Like many Guardian readers, I have thoroughly enjoyed and always look forward to reading Marina Hyde’s witty and caustic commentaries on the world about us. However, I was dismayed to read a somewhat uncalled for slur about the game of real tennis in the closing paragraph of her article on Twitter’s new owner (What better owner for Twitter than Elon Musk, master of the ill-advised tweet?, 26 April).
What has real tennis ever done to Marina to cause such an unprovoked attack? Perhaps we should be told. It is certainly not my experience of 30 years’ involvement with real tennis at Cambridge, where the university club is (unusually) open to young and old from all sorts of backgrounds, including both members and non-members of the university.
It has brought together town and gown and offered fun, pleasure, physical exercise and friendship to many.
I would welcome a visit to the club from Ms Hyde so that, as a journalist, she might be better acquainted with the facts.
Jeremy Fairbrother
Trinity College, University of Cambridge
