Taking Weekend Tennis Seriously

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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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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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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If you look up my USTA league record on USTA TennisLink as I do before bed each night, you will notice that I am winless in 4.5 league doubles since November of 2013 through this very moment.*

*Technically I’ve won one match…when I played against two 4.0s…with a 4.5 doubles partner…sooooo…

That’s right. I haven’t won a 4.5 USTA league doubles match in over a year.

What’s worse is that starting with the USTA 2014 spring/summer league playoffs through the time of this writing, I have won all my 4.5 USTA singles matches.**

**Never you mind that three of the last four singles matches came down to match tiebreaks, which means I got some seriously lucky bounces. Stop raining on the point I’m trying to make.

This is why I captain a 4.5 USTA team.

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The bump up from 3.5 to 4.0* seems to always come with the same general response: “IT’S ABOUT DANG TIME. Stupid computer. Like, of course, I’m not a 3.5. Gah, the embarrassment I’ve had to endure…”

The bump up from 4.0 to 4.5* also seems to always come with its own general response: “The USTA rating system is a joke! There goes a year of my life. I’m going to get killed. I am NOT a 4.5. You’re kidding, right? Well, there went winning…”

*I’m using specific ratings a) because it’s true and b) to make the post easier to follow, but of course, these feelings of joy or dread can be applied at any level. We all know people who were convinced being bumped up to 4.0 was the end of their tennis world as they knew it. And then quit tennis. Sigh.

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Here is a list of tennis etiquette rules every person who picks up the ole tennis racquet should know when it comes to playing tennis.

Some of these are actual but commonly violated rules that can be found in either the International Tennis Federation (ITF) Rules of Tennis and/or The Code. Together, those two handbooks govern most tennis leagues and tournaments.

Some of these are not stated in either of those doctrines but are the unwritten, common courtesy guidelines that are often breached by inexperienced players.

You all are most welcome!

In no particular order:

• Practice matches are two hours long at a minimum. That’s how long it takes to play a worthwhile for-fun match. If you don’t have two hours to play tennis, let the organizer know you’ll only be able to play for an hour and a half and see if she’s cool with that. And if you can’t play for at least an hour and a half, you can’t play at all.

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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…

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Last Friday morning, I drove into work while big flakes of snow were swirling down and powdering up the roads. I took the tollway with the logic that not having to brake and stop and turn on the treacherous pathways would be the best strategy for a safe drive. Not to mention it’d be the fastest route into the office.

I was wrong. Traffic slowed to a crawl as a two-car accident was being attended to by the cops on the left-most lane. As soon as I passed the wreckage, I vroomed back over to the passing lane. Other than the roads being wet, the snow didn’t appear to have much of an effect on the traveling conditions for this particular stretch of the tollway, and I figured it’d be an easy cruise the rest of the way into work with perhaps merely moments of the-car-is-slipping anxiousness that would ultimately prove innocuous…which I experienced earlier that week on my drive home from the office when it had sleeted and the roads were icy.

Suddenly, the white mini-SUV-jeep-looking vehicle in the right-most lane 30 yards in front of me lost control, turned 90 degrees to the left, drove straight into the rail, spun in place, and stopped in the middle of the left lane. That I was on.

Because I had just left the scene of a car accident and perhaps because of how fast I had been going, I had time to slow down and check behind me, veer into the middle lane without incident, and continue safely past the vehicle with its severely damaged front-end and its no-doubt traumatized passengers inside. And then I exited the tollway.

So that was my Friday, February 27th. How was yours?

The weather has been quite the hot topic of interest for the recreational tennis players of the Dallas/Ft. Worth area recently. Last week was the first week for several of the local community tennis leagues. Mother Nature could not have cared less. Or maybe she did care and she was purposefully screwing with everyone. However you want to look at it.

The real flurry of fun was the heated discussion of having to play during these conditions. Thursday, Feb. 26 was the first day for the weekday ladies section of the Tennis Competitors of Dallas (TCD) league, and it was the only day of the week when precipitation wasn’t in the forecast.

But it would be cold. Like in-the-30s-but-it-feels-like-it’s-in-the-20s cold. With 20 mph winds.

TCD doesn’t have a rule on not playing because of non-precipitous weather (cold, wind, heat). Like that’s the actual rule:

Page 35, under Section K. Weather Conditions, under item 2: “There are no provisions for extreme cold, heat, or wind.”

Which means you’re supposed to play.

Wouldn’t you know it, but this did not sit well with the grown women who can play recreational adult tennis on a weekday morning.

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I’ve decided to start playing tennis tournaments this year. A coach said playing more meaningful matches would help make me a better player and I pretty much do what coaches tell me to do if it means I get better.

Well that and I finally feel comfortable enough with my tennis game where I’m pretty sure I won’t be blown out by most opponents in the first round and it’ll actually be worth it to pay the exorbitant entry fees (for me that would be any dollar amount over $5) that sometimes only guarantees me one match in an event.

For those not in the know, a tennis tournament typically offers multiple events players can enter into (singles, doubles, mixed doubles, etc.), and each event requires its own entry fee.

In the first tournament I played in to kick start this tournament journey, it proudly said on the website “You spoke, we listened” (the bold is all them) and that it was changing its consolation rules. No more consolation for any doubles events because a survey was sent out and “62% were in favor of eliminating consolation brackets in doubles in order to allow a player to register for two doubles events.”

I feel like those 62% don’t understand basic math…but the people running the tournament sure do!

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