LONDON -- Tennis is a game of traditions, and a rich literature has grown up around the arcane origins of everything from its scoring system to its etiquette. Reaching back into the mists of time, the game’s historians have gravely discussed the precise dates when men first wore shorts, when the ball went from white to canary yellow, when the tie-break was introduced. Ah, but the humble bathroom break. . .there’s a mystery for a true scholar.  When did players suddenly become so incontinent they had to race off court between points, after a set or right before an opponent served for the match? A few years ago at the French Open, Marat Safin established some sort of new record by interrupting the pre-match warm-up to flee to the bathroom.

 In the opinion of most experts, the 1983 US Open final between Jimmy Connors and Ivan Lendl was a watershed – or should that be a water-closet? – moment. In their pre-match commentary, CBS announcer Pat Summerall and Tony Trabert informed a national TV audience that Connors was suffering from diarrhoea and would have to run off court at a moment’s notice. Some viewers might have considered this an example of gross over-sharing or of way too much information. But this was back in the day when tennis had no medical time-outs and play was supposed to be “continuous.” So Summerall and Trabert, firm believers in truth in packaging, wanted people to know that the rules were being just slightly bent for good gastric reason. Jimmy, they assured the world, would go to the bathroom and return promptly without any illegal coaching or treatment.

 Every tennis fan of a certain age will fondly recall this event as the birth of the bathroom break. But in his otherwise unsurprising book, Never Make the First Offer, Donald Dell, agent extraordinaire and the uncrowned King of Conflict of Interest, recounts the real story behind the false public announcement – and thereby reveals the kind of squalid behind-the-scenes manoeuvring which all too often makes a mockery of the rules of tennis, betrays the trust of spectators and raises suspicions about other side deals and cynical violations that may be occurring today.

 As Dell tells the tale, Jimbo didn’t have diarrhoea. He developed a massive blood blister on his foot during the semi-final and informed US Open officials that he would have to default the final. This was a nightmare scenario for pro tennis and the USTA, not to mention for CBS TV which faced the prospect of four hours of empty airtime. But comes the moment, comes the man, and as usual when the going gets tough in tennis, the rulebook goes out the window, the proper authorities abdicate responsibility, the wheeler-dealers take over and fans remain in the dark.

 Proud of his coolness under pressure and his readiness to improvise, Dell explains that he contacted the doctor for the NY Jets and discovered that Jimbo’s blister could be drained and his condition stabilized with a shot of painkiller. The only trouble, the doctor cautioned, was that the shot would wear off after an hour or so, and Connors would need to have a second ampoule of painkiller needled into his foot.

 Tournament director Bill Talbot objected that this was against the rules. There was no provision at that time for medical treatment, even on an emergency basis, during a match. If a player was injured in the course of play, he had to hobble on or default. But neither the rulebook nor the tournament director was any match for Dell. Talbot ducked out of the debate, agreeing to pretend he and Dell had never talked. Then in a temporary coup d’état, Dell, who had no official standing, invented the bogus bathroom break, got Summerall and Trabert to make a misleading announcement, and instructed the chair umpire that millions of fans should be spared a major intestinal malfunction. As a result, Connors not only got through the match. He beat Lendl who had been assured that his opponent was answering a call of nature, not having medical treatment. To reiterate the obvious, Dell orchestrated a Grand Slam final involving two of his clients when, in fact, he knew and the tournament knew – and who knows how many others knew? – that Connors should have been defaulted.

  As a sport/business, pro tennis has a notoriously short attention span and a long-standing nonchalance about breaking the rules it has written for itself. Like a lot of its other inconvenient rules, the one concerning medical treatment was eventually changed. These days it’s not uncommon for matches to be interrupted for fifteen or twenty minutes while a physio is fetched on court, or a player is escorted to the locker room long enough, it sometimes seems, for an appendectomy. How many of these injury time-outs are medically urgent or even necessary is debatable. How many are gamesmanship, lame attempts to get a little rest or change the momentum of a match must be a matter of serious suspicion. 

 Whatever the impact on the players or the effect on the final score, these interruptions are an aggravation to fans, a distraction from the game’s natural rhythms, and a diminishment of its enjoyment. On this year’s anniversary of the celebrated 1980 Wimbledon final between Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe, it is worth remembering that during the splendid long tie-break in the fourth set, neither man ever towelled off or dawdled between points or paused during the change of ends to eat a banana or slug back some magic elixir. They played on, and as they did so, the intensity increased stroke by stroke, point by point until it reached a pitch of emotion that’s impossible today when players waste half a minute or more pulling up their socks or picking at the seat of their pants between serves. Then there are those who decorously withdraw to an off-court toilet while the Wimbledon commentator assures the audience that they will be receiving no coaching and no treatment, and certainly no stimulants or performance enhancers. But when they’re out of sight, who enforces the enforcers? Will we again have to wait four decades to find out the truth?