Taking Weekend Tennis Seriously

Remember when I said I would never captain a weekend warrior adult tennis team? Yeah, about that…

Look it. I did not ask to captain. I didn’t go seeking for an open team tennis captaining/babysitting/therapy-listening/ego-massaging position in the help wanted section of my local tennis pro shop. I didn’t start my own team. Someone promised me beef tacos, ruffled Hickory BBQ chips, and chocolate milk if I would do it. I am a sucker for beef tacos, ruffled Hickory BBQ chips, and chocolate milk food. I totally would have done it just for curly fries. Besides, why in the world would a tennis-crazy control freak like me agree to captain unless she was forced to?

I had to take on the captaining crown when it was presented to me. I couldn’t let this poor village suffer when they found themselves leaderless! People’s lives were at stake here!

Speaking of those players, none of them read this blog. Thankfully. Don’t anyone be telling them about this Exhibit A in my insanity court case now, ya hear? Those players certainly wouldn’t agree to be on a team I captained if they knew about this ode to crazy. So between you and me, dear reader, this post outlines the rules of my dictatorship.

I will play myself every week. Because as the captain, I deserve to. Everyone understands this unspoken rule of recreational adult team tennis. I mean, why agree to take on the thankless role of captainship if not with the understood perk of playing myself every week? Every week, dear reader. Because the point of team tennis isn’t to win and advance; the point is having a forum to showcase myself and my brand of .500 tennis. Me. It’s always about me.

Speaking of me, I will also only be playing the top lines. I am an excellent gauge of tennis ability, and I know I’m a top line kinda player. Playing a lower line is beneath me. Playing the lowest line? As Danny Zuko told Sandy Olsson in that iconic movie, Grease: “Oh, come on, Sandy. Don’t make me laugh. Ha. Ha. Ha.”

This ego trip does not make the line I’m playing on – Line 1, natch – an automatic loss because:

As the captain, I get the pick of the litter of whom I play doubles with. In addition to playing every week, this is the biggest perk of captaining. All those issues I’ve had with my doubles game – and it’s clearly not even me who has the issues here; I’m obviously just being cruelly affected by the limitations of my doubles partners. It’s not as if I’m willfully ignoring the shortcomings of my game by always looking first at that person beside me to lay most of the blame on – will be erased by simply typing the name of one of my best players next to mine. Then I don’t even have to pick up my racquet, and we’re still going to win. Ah, my favorite kind of doubles partnership. It’s going to be so awesome. This is the power I’m looking forward to wielding the most.

Heeheehee. Do you like how there’s nothing those players can do when they see who they’re saddled with? Either they play with me, or they don’t play at all that week. Or, ever, come to think of it.

*evil laughter*

Here’s the thing, dear reader: I don’t care about my players’ playing times. I don’t care who they want to play with (in fact, if any of them tell me who they don’t want to play with, I am SO putting those two together. Isn’t the point of captaining to cause the same amount of strife and stress in my players’ tennis lives as they do mine?). I don’t care about what side of the court they prefer to play on. I don’t care that they’ve never met the person they’re playing with until the day of the match. I mean, what in Carmen’s San Diego do they want me to do about that, anyway?

I don’t care that they’ve never played singles in their lives. I’m still putting them on the singles line because captaining a USTA tennis team is really just a cover for carrying out a summer-long psychological experiment, the highly anticipated results of which will be just devoured by the rest of the laughing world.

I don’t care about winning. I don’t care about wasting time on researching the other teams. I don’t care about play-offs. I don’t care about putting my players in the best possible position to do well. I don’t care about any of that nonsense that generally makes tennis teams happy.

Because it’s all about my happiness aka my playing time. Oh hey, guess who’s in charge of the line-up every week and has control over such a thing?

It’s good to be the captain.

~ Christy Vutam