My conscious uncoupling with playing tennis for reals
We're separating, but still will remain close friends - on my terms. It's all going to work out, I promise. We've been through too much for it not to.
I’ve enjoyed a profound irony over the past two-ish weeks. I am a writer, I have the words I want to say. I need to type the words into the magic laptop box to get them to you over Al Gore’s interwebs.
However, my pitching (right) arm decided to go on strike, thanks to overuse…leading to tendonitis, which means I needed to go on my PPUP (personally physically unable to perform) list.
Ice is my friend, funky KT adorns my arm, and life as a lefty sucks. But funny what happens when your don’t overuse the thing that hurts - it gets better! I am like 50 percent better, enough that I can do the typing words thing again, so here I am. I apologize for the radio silence. But you get it. I had to behave. (And no, I did not want to subject you to the madness that is speech-to-text, a podcast, or God forbid a video message. You deserve better.)
Here is my evidence exhibit A for the jury:
Throwing/tennis arm injury notwithstanding, I’ve been brewing on a decision for a while about my life in tennis. I’ve played my whole life at different levels, from starting as a newbie at the Grosse Pointe Woods Lakefront Park, to high school, peaking making the college varsity team as a walk-on. I took about five years off after undergrad, getting busy with life and needing a break from playing. Having to play, do the conditioning and practice for a higher-level tennis burned me out. I was not the bomb player, just the shortie who liked to be the pusher (aka, the player who returns everything until the opponent destructs - aka an annoying person to play. EVIL GRIN).
NOTE: photographic evidence below of right knee without surgery scars.
I came back to tennis in my early 30s, joining a club and getting on a few USTA women’s and mixed teams. I enjoyed being back, playing with nice people, and it made the game fun again. We socialized, with the aprés tennis being as legendary as the on court. A lot of laughs. What did not amuse me were the hellacious cheaters and playing older women that did not like pace or topspin.
I remember making one older lady cry, at some half-lit YMCA in Battle Creek, Mich., when I made batting practice of her. Look, I am not here to play patty-cake. She was closer to a 2.5 and I was closer to a 4.0 rating…it was foretold very bad things would be happening. (For my non-tennis peeps, a beginner is like 1.0, college players are 4.5/5.0, and winning pro tournaments puts you at 7.0.) I am not totally a savage. After a first set of 6-0, I backed off on the power, just got the ball in, and still won 6-0 in the second. It took under 30 minutes for that Red Wedding. That poor woman looked wrecked and her teammates glowered at me for like 90 minutes as I waited for my people to finish their matches so we could go home.
I felt bad about that. What I do not have any sympathy for is the continuing epidemic of trash humans who cheat as a rule, like calling serves that were COMPLETELY in…as out. Under the rules of tennis, anything that needs to be called is done by the players on the side of the court where the ball lands. So if they want to screw you out of a bomb serve ace…they screw you. I, course, not-so-politely asked, “ARE YOU SURE?!”, to make my point that I knew they were being shady as hell. I would get the passive-aggressive smile, and the affirmation they were super-duper sure. At that point, you have a few choices: keep playing and decide to kill them; hook them back on a crap call to get even; or, just move on. I never did the hook, (tennis lingo for mad cheating), because it just doesn’t sit right with me. I am going to beat you with my might, not with my cheating.
My weapon was to start hitting harder and drive home the point - literally - that I was done playing with these fools. My forehand usually was the answer to any question I needed to solve.
My fave season, 2009, was undefeated. My dear friend and partner Sherylle and I were a tag team from hell. The cool tall chick who was a volleyball queen, and the smaller chick who knew how to pound away. Please note the one loss, at the end: that’s when in I blew my ACL out. I know, we were sooooo winning. But I was done. For two years after that. Good times.
I moved around for work, found some other clubs and teams, and kept playing USTA. I’m still a decent player, and I can get it done at 3.5. But something has changed in me. I don’t have the patience anymore to deal with the cheating and the catty bitches on the other teams. I went to an all-girl Catholic high school, so I have advanced skill ratings in catty bitch detection, avoidance and elimination.
Just keeping it real. The country club ladies who show up in make-up, big rocks and matchy-matchy outfits also seem to be the ones who never learned how to win/lose with class and not fly wrong. I am the person in mismatched Nike, a beat-up stick, no make-up, and there for the tennis. I will lose the red carpet. But I will die trying to beat you.
I’ve not been able to play on a team for a while, due to my work schedule and other stuff. I get asked by people to join, and I’ve been saying sorry to the invites. It’s not that I didn’t want to play, I just couldn’t sync my schedule with their practices and matches. Instead, I’ve been doing a lot of drop-in drills, for 60-90 minutes, where you just hit a lot of tennis balls with a pro, and work through situations to develop sharpness, angles, and ways to win.
I was asked a few weeks ago, by a really nice person, if I wanted to join their summer USTA women’s team. I said no, because I will be gone a lot this summer for work. (SPOILER ALERT: the popular Open Court - Road Edition will be back!). She said she understood, and would contact me for the fall season.
The a-ha! moment sprung right after we hung up: I honestly don’t want to play any matches. I don’t want to keep score. I don’t want to worry about whatever is going on with the other team…or even mine. Tennis is still deep in my soul, as a fan and a player, and what brings me real joy is just hitting and drilling. It brings me the feeling of being competitive in a productive way, and allows me to still check in with the substantive vibrations of whacking tennis balls. In drills, people don’t cheat, I don’t have to drive 90 minutes to another club for a match against people who can’t even be pressed to say hi to you. I don’t need to run through the mental gymnastics of who I am playing with and how we’re going to out-manuever the other side. Sure, that’s tennis, and that’s cool. Been there, done that well, and I am good.
I’m taking tennis back to the core for me, just hitting balls, laughing, having fun, making mistakes and firing winners. You don’t have to always keep score for it to matter. It’s still very real, moment by moment, on my terms. I don’t play tennis for a living, so I don’t need to play matches if I don’t want to.
Maybe I will change my mind in the future, and that door is always open to coming back to team play. But right now, it’s time to take things back to the core: having fun.
So, vamos. (And I pinkie swear, I am icing my forearm right after this. Gotta keep the pitching arm strong for my next start.)
Hope it goes away soon. Loved your dissection of Catholic schoolgirls
Thank youuuuu!