Pippa Middleton Loves Day Drinking, Hates Watching Women's Tennis

Pippa Middleton’s latest column for the British political rag the Spectator (she has a column for the British political rag the Spectator) takes on the topic of Wimbledon. “Wimbers is tennis at its best, the grandest of all slams,” writes the younger Middleton sister. “Which is why I like to go every year, at least twice.” Wimbers also means…day drinking!

Pimm’s has become so identified with the tennis ‘brand’ that it’s a cliché — but that doesn’t stop it from being absolutely delicious, essential drinking in fact. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy a Pimm’s or three when I’m watching a game. Only pints will do, frankly, since half the glass is ice anyway. (For tips on how to make ice, may I refer you to my book Celebrate?) I try to smuggle mine under my chair and sip it when the cameras aren’t on me. Oversized sunglasses help the disguise, and mean I can nod off unnoticed after one too many Pimm’s in the sun.

Pippa knows from ice, people! Before offering some sports betting tips (“surely Jo Wilfried Tsonga is worth a small punt at 28/1”), Middleton pauses for a digression on the vexed topic of women tennis players and their so-very-unladylike grunting:

Typically I prefer watching the men to the women. I don’t hate my own sex or anything; I just can’t stomach the women players’ shrieking. Here I agree with your High Life columnist, Taki, who wrote so eloquently against the shrieking phenomenon in last week’s Spectator. There are male grunters, it should be said (Nadal, Agassi, Ferrer, Djokovic — though not, of course, the serene and beautiful Roger Federer), but they have a lower pitch so it’s not too offputting. The shriekers, by contrast, howl so loudly that they make it hard for the audience to focus on the tennis. You can even hear them on Centre Court from the outside courts. The worst offenders are Maria Sharapova (101 decibels, according to a scientific tool called a ‘gruntometer’), the Williams sisters (Serena at 88.9 decibels) and Victoria Azarenka. I remember playing a bad screamer in county tennis. Her relentless noise turned her into a sort of androgynous warrior on the other side of the net, which terrified me. She won. I’ve had it in for shriekers ever since.

Basically the whole column reads kind of like being trapped on a train to boarding school next to a blissfully un-self aware popular girl who won’t stop talking about her boyfriend at the brother school, St. Something Or Other’s College, field hockey, and the vodka she’s totally going to sneak into the dorm. But at least now we know what those sunglasses are hiding.