How to Keep Tabs on Wet Wimbledon

It just keeps raining and raining and raining, so the London newspapers don’t know what to do. With no Wimbledon tennis to report, all they can do is keep creating bogus scandals:

UFO Refuses to Release Monica Seles

Aliens, not ailments, have turned out to be responsible for Monica Seles’ sudden withdrawal from the Wimbledon tennis tournament, the London Daily Slime has learned.

“It’s that new haircut,” one alien reportedly said. “We assumed she was one of us.”

The women’s No. 1-ranked player originally was alleged to have suffered a mysterious injury--thought at first to be either a shin splint, sore shoulder, tennis elbow, athlete’s foot, wounded knee, cauliflower ear, sauteed chicken breast, dotted eye, double chin or bo nose.

The Women’s Tennis Assn. fined Seles $6,000 for having the gall to get injured. The fine would have been upped to $7,000 had Seles claimed to have an injured gall.

Instead, Monica’s brother, Zoltan, and her sister, Empress Azura, have been notified that the 17-year-old tennis champion was beamed aboard a brilliantly illuminated ship sometime shortly after the French Open and replaced on this planet by an exact duplicate.

“Where their plot failed,” a reliable source told the Slime, “was that Monica’s double didn’t know how to play tennis. That’s why she withdrew.”

The Women’s Tennis Assn. intends to raise Seles’ fine to $8,000, which is the standard penalty for withdrawing from a tournament due to being replaced by an exact duplicate.

One official said the least the Seles family could have done was ask Monica’s double to play doubles.

Andre Agassi Will Wed Julia Roberts

Having a particularly good week, young American tennis ace Andre Agassi is about to announce his forthcoming nuptials to top-seeded actress Julia Roberts, sources have told the London Daily Waste.

According to family members, the bride will wear white, but the groom refuses.

Ms. Roberts reportedly supposedly allegedly purportedly was recently seen with Mr. Agassi by several of her cousin’s nephew’s neighbor’s mailman’s closest friends. Spotted at the airport, Ms. Roberts and Mr. Agassi acted as if they didn’t know one another, arriving on different days and never actually meeting.

“They didn’t fool me for a minute,” said one person who wished to remain anonymous and probably will.

In his first appearance at Wimbledon since 1987, Agassi caused considerable controversy on opening day by peeling off his shirt and tossing it into the crowd, right over the face of her majesty, the queen.

“Hey, babe,” Mr. Agassi reportedly called out. “It’s not how you rule, it’s how you look.”

He is expected to be fined heavily by the Men’s Tennis Assn. for monarch abuse.

Former Partner Sues Martina for ‘a Lot’

Nine-time Wimbledon women’s singles champion Martina Navratilova was sued for emotional and financial damages yesterday by doubles partner Pam Shriver, who claimed that Martina promised to play with her forever.

“When your partner’s there for you every minute of every match, serving aces, hitting winners, the least she can do is give you half her income for the rest of her life,” Shriver explained to the London Evening Commode.

“Martina promised to take care of me every time my backhand was exposed or my lobs were weak,” Shriver continued. “When she picked somebody else to be her doubles partner, I got really mad! It was like she thought she had the freedom to make her own choices in life or something!”

Since the breakup of their doubles partnership, Navratilova has won slightly more than 1 billion, 987 million, 6 hundred and 54 dollars and 32 cents. Shriver has won 22 bucks and some change.

“She and I had a pre-doubles agreement,” Shriver said.

Navratilova reportedly is telling friends that she is absolutely thrilled to be back in England having her private life dragged through the mud once again for the entire world.

Father Tells Steffi: ‘Win or I’ll Do Something’

Having gone days now without humiliating his daughter, Peter (Seismo) Graf, the father of German tennis star Steffi Graf, has informed her daughter that she had better play excellent tennis at Wimbledon “or I’ll do something creepy again.”

Peter Graf has sold the exclusive rights to his story to the London Morning Lice.

In his first report, Graf defends having punched out another man at the French Open who was watching his daughter play tennis.

“He couldn’t take his eyes off her,” Graf writes. “Every time Steffi would go after a shot, I’d look over and find him staring at her. His eyes never left her. She’d serve the ball, he’d watch her. She’d rush to the net, he’d watch her. Sometimes he even watched her between points!

“I mean, the guy had it coming.”

The elder Graf denied published reports in Germany that Monica Seles withdrew from the tournament because he threatened to run her over with a Volkswagen Rabbit if she defeated his daughter.

John McEnroe Does Absolutely Nothing

Playing superb tennis and demonstrating equally superb on-court behavior, American tennis “brat’ John McEnroe obviously has lost his enthusiasm for the game, the London Weekly Fishwrapper has decided.

“At least the old McEnroe cared enough about his tennis to act like a jerk,” the paper’s writer wrote. “Now he’s so bloody pleasant and such a blasted nice person that he’s only a shadow of his old self. Sad, very sad.”

McEnroe gave extended interviews to everybody in the British Isles and said he enjoyed the people he had met and the places he had been and particularly the food.

He also said that while he understood that the British press could be filthy, lying buggers at times, he didn’t mind because, hey, they were going to write that crap whether he liked it or not.