hat was until Tuesday evening, anyway, when the self-styled Spice Girls – the still youthful but long retired Anna Kournikova and the perennially “re-emerging” Martina Hingis – decided it was time for one last revival “gig” before going their separate ways. Veterans of 29, they have both admittedly squeezed in a couple of lives apiece in they contemplate the horror of 30th birthdays.
The Invitation Doubles conveniently caters for such romps down memory lane and Britain’s Ann Hobbs and Sam Smith were the perfect sidekicks, in no way attempting to share the limelight but providing enough oppositon to see one “great” and one very fine woman’s tennis player to best effect as they moved to a 6-2, 6-4 win.
The Wimbledon blazers, who weren’t born yesterday and have forgotten more about putting on a show than we will ever know, teasingly scheduled the match as fourth on Court Two and you could see one or two dejected males adopting a position of prayer mid-morning as the rain lingered and a full day’s play seemed unlikely. So near and yet so far.
