"Only a Game"

Doping, match-fixing, appearance fees heading through the roof: When you think about it, tennis isn’t all that bad today. You should have seen it in the 1980s, when there seemed to be no cure for any even more dangerous disease: the exhibition. At a certain point, Ivan Lendl, world No. 1, attempted to play virtually nothing but exos. It almost seemed that tennis as competition, rather than as paid vacation for the stars, might become a thing of the past.Despite the history of all-whites and the crisp lawns, if you’re looking for purity in tennis, you’ll have to go back further, much further, maybe even back to the first time it was played at an English garden party—though, who knows,