Tennis /Wimbledon '93:: Half the trouble, double the fun: Guy Hodgson on the second-class citizens who play the four hand

A GLANCE at the court allocation reveals the poor relations at Wimbledon. Find a far-flung court with paltry spectator facilities and the fading light of dusk and you can be assured Steffi Graf or Pete Sampras will not be playing. Not in the singles anyway. If they were part of the world's best doubles team it would be perfectly possible.

Making a living sharing one side of the net is to be in an undervalued world. Its inhabitants exist on the fringes, a lightly regarded community which is embraced into the bosom of great championships rarely before the latter rounds. Even then they are frequently used as a dessert at the banquet, a course many find highly resistible.

Go to a local tennis club and there is barely a court not indulging in four play, but when it comes to watching rather than the participating, spectators prefer their idols in isolation. Rather than twice the excitement, doubles seems to accrue half the appreciation. The prize money at the All England Club reveals all: the 1993 men's singles champion will earn pounds 305,000 while the correspondingly successful duo will get pounds 124,960. Shared.

'Playing on the outer courts is all part of it,' Gigi Fernandez, who, with Natalia Zvereva, is the reigning women's doubles champion, said. 'You don't mind. It's the same size, the lines are in the same place. You can get distracted when matches are on the next courts but you just have to blot it out of your mind.'

Fernandez has ignored the distractions to become the best pound-for-pound doubles player in the world. She says she needs luck with partners but she has been fortunate with Zvereva, with whom she has won the last five Grand Slam titles, and Mary Joe Fernandez, a combination who took the Olympic gold in Barcelona. Not to mention Martina Navratilova (1990 US Open), Jana Novotna (1991 French Open) and Robin White (1988 US Open).

Good doubles, she says, is down to to communication, and Fernandez talks on court like other players rattle off their strokes.

Zvereva is five places above her in the singles rankings, yet the American seems to be in charge. 'I'm not calling the shots,' she said, 'I'm just the emotional upper in the team. Natasha (Zvereva) is very even tempered whereas I go up and down and it's a release for me to talk. Maybe that's why I don't do as well in singles.

'It's like a relationship, you have to pay attention to it. If I get upset with Natasha I don't say anything then because it might affect her game. So you talk about it after the match. You have to talk. Otherwise you bottle things up and blow up about something totally unrelated. We're at a dangerous stage for a doubles team. After a year or so you can get on each other's nerves so if it gets a bit tense I try to say something funny.'

Ask a doubles player what is the key to his art and he will say the hands. The serve and the return are important but it is at the net that matches are won. The ball arrives in split seconds and it requires fast reflexes to volley.

John McEnroe, often described as the finest doubles player ever, was lightning fast at his peak, exploiting angles before opponents could see them, quite apart from react. So was Martina Navratilova, who has won a staggering 28 Grand Slam doubles titles.

A good singles player does not necessarily prosper with a partner, however. Monica Seles sometimes approaches a volley like a sapper nearing a live mine and Andre Agassi's highest doubles ranking is 123, even though his coach Nick Bollettieri attributes him with 'the finest hands I've seen.' The teamwork ethic is probably the stumbling block in his case.

Yet surely every doubles player dreams of casting off the cloak of anonymity to be a champion in the singular rather than the plural? 'No,' Fernandez replied. 'Not at all. The prize money is still good and you don't face the invasion of privacy. I can still go to restaurants without getting recognised and lead a normal life.

'The choice is between being Monica (Seles) and earning dollars 50m with the pressure it brings or being a No 1 doubles player and earning dollars 2m.' Fernendez has earned dollars 340,000 (pounds 230,000) this year, 80 per cent of which has been in tandem with Zvereva.

'What happened to Monica in Hamburg reinforced my opinion. No one would attack a doubles player with a knife because we're not famous enough. You wouldn't get the attention.'

With Graf driven to a near recluse-like existence by pests and Seles still not playing, who would not yearn for tennis without terror? Doubles may be undervalued but minor courts are a small price to pay for peace of mind.