The list of ailments from the sporting superstar is endless. There is vertigo from inadvertently standing on their wallets. There is the repetitive strain injury from counting the dosh. And there is the confusion when they wander too near the little people.
"Sometimes it can be annoying when someone is chewing chips right when you are serving," said Victoria Azarenka of her Wimbledon experience this week. One should try serving on the public courts of Glasgow, madam. If she can find one. And if she doesn't mind playing on a surface that is as rough as Uncle Tommy on the morning after he decided fortified sherry could be drunk from a pint glass.
The conditions for the little people are so bad that a foot fault in Glasgow is another name for a broken ankle.
Of course, I am one of the little people and my sporting history is littered with episodes of playing on less than ideal surfaces. It is also littered with tears, used needles (there must have been a helluva vaccination programme on one pitch I played on), and two of my front teeth.
The facilities for playing sport in my day were so rudimentary that basically the term indoor sport could be covered by the term Fighting With Your Brother In the Bedroom.
Outdoor sport was tennis in the street (which lasted for two weeks or whenever the one tennis ball was lost, whatever comes first), Tour de France or the Derby on the big hill on the bike, and football for a bare four hours a day in winter and for 23-and-a-half hours a day in summer.
The fitba' provided the peculiar difficulties that may interest Azarenka. This had nothing to do with crude equipment and even cruder opponents. It had nothing to with pitches that had less grass than a student at a Stone Roses concert.
Nope. It had it all to do with what was on the park. And what came on to the park.
The first category included once playing on Saturday morning with a smouldering bonfire on the centre circle. Some players believed it was a hangover from Guy Fawkes Night. Others thought it was the last resting place of a heretic referee who had been a trifle over fussy with his decisions. Others thought our centre midfielder had, when firing his customary half-time fag, lit a match to his ethanol-laden breath and combusted.
Whatever the cause, we played around the bonfire. I once essayed a one-two with what looked like the remnants of a sofa but what the CSI investigator called "the possible victim of a wilful fire-raising".
So much for what was on the pitch. It was the intrusions that caused the biggest problem. Some spectators wanted to take a physical interest in proceedings. A Stirlingshire team I played for had a support that charged on with the courage of their previous convictions. On resumption of play, the buffeted referee was so immobile his position should have been marked in chalk. The hordes milling around the sidelines recreated the menace of the hordes of Genghis Khan, though the Stirlingshire mob were much, much tougher.
They got their little sister to crochet their battle wounds. Which is why my mate Tam has a scar in the shape of My Little Pony. But I digress.
Over on-field intrusions, it was the dugs that bothered me.
There were packs of such beasts in Glasgow and Stirlingshire of the 1970s. They split up on a Saturday morning and headed off to disrupt the fitba'. They were usually mongrel collies.
They charged on to the park nipped the ball off your feet and raced towards goal. Eventually, they were shooed off the pitch but would return regularly. They could stop a match permanently. One collie scored three times one afternoon. In all fairness, we had to give it the match ball and slope off home.
There were other dugs that just bit you, requiring a jag for tetanus. It was difficult catching the dug, though, and giving it the injection was a nightmare.
It is instructive decades on to reflect on Azarenka's comments on chips on the sidelines. This may just have stopped the dugs. And me from being nutmegged by Rover. Twice.
