were not allowed to care about tennis. Everything was going down. You can only imagine. Tennis is one of the most expensive sports in the world. Now how is it possible we have three players in the top ten and [we are] moving up? How did it happen? I really don’t know,” he joked, “Maybe [it’s from] some radiation from the bombing.”

Sitting with Tipsarevic, you can’t see the huge tattoo on his back that is inspired by German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and his notion of the genius. And you can try to ignore the massive tattoo on his arm that’s based on Dostoyevsky’s oh-so-appealing concept that “beauty will save the world.”

What you can’t ignore are Tipsarevic’s penetrating brown eyes, his deep reflective voice and the reality that he is a player apart. The late Arthur Ashe, with his unending curiosity, would offer insights on anything from the jazz of Miles Davis to the wisdom of Buddhism. Yannick Noah emanated a compassionate humanism, Jim Courier read during changeovers and both Michael Chang and James Blake are sober cerebral types who are prone to ponder matters little and large./p>

But Tipsarevic is quite a different kettle. Okay, the 23-yearold native, who won the Australian Open juniors in ‘01 and is now ranked No. 48, insists, “I’m not a writer and I don’t want to be a thinker.” Then he quickly adds, “But for your life you have to pick up and do what is best and make an idea. There are a lot of philosophers in the world and every one of them has their own philosophy, but you don’t have to be inside of one philosophy to be right. Everyone of us deep down has an idea about his life. The problem is that people don’t go deep inside. You know what is right for yourself and if you are willing to give everything to the idea of the moral inside, you will be a winner in the end.

“Now the main part of my life is tennis. But tennis is not a prison or a mine. My coach tells me I don’t have to have a narrow focus [think Pete Sampras] to be successful or that being too smart is not good for you.”

That being said, the young lad who regularly cranks up laser serves in the 125 mph range launches with ease on a soliloquy on Schopenhauer; will reflect on the notion of moral boundaries in Emmanuel Kant or insist there is no such thing as “global morality.” To Tipsarevic, “everyone in the world has a chance. Even the people in Iraq. For an individual it is stupid to feel bad because my friend’s father has money and a better starting point in life than me or feel bad because people in Africa don’t have food.” And then it all comes back to that haunting tattoo on Tipsarevic’s arm and the not so inconsequential question - will beauty save the world?

Oh, if we could only know. Indeed, all I know is that as another evening of golden English light lingers long in the northern dusk, the compelling happening they call Wimbledon is an extraordinary magnet for stories. Here, as you stroll on or about the incomparable St. Mary’s walk, you here tales: tales from Serbia or Siberia, Compton or Hyderabad, tales of beauty, triumph and intrigue. Tales of humanity.

To contact Bill Simons, email him at editorial@insidetennis.com

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