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Sport

No point playing the pain game

June 26, 2014 14:13

By

Danny Caro,

Danny Caro

1 min read

The beauty of Israeli sportsmen and women is that they always look on the bright side of life. They tell it how it is. After all, it's sport – not life or death.

In certain countries there would be a major fall-out for continued failure at Wimbledon. But not this year. Sela is about to make the big dip into marriage, while Peer is starting to think about life after tennis. "I'd like to do something with food," she told me in one of the interview rooms at Wimbledon. "I don't know what exactly. Not cooking, but maybe be the face of a restaurant."

Peer has been through the sporting doldrums over the past couple of years. Having reached the fourth round in 2008, it was good to see her fighting all the way. She is now looking at the bigger picture – realising what an honour it is to be an elite sportsperson.

The problem is that the Israelis don't play or train on grass courts all that often and if the draw is unkind, as it was this year, the chances are that they won't get very far. They are hamstrung.