So it does – the golden plover, most beautiful of British hill-birds and one of the most threatened, its numbers down by over 80% in 30 years, breeds up here, as evidenced by pale juveniles scurrying across tormentil-starred greensward away to my right.
But this orthodox, controlled swordplay was of little account on a cold gray morning on greensward or gravel path when one faced a determined opponent with a sharp and heavier weapon who disregarded all conventions.
Adam's Jeu de la feuillée ("Play of the Greensward") is a satirical fantasy based on his own life, written to amuse his friends in Arras upon his departure for Paris to pursue his studies.
The Mall, in full the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., broad promenade and greensward extending westward from the Capitol to the Potomac River beyond the Lincoln Memorial.
Holland Park, home of a lovely west London patch of greensward, just needs a few sporting rifles to be renamed Holland & Holland Park.
Returning to cricket, which I think he would prefer me to do, who are the Terfels and Te Kanawas of the greensward, the performers who hit the notes, so to speak, that he yearns to reach?
At the same time, the Mart-attack sets loose so many hares across the greensward of our national life that it is difficult to disentangle them.
None of which makes the slightest difference to the impressionable thirtysomething who has watched one of those BBC4 documentaries in which hippy children romp over the greensward as Vashti Bunyan and the Incredible String Band jingle by in their horse-drawn carts.
Here in Britain, the really decisive twitch on the thread of sporting legend was provided by the 1966 football World Cup, which instantly transformed a collection of young and predominantly working-class English men into the modern equivalent of the Norse gods – titanic figures permanently a-course across the endless greensward, immortal and invincible.
The old town lies on a narrow spit of land between the lively, crowded, picturesque harbour with its quaysides on one side, and the 2km pebble beach backed by greensward on the other.
There are no grass courts in Switzerland, but Bencic has reached two finals on the greensward this year (she lost earlier this month to Camila Giorgi, of Italy, at s'Hertogenbosch) and says she prefers playing to practising on the surface.
