I think this is what's known as unfortunate timing.

3.25:

Tame Murray beaten by Baghdatis By Caroline Cheese BBC Sport at Wimbledon

Andy Murray's Wimbledon run came to a disappointing end with a 6-3 6-4 7-6 (7-2) defeat to Marcos Baghdatis.

Murray sees internet search boom Mark Sweney Monday July 3, 2006

Teenage tennis sensation Andy Murray is set to overtake Wayne Rooney in online search requests over the next few days...

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The good news is it's pissing down as I look through my study window, and the forecast says it'll carry on for most of the day. Fingers crossed the rain keeps up for a fortnight, and not only will we not have to go to stand pipes later in the summer for our water but - far more importantly - that bore of all bores will be abandoned as a washout.

If only. Instead, we'll have to suffer two weeks of non-stop coverage of the sport for people who don't like sport. What a giant yawn Wimbledon is.

(And by the way, I know how enraged my making this point makes tennis fanatics. So please feel free to insult me and my views, but keep in mind one thing: I don't care. In fact I positively relish the fact that my contempt for tennis as a so-called sport drives you all mad. So go on - insult me and my view: make my day!)

UPDATE: The comments are wonderful - light the touchpaper and watch the sparks fly!

One commenter implies that my "world-renowned physique" is in some way connected to my dislike of tennis. I wonder if he's the same chap to whom I have referred previously:

The biggest postbag I have ever received, by quite a long margin, was when I was on the Express and I wrote a couple of sentences after Britain had lost in the Davis Cup to the US. My piece was, almost in its entirety:

Who cares? It's only tennis.

The angry letters flooded in. The best was from someone who had clearly gone to a lot of trouble. Using letters that had been cut from newspapers and mags, blackmail style, it simply said:

You hate tennis because you are a fat bastard.

Whilst the latter point was 50 per cent correct, it was of course a non sequitur to associate this with the fact that I consider tennis to be mind-numbingly tedious: the sport for people who don't like sport.

Another commenter however appears slightly over wrought by my having supposedly written about my dislike of New Year's Eve "three years consecutively in The Times". Quite what this has to do with a post about Wimbledon I don't know but, just for the record, it's utter nonsense. I have written about it there once, last December. (I also wrote about it in 2004 in the Mail and in 2003 in the Independent. Unless I am mistaken, they are different newspapers with different readers.)

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Surely the smallest website in history.

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This blog only deals with the major issues of the day. As regular readers will know, I find tennis mind-numbingly boring. The organisers of a Spanish tournament have tried to do something about this by hiring models as ball boys. The idea has, predictably, prompted complaints. My favourite is from something called Consumers in Action, which has lodged a court case against Hugo Boss, the fashion company that hired the models, "for attacking the dignity of women".

I can't begin to think what on earth this has got to do with a consumer group, but then again I've never really understood Spain.

The best complaint by far comes from Andre Agassi:

I think that the skirts should be shorter.

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I'm watching the Olympics athletics at the moment. They're playing Abba hits over the stadium's PA. Bizarre.

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I'd forgotten just how boring the opening ceremonies of sporting events are. Tonight's Olympic opening was a classic of its kind, a sort of It's A Knockout with fireworks.

But it didn't come close to the "quite pathetic" (in Wisden's words) opening to the 1999 Cricket World Cup at Lord's. As the great Frank Keating put it:

This year's cricket World Cup at Lord's had a calamitous opening ceremony, if it could thus be called: three or four damp- squib fireworks being rained on and - "testing, testing, testing" - a microphone for Tony Blair which did not work. Most village-hall jumble sales could have done better than that.

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There are few more exciting golfers to watch than John Daly. You never what will happen next.

As this Guardian story shows, it seems he is big hearted as well as just big.

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