Taking Weekend Tennis Seriously

House sitting adventures: I’m house sitting cats. These cats are free to come and go as they please as they have a pet door in the back of the house. Usually, however, these cats will wait for me to hold the door open for them before coming in. Well, no, I take that back. They’ll wait for me to hold the door open for them; I’ll oblige; and then they’ll stop a foot from the door and survey me uncertainly. Now I have to coax them to come in and try to convince them that I’m not scary (it’s my first time pet sitting for these cats so we’re just getting used to each other). I’ll spend a minute just standing there, holding the door open as still as I can because any creak will scare them away, and talk to the cats as if I were a part of the FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit. After the cats have either scurried inside or scampered away, I’ll look up, and of course, there’s a neighbor watching me. I leave her so she can laugh openly at this display of human-animal deference also known as the crazy lady talking to cats.

I met with a house/pet sitting client the other day, and as is the case with most of my clients, the wife plays tennis and the husband does not. He could not stop poking fun at the irrational tennis culture his wife and I are a part of.

“What is with you tennis players and your addiction to the game? An orthopedic friend was telling me how a guy with a broken leg was trying to figure out how to keep playing tennis. I mean, you’re not going to keep playing tennis; you have a broken leg!”

Let me try to explain the sickness.

There’s something wrong with my knee. I’m fine, and yet, I’m not fine. I can walk; I can run; and I can play tennis. But, once just about every tennis activity, which I do just about every day, I will twist funny on my knee, and whatever is wrong with it has surely gotten worse. All I have to do though is take a minute to walk it out, and the pain goes away. And on I play.

Because my knee is 99% of the time fine, I have a theory that if I just rested and iced it, whatever is wrong with my knee would go away on its own. It’s either that or there’s something very wrong, and I should definitely rest it. Of course, I do no such thing.

If I were to stop playing tennis right now for the rest of the year to rest my knee, let’s say – because I’m not saying that – I would gain a million pounds. Roughly. Give or take. I’m not sure what came first: eating so much or… no, wait, yes, eating so much came first. And then tennis swooped in and instead of having to do something ridiculously extreme like eat less, I now play a ton of tennis so that I can eat even more. Thank you, tennis.

If I were to stop playing tennis right now for the rest of the year, I wouldn’t get to go to battle with my teammates and feel like a contributing member of society even as my losses mount (my teams just need a warm body so as to not default a line; you are very welcome, teams). All the major tennis leagues in my city and surrounding areas are in full swing. I think that’s a pun. There’s nothing quite like playing tennis for reals where the results are posted for everyone in the world to judge you on, where how many sets you win or lose affects both your playing time and your standing amongst your teammates as they judge you, and where beating fellow aging pedestrians at this silly game that we’re not good at makes us unbelievably happy and smug for the rest of the day as we judge our opponents. And pretend to be athletes.

All of us have won a tennis match. Maybe even two! And we’re hooked. I think that’s where the problem starts because I have this other theory that tennis is like gambling.

Paraphrasing from The Effects of Gambling:

We play tennis because:

•  We love the thrill of the competition
• We know that a big win could solve all our problems
• We feel important when we win
• Tennis lets us forget our real-life problems and pains for a while
• When we play tennis, we feel in control
• Tennis gets us out of the house to a safe and welcome environment with fellow tennis crazies

There’s also a lot of chance involved with tennis. There’s a chance that I could win this match. My opponent could have an even worse day than I will. There’s a chance that my forehand will be on, that I’ll hold my serve for once. There’s a chance that when I hit this evil, fluffy ball, it will go over the net and into the court. Isn’t that why most of us stand still after we hit the ball? We’re holding our breaths, praying and hoping the ball goes in, and wondering if lady luck is smiling upon us finally. Then when that ball does go surprisingly somewhere in the general vicinity we were hoping it would, we’ll sit down and have some popcorn while looking on curiously to see how our opponents’ own date with dame fortune turns out.

In other words, we play tennis because we’re anxious to see what happens to the ball after we hit it. It’s all very exciting.

We play tennis because every once in a while, we will win. All the frustration of our recent losses are forgotten, and we think we’ve got the game figured out. Again. Whoo-hoo, ten-nissss! Feeling like a bada— is always really fun and awesome. What keeps me tennising, however, is all the losses. When I don’t win, that’s when the real addictiveness of the sport kicks in. When I lose, all I want to do with every fiber of my being is to get back on the court and play again in an attempt to get the stink of inadequacy off of me. Unfortunately, I’ve won before. But mostly, I want to get back on the court to keep banging my head against the wall in this insanity known as weekend tennis as I hit the same shot exactly the same way as before but this time – this time – I will win the point instead of you.

Just infallible logic.

I play tennis as much as I can now because time is running out. I’m playing because I have this goal of sucking less today than I did yesterday. Because I have a chip on my shoulder due to all the voices in my head. Because I think if I spend enough time hitting that darn, taunting ball – let’s say 10,000 hours – I’ll eventually be able to get the ball in consistently. I really want to figure out this challenging physical and mental logic puzzle that has life and death soap opera implications. That gold-sprayed trinket for coming in first is a big deal, people. But even more importantly, that person – that team – and their unkind thoughts about my team and/or me needs to go down.

Oh. You know what you did.

Thank goodness. Because one of us should know.

Every day, if not every hour, my tennis ability ceiling descends a notch. Some time soon, I will meet that ceiling, and it’ll all be downhill from there. I don’t really understand how the whole aging process works, but I’m pretty sure that at some point in the near future, I won’t be able to play tennis, anymore. I’ll go to pick up my racquet, and either my arm or the racquet – or both – will crumble into a fine powder. Pretty, pretty sure…

But you know what? This could be the best I’ll ever get. If it is, then by golly, I need to cram in as much tennis as possible when I can still hobble this well about the court. I’m never going to be as fast as I am this second – knee issue or no – and it could make all the difference in a match. Gotta take advantage of this lack of speed before it’s all gone!

And that’s why I tennis. Did I confuse you even more? Sorry. It makes perfect sense to me.

~ Christy Vutam