Robin birley

When the world thinks of Palm Beach – and it does more and more because Donald Trump has his home and his club there – the world tends to think of a sybaritic sunshiny town of palm trees, sandy beaches, rich old people, easy living, bland blondes, Range Rovers, Porsches, Bentleys and Bugattis as far as the eye can see. This is not wrong but, as ever in real life, there is a little bit more to PB than that. The underlying truth is that there are two Palm Beaches, not one, and their interaction is what drives a lot of activity here.

Around 20 or so years ago I had a point for match point on a perfect grass court at Fort Belvedere. We’d been playing for close to two hours. I remember hitting a topspin backhand down the line, going to the net and seeing my ball just miss the tramline. I was perfectly positioned to call the ball out. My opponent, thinking I would approach with a crosscourt, was covering his backhand side. He called my ball in. ‘Ball was out,’ said I. ‘I saw it in and it was in,’ said Galen Weston, my host at the Fort and a very good tennis player. It verged on the parodic, the ensuing so-called argument about who was right. Galen prevailed, and I eventually won the match. He then lent me his best pony to stick and ball on his polo ground and play one against one.