This is not to diminish the seriousness of Robert Allenby's injuries after his bashing in Hawaii – the one part of the murky escapade that is not "alleged" was the state of the golfer's face. He may have missed the cut, but not the bruises and abrasions. But who has not used the line, "Mum, I was in a bar with a couple of mates and I swear, the next thing I knew I was ______[fill space here]"?
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I think I might have used "Waking up in a park with homeless people" myself somewhere along the line, along with "Walking the F2 on-ramp with my jumper on back to front", "Here in this holding cell" and "In Queensland". The comedian Jack Dee does a nice line where he says, "I was in my local with a couple of mates and, well, to cut a long story short, the next thing I knew I was in a hotel in Amsterdam bound and gagged in a gimp suit. But … mere details. It's what happened next that I want to tell you about."
If a chunk of time went missing for Allenby, he wasn't alone in a week where there were blank spots all over the sporting world. Other fill-ins for the space after "I was in a bar with a couple of mates and the next thing I knew I was_____" include:
"Fielding for the Melbourne Stars." There was nothing "alleged" about the belting an MCG seagull copped from a ball struck into the outfield by Perth's Adam Voges. The seagull, apparently dead, was carried off by Rob Quiney. But, like Monty Python's deceased parrot, the seagull was just resting. Next thing it knew it was running onto the field trying to get between two Stars fielders to attack the ball. With a vengeance! Cheered for bravery and aggressive outfielding, the seagull had only one thing wrong with it: it was now running.
"Sledging in fluent Hindi." David Warner took a game off to study up on how to stop being so misunderstood. Told he was being racist by asking Rohit Sharma to sledge him in English, Warner can now say "Bowl him a piano, see if he can play that" and "I don't know, ask your mother" in 17 subcontinental dialects. Let's hope he avoids the one with phrases that sound like "You hairy monkey".
"Wearing a Halloween mask on a ski field looking for my girlfriend." Just the latest post-blank spot in the life of Tiger Woods. Apparently his missing tooth was not part of the mask, but the result of another golfer-bashing. Seriously. Allegedly.
"Working for the NRL." Shane Richardson, doing so well at Souths, got sucked into the vortex. Wish him well, for, having been part of the solution, he doesn't deserve to become part of the problem.
"Playing tennis in a hi-viz vest." At Melbourne Park, the world's elite must be wondering where they blacked out, how it ever came to this. Tennis has some bizarre conventions. These most fabulously wealthy, talented, powerful sportsmen and women are not allowed to put their names on their shirts, and have to line up dutifully for this season's uniform like roadworkers at the company store. Last year we were losing them against the court as they all wore Rebound Ace Blue. This year, if the fluoro was fuzzy, you'd never be able to see the ball. The honourable exception was Sam Groth, who not only looked like the bloke stocking the storeroom at the bottle shop, but dressed like him too.
"Playing tennis in hi-viz with a ruddy great hole in the back." Poor Serena Williams, who was out with mates in a bar and the next minute woke up wearing something that, in her words, highlighted that she was "not just powerful but beautiful". "Kind of a lot of my outfits this year are really based on the beauty of and the shape of the back, which a lot of people don't think about." That's a real quote, not an alleged one. Task one, people: have more respect for backs. Sadly, though, being one of the two or three all-time greatest tennis players has never quite given Williams the adoration she has craved. There was the alleged acting, the alleged modelling, the alleged fashion-design, the alleged cosmetic line, even the mysterious Allenby-esque alleged episode at Wimbledon where she was out with her sister and the next minute woke up during a doubles match. But when nothing else quite does it, as a fallback there is always winning another grand slam.
"Playing tennis in hi-viz and being asked to 'twirl'." Oddly, in her quest to be seen as something other than a tennis player, Williams started this thing where she pirouettes on court after a match and, having done so much to demonstrate the power and glory of women's sport, she can then do something to undercut it. That must be the "beautiful" part. The price is paid when a player who some man actually wants to see twirl is, demeaningly, asked to do it. Eugenie Bouchard woke up from her blackout to find herself being asked to "twirl" on court. Put on the spot, she did it, but looked as comfortable as Ricky Ponting interviewing Kevin Pietersen. If that geniality was any more forced, its eyes would shrink right back into its head.
"Finding myself on the Seven App." Multichannel coverage on Seven is a marvellous thing, enabling the viewer to dash from court to court with no more exertion than the press of a thumb. But what it does mean is that Seven must provide more commentators, more on-court interviewers, a team for every venue. In Bouchard's case, the network's depth was clearly being tested. And it tests the players, too. It's a competition. When his second-round match lost interest, Bernard Tomic got relegated to the Seven App, a wasteland where he was filed alongside press conferences, giveaways and ads for Home and Away. Being bumped down to the App must be the tennis equivalent to when Spinal Tap turned up at a gig only to read on the venue billboard, "Welcome Spinal Tap and Puppet Show". It is, as Gordon Bray would say, "the final indignation". On the App, no one can think about your back, and no one can hear your clothes scream. Not even in Hindi.
