Taking Weekend Tennis Seriously

I hit tennis rock bottom the other day.

I brought it upon myself, of course. You see, dear reader, I am a tennis hypochondriac. I am constantly tinkering around with my strokes and am always in the process of learning a brand new stinkin’ technique because of my perpetual need to get better at tennis. Three months ago it was my serve. Currently, it’s my forehand groundstroke. In a few months, it’ll be my backhand groundstroke.

My volleys are a never-ending technique nightmare that I have yet to wake up from. And my overhead is a lost cause…so I will try to take every ball that remotely resembles an overhead instead of letting my doubles partner hit the surefire basic groundstroke because I believe that’s how I’ll overcome my overhead issue.

And after all the work that’s been put into my serve thus far, I still double fault at an alarming rate.

Sigh.

Just another lovely reason why you don’t want to be partnered up with me. You should let our captain know if you haven’t already.

Unless I’m our captain, um…

Tangent thought #1: Hey, have you ever wondered how many people on your tennis team have asked your captain to not be paired up with you?

Tangent thought #2: Good grief, you know what would be an excellent way to make sure you got partnered up with the one player on the team you want to play with? No, not tell the captain. Don’t be ridiculous. Don’t do that. Don’t be that player.

NO, what you should do is to piss off everyone else you’re paired up with till there’s only ONE person left on the team the captain can put you with. GENIUS.

You. You out there. You know who you are. And you are a genius. My hats off to you, madam.

So, anyway, I’m in the process of overhauling my forehand groundstroke, and…

What’s that? Why would I change a stroke that most of my opponents would have considered my best weapon? Well… a couple of months ago, I lost a match, ran into down a coach who saw me play that travesty, and asked for her professional opinion on what the heck just happened. Wouldn’t you know it, but she had all sorts of analysis on my entire tennis game. My gosh, do I love me some instruction and note nuggets.

A couple of handful of lessons later and there’s little, if anything, left of the forehand groundstroke technique I used to have. I don’t quite have this new stroke down, yet – or at all – and when I played a for-reals doubles match last Thursday, I plumb lost my forehand. I’d take the racquet back just fine and then…nope. Not a clue on what to do after that.

It was automatically the other team’s point every time they served the ball to me. I’m quite positive my opponents just started walking off the court on my returns so they were in better position to retrieve the ball after it hit the fence.

Once I couldn’t find my forehand groundstroke, the whole rest of my game followed suit and ran away. There came a point in the match in which I wasn’t even mad at myself, anymore. I was just very, very scared. So…lost.

It got so bad that when I was serving for the match and the first return came floating back to me, I told my partner as I was in the middle of the backswing of my backhand groundstroke (thank goodness it was a backhand…a thought I rarely think), “I NEED YOU!”

Yes. That’s right. I verbalized a cry for help for everyone to hear in the middle of a stroke. I don’t do “act as if” well, if at all…

Thank goodness for doubles partners. She got the message loud and clear and took over the rest of the game. For the second time last week, I got carried to a TCD win I didn’t earn. YAY for team sports!!!

As I’m going through this requisite sucking period in the getting better development, I’m reminded of why adult recreational tennis players don’t keep taking private lessons or why they go into lessons wanting coaches to work with the (incorrect) technique they already have. It’s hard to justify losing matches while feeling frustrated, like you’re embarrassing yourself, and lost when you could lose matches with the strokes you’re comfortable with and not have to endure the incompetent, humiliation-feeling aspect as you try to remember which body part goes where during the swing.

At least with your “incorrect” technique, you’d feel like you were contributing meaningfully to the match. At least that “incorrect” stroke WENT OVER THE NET AND INTO THE COURT.

Sigh.

I’m hoping last Thursday was tennis rock bottom because I haven’t felt that level of ineptitude and frustration in over a year (coincidentally, the last time I tried to change my forehand groundstroke). I mean, obviously, I feel inept all the time on the tennis court, but it’s not to those depths of Thursday when I thought it was something of a minor miracle if I was able to push the ball back successfully.

As a getting-better-at-tennis addict, I can’t help myself though. My response to sucking at tennis is to take more private lessons. I cannot get enough of them. Plus, there has GOT to be someone out there who can fix my volleys, and I will not stop till I find that coach. Unfortunately, each coach has his or her own way of hitting all the rest of the strokes that she/he feels compelled to thrust upon his/her students…

Tangent thought #3: You ever have flashes of brilliance on the tennis court and wonder if those were just lucky shots you slapped silly or if there’s actually an awesome tennis-stud within you that’s lying mostly dormant but yearning to emerge?

So to future doubles partners of mine: this is who you’re saddled with. So sorry about my sickness and the fact that I’m in the midst of developing just about every stroke all the time. You’re stuck with a partner who “realizes” something about a tennis stroke every time she plays tennis: “OH! My elbow is supposed to go here when I take my racquet back!!!!”

The exclamation points are a true representation of my reactions for each “discovery.”

And then I’ll have the same conversation with myself a few days later! Yes of course, I played tennis on the days in-between.

Sigh.

This is who I’m saddled with all the time.