Wimbledon Merely a Sideshow as England Goes Soccer Mad

The Championships are upon us, but all over England there’s confusion about which one.

The term usually applies to the Wimbledon tennis championships, which begin Monday. The lack of fanfare and anticipation here can be credited to the other, some would say more important, event, the European soccer championships.

The success of England’s national team in the prestigious tournament, along with soccer’s status as the national sport, has pushed Wimbledon off the front page and out of the consciousness of most sports fans.

The men’s and women’s warmup tournaments are breezing along, and no one seems to care. In place of results, newspapers have been running pages and pages of pregame analysis, anticipating Saturday’s England-Spain match at Wembley.

Even the news that the tennis balls being used this year have been made a brighter yellow--surely tabloid headline fodder--has been largely ignored.

One sign of interest came in a Saturday magazine, which ran a two-page photo spread of female players’ ungainly curtsy to the Royal Box as they stepped on Centre Court. The caption read: “One of the great London traditions begins again next week with the excruciatingly unladylike Wimbledon curtsy. Forcing muscular, testosterone-filled legs into a plie in front of the wife of the eighteenth-in-line to the throne of England remains a high point in the English etiquette calendar.”

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It’s nothing unusual for tennis players to withdraw from a tournament, even if it happens to be the most important one in the world.

But Thomas Muster and Jennifer Capriati are not playing here mainly because they don’t want to and not because of injury.

Muster is said to have aggravated an injury to his left hamstring, something that troubled him at the French Open two weeks ago. But the real irritation for Muster came when the Austrian, ranked No. 2 in the world, was seeded No. 7 at Wimbledon.

Reports claimed Muster was angry at the seeding and had to be talked out of withdrawing by his manager. He denied that, but added, “I think the seeding is unfair, but it has nothing to do with this injury. I never threatened to boycott Wimbledon.

“The problem is that I’ve had about six days off in the last nine weeks. My body is tired. The muscle is injured and now needs several days of rest.”

Despite his protest, there’s little doubt the seeding added insult to an existing injury, but Muster has never been eager to play on grass, his worst surface. The last time Muster played here was in 1994, when he didn’t survive the first round.

Capriati withdrew not because of injury but for lack of fitness. She said she didn’t feel fully prepared to play up to the standards of a Grand Slam event.

By that standard, Monica Seles should pull out right now.

No, Capriati may be having trouble with a back muscle and she may not have enough grass-court preparation. But the real reason she’s skipping Wimbledon is probably that the last people she wants to deal with are British tabloid writers.

That has always been true, but more so since her latest scrape after the French Open, when Capriati was accused of punching a cocktail waitress during an argument with her boyfriend.

With that juicy morsel hanging out there, in addition to Capriati’s history, it’s unlikely she wanted to return to the All England Club with that cloud over her head.

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Facts & Figures

* Dates: Monday through July 7.

* Surface: Grass.

* Purse: $9.76 million.

* Men’s first prize: $592,675.

* Women’s first prize: $533,030.

* TV: Weekends on NBC. First-week weekdays on HBO. Second-week weekdays on NBC and HBO.

* Defending champions: Pete Sampras and Steffi Graf.