It’s past ten on a Friday evening and you’re stuck at home. Back in the pre-Coronavirus times, you’d be out, but these days it’s a tricky proposition. So you’re at home. You’ve had a few. You’re slouched on the sofa playing with your phone and occasionally glancing at the TV. They’re showing reruns of last year’s French Open. You’ve always liked tennis — it’s classy, glamorous, and those guys do make it look easy. Every week, a group of beautiful, well paid athletes compete in another fancy location, and when they’re not playing, they enjoy a life of luxury. Sounds exactly like the kind of a job you’ve been looking for. It certainly beats being trapped in a never-ending 9-to-5 cycle. Then it hits you — you’re going to become a tennis player. How hard can it be?
Turns out it is hard. A quick google search reveals that most professional tennis players started out as early as 4 years old. Being in your mid-20s, you’re clearly late to the party. But you’re not one to give up easily, especially not before you even started. You decide to join a local tennis club and start taking lessons. You pick up a resident coach’s business card and arrange your first class.
On the morning of the lesson, you turn up in a shining new pair of Adidas tennis shoes and a £180 tennis racquet. As you’re not here to half-ass this thing, you went with the one Roger Federer uses. The lesson begins and you slowly start to grasp the enormity of the task you’ve set yourself up to. That yellow ball is surprisingly difficult to hit well. Besides, the way your coach feeds you the shots, it feels way more difficult than what the guys on TV have to deal with. You tell him to take it easy on you. He chuckles and pretty much rolls the balls your way but it doesn’t improve your early game one bit. You may have to scale down the expectations a little. Maybe not an internationally adored professional tennis player, but a really good journeyman. That will do. With your work ethic and natural athleticism, you should be able to easily hack and slice your way through the lower ranks of the tennis hierarchy.
Your first lesson ends and you feel a strange mixture of frustration and satisfaction. You barely managed to hit a ball, but there was this one shot that you played by the end of the hour, a beautiful forehand, that gave you hope for your tennis career. The sound the ball made as it left the racquet, the beautiful arch over the net as it sailed almost in slow motion, left you with a warm and fuzzy sensation. It was the kind of a shot that even Rafa Nadal would be proud to pull off, you tell yourself. In reality, it barely flopped over the net, but as it turns out, 50 minutes was enough to place the clay-tinted glasses on your nose. You’re hooked. You’re craving for more. You’ve always been a perfectionist and tennis has provided you with an outlet with a perfectly measurable outcome, an easy to gauge progress.
Weeks pass by and as much as you’re enjoying yourself, trying to learn the ins and outs of the game, you’ve been forced to scale down the expectations once again. You’re not aiming to become a pro anymore. Local leagues will do for now. And your coach assures you that it’s something you can definitely do, should you be willing to work on your technique, tennis savviness and fitness. And you are willing, oh, you are so willing. By now you’ve got the hunger, the fire in your belly that is not much different to what drives the pros, just on a smaller scale.
Your coach is a great bloke. He recognises and appreciates your desire to learn and get better, and he’s always on hand with helpful tips and advice. You work hard on your technique trying to perfect the elements of the game — the forehand, the backhand, the volleys, the overheads, the serves. The serve has turned into the bane of your life. Your coach tells you it’s the only shot you should be able to fully control as every other one comes with your opponent’s stamp — speed, power, angle and spin all vary from shot to shot and there seem to be virtually no two identical balls you get to play. Apart from the serve. That one is all down to you. It seems simple, too, but only once you break it down into all the little elements, you realise how many different cogs are there to the machinery of serve. You work on your toss, your feet, the elbow pronation.
Tennis is hard work but you’re determined to make it happen. You’ve started coming to the club every free moment you get, practising that wretched serve or hitting up against the wall.
The lessons continue, too, and they get more complex. You learn all about different types of shots, the difference between flat and topspin, how and when to employ a slice. You learn a kick serve and a slice serve. Your coach tells you that you’ve been hitting the ball well recently and the time has now come to teach you how to be a thinking player. You start learning about shot selection. As you get better, the drills are becoming more elaborate, and it is in equal ways down to his coaching ability as your desire to learn. Tennis is a relationship. You give and take. And the more you give, the more you’re allowed to take. This much is clear to you now.
You start playing with other members of the club. The first match, such a meaningless match, you’re so nervous that your knees shake. You double fault 14 times and miss the easiest of shots, the kinds of shots you put away with your eyes closed in training. You lose. Badly. You’re a little upset with the way you played but you try not to be overly tough on yourself. Your opponent is a very nice guy. You ask to see his racquet and he offers you to play a few shots with it. You’re amazed at how smooth it feels and how much easier it is on your elbow. The strings are different as well, all black. You ask about those. He invites you for a beer and you end up talking for hours about all things tennis. He, too, started playing not long ago and caught the bug. You find that you have many things in common. You might have just made a new friend and a hitting partner for sure.
The next morning you march into a tennis store once again. This time you know what you’re doing and you’re pleased to find a knowledgeable employee who’s more than happy to let you pick his brains and even try a few different racquets. You end up buying one that seems much more suited to your needs along with a reel of strings recommended by the employee and a couple of overgrips. You’re excited. You can’t wait to try your new setup.
Your love for tennis does get tested at times. There are days when nothing seems to be going well, when you hate the game and yourself, too. When that happens, you almost smash your racquet into pieces and the only thing stopping you is the knowledge that, no matter what, you’re going to have to buy a new one in the morning. You’re addicted. That much is clear.
You continue to play and take lessons, working on your game every time you hold a racquet. Gone are the days when all your focus was on whacking the ball as hard as possible. You’re a thinking player now. Whenever you play, be it a match or a casual hitting session, you work on your technique, mental preparation and footwork. You make micro-adjustments and correct your shots knowing that, however far it is, each correction brings you a step closer to perfection.
You learn about the nuances of the game, too. Not the rules — those you picked up early — but the little things that can make a game of tennis that little bit more enjoyable. You learn that your opponent’s serve, which is out, is not actually out if you’ve managed to crack a hell of a return. You learn to lift your finger up and, with a straight face, call out shots that nearly took your head off and ended up in the back fence without touching the surface of the court. You learn, with a self-deprecating satisfaction, to confirm with the opponent whether your wild forehand shank which sailed over to the adjacent court was, indeed, out.
By now you’re a grizzled veteran of the club matches, a true weekend warrior. Your dreams of becoming a professional tennis player are a laughable memory, but boy, you’ll be damned if it didn’t set you on the wildest journey of your life. When the call comes from the 4th team captain that they’re looking to fill a spot for an inter-club match, your heart near jumps out of your chest with excitement. You feel like you’ve made it. This is it. Your moment to shine.
It’s an away match so you get to travel. The night before the match, you pack your bag making sure you don’t forget anything. Two freshly strung racquets. Tennis shoes. A couple of spare overgrips. Sweat bands. A can of tennis balls for warm up. Protein bars. Second pair of socks. That night you can’t fall asleep. You’re excited and nervous. You wonder if this is how Federer feels before a big match.
The next day at work you can’t think about anything else but the game later on. At the stroke of 5 PM, you grab your tennis bag and run out the door. It’s just tennis and it’s not just tennis. It’s nothing big and it is big. It’s just an afternoon hobby and it is your whole life. You think of the quote by Pope John Paul II which said that out of all the unimportant things, football is the most important one. This is how you’ve come to feel about tennis.
A couple of hours later you’re standing on a clay court in another part of town, staring down an opponent you haven’t played before. You’re not playing for prize money but the stakes are high nonetheless — you’re representing your club.
Your rival is about to serve. He’s dressed all in black with a yellow Babolat racquet and a headband tying his hair together. Behind him, the sun begins to set over the bright red of the court. In your eyes, he’s the Nadal to your Thiem. He tosses the ball high over his head and jumps up to meet it at its apex. You put your left foot forward and hop into a split-step, ready to return. This is your French Open. Welcome to the big time.
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