My carcass has been parked on this very spot since noon today. Four hours later, two of the world’s top tennis players, Novak Djokovic (Serbia) and Stanislaus Wawrinka (Switzerland) are lurching about the Arthur Ashe court in New York City, still battling through their utter exhaustion, tied at two games each in the fifth set.
I love this game.
When I was an impressionable student in high school, coolness did not include playing tennis and golf when it came to selecting a “status” boyfriend. The ball involved either had to be much bigger – and inflated – or much harder, as in baseball, although baseball wasn’t considered on a par with football and basketball, either.
It wasn’t until I was in college and began dating a guy on the tennis team that I came to appreciate the game. For starters, women could play it! What a concept. A game that didn’t have different rules or different equipment for us of the “weaker” gender. If we were foolish enough, we could even sidle up to the baseline of the ad court opposite a wiry and weak-looking man skinny enough to fit into a pair of our Levis 501s.
It may look to the non-playing onlooker like two pretty scrawny people are trying to pound the fuzz off those little balls using nothing more than brute strength. The truth, however, includes far more than that.
Team sports teach a player to work toward a common goal, with each player executing specific tasks while the ball is in play. If a player screws up or becomes too tired to execute, the coach has the luxury of pulling him or her out of the game and sending in a replacement.
In singles tennis, my favorite, there are only two people on the court while the ball is in play. There is no bench from which to replace anyone. Instead of pacing on the sidelines, the coach is relegated to a seat in the so-called player’s box from where he or she is forbidden to coach (ostensibly).
Although the opponent is across the net, a singles tennis player’s biggest opponent is his or her own mind. Just ask veteran greats like John McEnroe or Chris Evert. Because John was a notorious hothead, his inability to control his temper defeated him far more often than the guy across the net did. In Chris Evert’s case, she was not the most athletic woman in the game back then, but she was the most mentally tough. Nothing rattled her. When she made a mistake, she didn’t brood about it into the next point. She viewed each point as a separate opportunity.
I played competitive tennis in my late twenties and throughout my thirties. It was at the recreational level; nothing even resembling what I’m watching as I write this. I wasn’t even what is called an “A” player; closer to a B-, at my best. But I learned more about myself and what the game could teach me than I had in any other activity.
Once I learned the fundamentals of the game – the shots, the scoring and the rules – I thought I was ready to be competitive with women ranked in the same category I was in. I was very, very wrong.
What I didn’t consider was the strategy. I couldn’t just wait for the ball to come back over the net. I had to learn to think two or three shots ahead while still commanding my eyes, feet, and hands to execute the current shot. I had to learn to size up the opponent in the first game or two, determine her strengths and lay into her weaknesses. And, most importantly, I had to learn not to base ANY judgments on the way the opponent looked.
My doubles partner was one of the tiniest girly-girls I had ever seen pick up a racquet. Her arms look like two strands of spaghetti hanging out of her shirt. The legs weren’t much bigger. She was meticulous about her grooming. She even had eyelashes pasted to her eyelids individually, which was quite unheard of back in the 70s. And she died her naturally sandy brown hair to the height of platinumness. She was a vision in her designer tennis dresses and warmup suits.
The first time we took the court in a tournament, I think I saw one of the girls across the net snicker when she looked at my partner. But two minutes later, when my partner shot her first impossible—to-return serve into their court, no one was snickering. That woman could knock the cover off a tennis ball without breaking a sweat.
While I wrote this, Novak Djokovic managed to squeak out the win over Stan Wawrinka. After nearly five hours on the court in the heat of the day, the outcome came down to who could will himself to win just one more point, in spite of the fatigue and screaming muscles, in spite of the self-doubt that each man had to defeat over and over again, and in spite of who was considered the man “favored” to win.
Tennis is a game of guts and I don’t mean the cat innards that were once used to string racquets. Yes, the player must stay in optimal physical condition in order to endure the long rallies and endless points. But the thing that separates champions from runners up is the mind.
That’s why I love it.
