Taking Weekend Tennis Seriously

Whoo-hoo, tennis is back, ba-by! The two non-USTA cities-spanning team tennis doubles leagues in my area start this week: TCD today and Metro this Saturday. But it’s TCD that holds a special place in my heart – it’s the league in which flocks of grown-up women recreational tennis players will be flouncing to their respective tennis match sites all uniformly decked out as a team in whatever tennis apparel the major sportswear corporations convinced them was the absolute latest in tennis fashion.

Basically those corporations mixed and matched any two colors together with the sole criteria being: the louder the better. They’re no dummies. They know their core audience.

And so I present to you my second post (here’s the first) centered around that one tennis must-have that adult women tennis teams have been working oh-so-hard to get just right this off-season. I am shocked it’s not the serve.

• I did not realize we’d been going with conservative combinations of clashing colors these last few seasons. I didn’t know to appreciate how good I’d been having it.
• Ah, so you guys are a social team.
• Okay, okay. I get it. We’re wearing these colors ironically. …right??
• Yes, absolutely. We need to commit to the prank we’re pulling on our husbands in convincing them that these colors do match and wear the outfits all season long. Maybe wear them for two seasons to really sell it.
• Assaulting the senses of the opponents with our team uniforms is an excellent strategy.
• At least something of ours will be popping if our volleys aren’t.
• When you only play a couple of times a season and somebody suggests those team uniforms to wear for the upcoming calendar year, I understand that a) you don’t want to rock the boat and speak up against the uniforms and risk even more reduced playing time and b) you can stomach only having to wear that in public not even a handful of times in your lifetime. It’s the rest of you scheduled regulars whose judgment I’m seriously questioning.
• I guess we’re going to take the phrase “let our game do the talking,” beat the Rice Krispies Treats out of it, wrap it up in a body bag, and set it on fire. And then spit on it for good measure.
• Those outfits are LOUD is what I’m trying to infer in case you didn’t catch that. Barking loud…
• Okay, look, as long as the person who thought these uniforms were a good idea isn’t the one making line-up decisions, then we’re good to…oh, no.
• Tennis lessons are just for an hour or so. Tennis outfits are forever.
• TCD prohibits the use of cameras and video cameras so we don’t have evidence of our poor clothing choices.
• If your captain jumped off a bridge…
• I’m finally starting to understand that the actual tennis part is secondary to you people.
• “Is there a matching visor?” This is the moment when I lost all faith in humanity.
• I would strongly suggest asking your husband or any males in your family what he thinks of the tennis outfit before mindlessly buying it just because your captain suggested it. If he yelps and runs away while yelling “My eyes! My eyes!” like my brother did…

This post is dedicated to my TCD teams past and present. I meant every bullet point lovingly. Good luck today, everyone!!