Taking Weekend Tennis Seriously

I have accepted that this won’t be the year I am debt-free. ?

I am, however, patting myself on the back for being able to foresee a global pandemic breaking out, and my decision to live in my parents’ house was obviously in preparation for it. Such advance preparation!

I did tell myself that if I didn’t publish a blog post during this lockdown-ish period, it was a wake-up call regarding my time management skills.

That conversation happened about a week into the first shelter-in-place edict. Two months later, my area has since seen a second such order…and now an ease into Phase I II for “re-opening Texas safely” so whenever this entry is finally published, it’ll have more to do with my lucking into a finished piece thanks to the continued time off…and then a gradual return to some semblance of pre-COVID-19 life routines…than from any actual sit-down, planned out resolve.

Speaking of “planned out,” you, dear reader, no doubt had big goals that have been dashed for 2020, and as a reader of this blog, you also, no doubt, had high hopes for your tennis game that have been dashed for 2020. Someone joked to me the other day a week and a half ago a month ago that this all came about because she allowed herself to get excited about the upcoming summer when she’d be joining two whole USTA teams, getting to play/practice more, and perhaps regaining the form that made her a two-time USTA Adult Nationalist.

Naturally then the USTA would have no choice but to cancel the entire year of league competition because of a terribly contagious and life-threatening virus that has disrupted normal life all over the world.

…which means I’ll still be a 4.5 at the end of 2020.

Hello, Dear Reader!

I know.

I’ve been away. 🙁

The honest reason for it? I just didn’t feel like writing.

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Player Christy is losing her singles match. It’s the 2016 USTA spring season. Of course she is.

The unfamiliar faces of teammates I met an hour ago shortly before the lineup was exchanged are clustered just outside my court. I look helplessly at them as they try to cheer me on towards a comeback that never begins. Drenched in sweat and stinking of tennis ineptitude, I am making a fine first impression on my fellow “super team” teammates.

Yes. That’s right, dear reader. Yours truly is on a “super team,” one of those USTA tennis teams made up mostly of several of the area’s badaces of a particular USTA rating, handpicked by a visionary ringleader, with the attainable goal of advancing all the way to Nationals.*

*Each of us received the exclusive invitation upon discovering a new can of tennis balls in our tennis bags; on the cap was emblazoned the Captain Morgan emblem along with the inscription of the USTA team number.

Well, it’s a good thing I’m surrounded by super team teammates. It’s a good thing all of them can actually play tennis well and take care of business. Good thing because I am losing my singles match to a player rated lower than me.

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I love USTA playoffs. The stressful, high stakes weekend (punctuated by the captain gripping with one hand her bullhorn, in the other her clipboard, and with her teeth her whistle) is the best, most efficient way to learn whether you absolutely love playing with a certain teammate or hate playing with a certain teammate and I AM NOT COMING BACK IF SHE IS STILL ON THE TEAM, CAPTAIN, SO YOU NEED TO MAKE A CHOICE RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW, IT’S EITHER HER OR ME YOU HEAR ME.

Ahem.

Love the playoffs.

For the first time in my captaining career, I had a USTA team finish first in its regular season flight. Make that two teams. That’s right, dear reader! Both my 4.0 (yes, the one I don’t play for but practice the most with) and my 4.5 (the one I do play for and quite a bit because I am terrible at recruiting) teams won their respective regular season flights this past fall season. HECK YEAH.

AND THEN my 4.5 team won their one-match-winner-take-all-playoff showdown (as opposed to the usual attrition-filled, multiple matches over the course of 24 hours fare) to become the champions of the fall season. WHAT UP!!!!

I, for one, can play tennis for hours!!!! Let’s test this theory out, Chriiiissssttttyyyy!!!!

(Someone made a most stupendous point about weekend tennis tournaments: if your tennis team is in a flight of 4 and the format is round robin and you play every guaranteed match – generally spanning Friday night through Saturday early afternoon – you’re basically playing 3 matches in 24 hours. WHO SIGNED OFF ON THIS????)

((In case anyone of Dallas Tennis Association authority is reading this [as opposed to my actually emailing them directly], I would have preferred at least 3 matches worth of 4.5 playoffs even if it was against the same team so I could have played everyone on my team. While I think the playoff tournament format is odd given the clientele in particular, if we’re already gonna have a tennis-filled weekend, the more guaranteed matches the better, so says the playing-time-juggling, player-appeasing captain part of me.))

The high from winning playoffs lasted all of five minutes, however. We didn’t receive our Area/Cities Championship scarves till the following week when I handed them out individually out of the trunk of Blueberry, my car (much like dated reference Master P did when he innovatively used a guerrilla-style marketing campaign of selling his rap tapes out of his car’s behind directly to possibly interested neighborhoods in order to better build up word-of-mouth buzz), so I sadly do not have a team photo of everyone together donning their cute navy and white scarves with one knee turned, hands on hips, and boobs out that would have clearly screamed RECREATIONAL ADULT TENNIS BADACES RIGHT HERE.

Sadness.

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I remember being the worst player in weekly round robin doubles outings and feeling sorry for the latest person who had to be stuck with me and take her turn losing a set. I remember being drop shotted and trick shotted upon ad nauseum. I remember not understanding why I was losing doubles matches to people who I felt like didn’t possess anywhere near the quality of groundstrokes as I did. I remember being labeled over and over and over again as a singles player after doubles matches and hating it. I remember trying to beat this particular partnership in practice matches for nearly a year, falling in straight sets every time, and on at least one occasion, shedding tears over the seemingly hopelessness of it all. I remember losing to pushers. I remember not knowing how to volley. I remember not playing myself in tough, must-win team matches – much to the confusion of my teammates – because I didn’t have confidence in my tennis game. I remember needing to prove my tennis abilities to everyone. I remember forgetting how to hit forehand groundstrokes and feeling so very lost. I remember ducking from screaming balls coming straight at me when I was at the net. I remember being blown off the court by vicious baseline groundstroke winners. I remember being mad at my partner for making ME look bad. I remember being bumped up to 4.5 and when I asked someone to join my newly created 4.5 team, she said “Ah, looking to get into the 4.5 captaining game already, huh?”

I remember. I remember because every once in awhile I’ll be jarred into one of these memories after a tennis outing in which I’m startled by how different my experiences are today than they’ve been over the last five years.

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A couple of weekends ago, I attended The United States Tennis Congress on a tuition scholarship. Think tennis camp interfused with TED-talks. The U.S. Tennis Congress is the brainchild of fellow adult recreational tennis enthusiast P.J. Simmons (Road To 4.5 Tennis). He’s a self-professed Tennisaholic who took up the sport in his 40s and is now making up for lost time.

P.J. figured there were many other adults just like him who were passionate about getting better and who would love the opportunity to learn from world-renowned tennis professionals. He be right.

The Tennis Congress is a magical world where I am not the only player on the court to have watched tennis how to videos on youtube. Where online-based tennis instructors like Craig O’Shannessy (Brain Game Tennis), Will Hamilton (Fuzzy Yellow Balls), and Ian Westermann (Essential Tennis) are larger-than-life celebrities (and yet super friendly and totally willing to talk to you).

(You know Ian and his tennis pal Ira Meiling from the hilarious viral tennis videos your teammates have tagged you on/forwarded to you:

How NOT to Make a Line Call

and How NOT to Treat Your Doubles Partner.)

Where doing jumping jacks, lunges, and many other dynamic warm up exercises before playing tennis is mandatory.

Guess which one is the former top #10 in the world. Hint: she’s towering over the rest of us mere mortals.

Where my personal Head Coach was Debbie Graham, former world top #30 in singles and top #10 in doubles.

Where 12-Time Grand Slam Title Winner Owen Davidson can name Billie Jean King, John Newcombe, and now Christy Vutam as doubles partners he has won at least one set with. Wwwhhhhhhaaaaatttttt.

Where I got to hear Davidson, Emilio Sanchez (former world #1 in doubles), Gigi Fernandez (former world #1 in doubles), John Austin (Wimbledon Mixed Doubles Champion with sister Tracy), and Tim Mayotte (Olympic Silver Medalist) share – sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking – constantly captivating stories of life at the top of the tour.

Where former #1 in Tanzania Ronald Rugimbana graciously stayed after a session to give me personal tips on my volleys. Where Craig Cignarelli, who has coached several #1 nationally-ranked juniors, blew my mind with his singles strategies…and then sassed me to no end over it. 😀 Where former top players in Spain Gerard Galindo (top 150) and Lucas Regas-Melero (top 100) taught me some much needed footwork and doubles nuances, respectively.

Where my roommate New Yorker Tammy Ferrari and I quickly became old friends and stayed up till past midnight every night discussing the tennis tips we learned that day and trading war stories as USTA captains.

(I have GOT to tell you about this innovative team tennis captaining strategy Tammy came up with on how to do your lineup and keep your sanity: send the whole season’s lineup out at the beginning of the season but only list one person for each line of doubles. Those people are then responsible for finding their own partners for that match. Whoa.)

Thank you so much, P.J.!

I could go on and on and on. It’s wonderful. And what might be almost worth the cost of the excursion alone is the culture. The atmosphere is…delightful. So very nice. Earnest. All in the fashion of its founder P.J. The adult recreational tennis world isn’t always nice, but I’m in a conference room full of very friendly adult recreational tennis fanatics and where there are no egos and no ratings talk. Just people who want to get better at tennis and who would probably all be willing to go out onto the court and try to hit 10, 20, 30+ balls in a row within the doubles alley with me till we succeeded.

“Improve, not prove,” urged The Focus Coach Bob Litwin (Live The Best Story of Your Life) to us tennis instruction-hungry athletes during the opening welcome dinner, and that mantra rang in my ear throughout the event.

(By the way, the doubles alley is called the tramlines in Australia. Something you might want to know if you were invited to help Owen Davidson in his presentation and he’s telling the audience about using the tramlines to work on their consistency while you’re just hitting groundstrokes all willy-nilly. Sigh.)

But now I’m home, and let me tell ya something, Toto. We ain’t in Kansas, anymore.

Er, or Arizona in this case.

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This fall is the sixth season I will have captained a tennis team, and for the first time in my team tennis captainship, I will be out of town and out of pocket for at least one of the matches.

Hold me.

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So I’ve never understood the USTA Playoffs.

Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE USTA Playoffs. I love pretty much everything about it. First of all, I personally do stupid well during the Playoffs…to the point where opponents will want to play me again after that weekend only to be very disappointed at my true tennis abilities when playoff testosterone isn’t coursing through my veins and I’m playing very much within my mind.

But what I really love is how much heightened everything is. This is recreational adult league tennis at its finest. I love the do-or-die atmosphere. I love the tension. I love the captains who hover around the tournament desk to try to sneak peaks at the opposing teams’ line-ups (captains are awful human beings. Watch out for that).

I love the people who are most certainly not treating the poor person running the tournament desk like they themselves would want to be treated and who need to know what’s going on RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW at all times (see my last parentheses).

I love that opposing players will glare at me when they think I’m over-cheering my players (there’s no such thing as over-cheering during playoff tennis).

And I love, love the camaraderie. You will never love your teammates more than when you are pulling for them with all your heart and soul to win their very important, very big deal tennis matches.

What I don’t love about USTA Playoffs, however, is the structure.

It confounds me.

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Captaining takes a lot out of me.

So last fall I realized it’s up to me to create an adult recreational tennis team I want to captain, that people can’t read my mind and don’t magically become the team players I want them to be. I’ve now got team rules to weed out players who would cause extraneous headaches for me as I once more assume the already inherently soul-crushing role of captainship.

As each season brings about new sets of captain-player problems, I keep adding rules.

There is no doubt that I will end up weeding out everyone on the planet and then I won’t have enough players to lord over captain. And my oh my, what a glorious feeling that will be.

The only reason why I still captain is because people keep saying yes. Like enough people to form a team with say yes. As soon as I alienate those people and I don’t have enough players to field a competitive weekly line-up with, I will stop captaining and then I will stop playing tennis for a while.

Every time I say that to someone, they laugh and roll their eyes as if I would actually stop playing tennis. Um, no. I’m being serious. Captaining makes me want to stop playing team tennis.

That’s how much out of me captaining takes.

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When I play doubles, there are times when it feels like I’m the scrawny, nobody-character in the TV show/movie who the screen shows the big bad guys being fearful of and sprinting away from, and my character’s all like “Yeah, that’s right! BE SCARED OF ME!”

Then I turn around and come face-to-face with the hero of the story with all the muscle and actual butt-kicking ability who was standing behind me the whole time.

Oh. So that’s why I won.

It’s especially fun when the match concludes and I go up to the net to shake hands with the opponents and they practically push me aside to flirt with my doubles partner and gush over her tennis abilities.

I don’t even recognize the win afterwards because I was as useful as a fern while my doubles partner, who is above my pay grade, did all the dominatin’ and I feel all worthless inside and I tear up on my drive home LIKE WHAT IS EVEN THE POINT ANYMORE.

Ahem.

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