Taking Weekend Tennis Seriously

My USTA Tri-Level tennis team finished 2^nd in the area tournament last weekend. It’s the single greatest thing in the universe that has ever happened to me*. I think I’m supposed to add “tennis-wise” to the end of that sentence. Oh, well.

*Happened to me – as in lucking out with having awesome players who played and won while I sat in my cozy chair and sipped on grapes.

On Tuesday, the powers that be emailed out to everyone a congratulatory note that listed all the winners and runner-ups. I was stoked. The names of all the fearsome Grand Wizards in my area decorated that document. And then there was my name right alongside those luminaries. I couldn’t help but grin from ear to ear when I saw it.

I got all ready to print the email out so I could put it on a plaque and hang it in my Weekend Tennis shrine when I spotted it.

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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.

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• The Real Housewives of Tennis: this delightful blog post about the weekend tennis scene in Nashville and its effect on unsuspecting domestic engineers and 401K-compensated women proves it’s not all just in my head. However, I am unclear on the whole “lunch that the other team brings” bit. What’s this about lunch being provided? And here I am getting all giddy when my team plays at country clubs that have complimentary Goldfish…
• Wouldn’t it be awesome if we had a Take Your Dog to Tennis Day? An actual thought I had when I brought my dog to a match I was playing. What a silly idea, right? Tennis balls flying everywhere and people running around willy-nilly: yeah, there is no way most dogs would sit nicely during all this delicious movement. Had there been other dogs at the tennis facility in honor of Take Your Dog to Tennis Day, my dog would have barked incessantly instead of being bored out of her mind.
• If your dog was watching you play tennis, do you think he/she would say, “Wow, she never moves that fast in real life” or “Yup, that dawdling looks about right”?

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Maybe my tennis team lost the last match of the season so that I would post regularly again.

Joke’s on them, of course. It’s taken me nearly two weeks to get over that loss. HAH!

I’m still not over it. I’m still in Phase One of the Don’t Make Play-Offs By One Match Recovery Stage: moping around in my sweat pants. Who’s joining me for Phase Two?

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Captaining is going well. Thanks for asking. I’m learning a lot. Every week, every day, every match, and every player is a learning experience.

I hate learning.

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I’m co-captaining two USTA teams this season – one Thursday, one Saturday – and I’ve been playing team tennis for the last few years…so what I’m saying is if anyone from either of my current USTA teams is reading this, I’m totally not talking about you, you good, strong player-woman, you.

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Of the many tennis shots I don’t have, hitting a forehand groundstroke isn’t one of them. I like to think of this next line delivered in Uncle Rico’s voice from Napoleon Dynamite: I can whip a forehand groundstroke winner on you from just about anywhere on the court.

Well, I’ll try, anyway. And trying’s half the battle! So that’s a 50% chance I’ll hit a winner and a 50% chance I won’t. I like these chances. And the logic.

My opponent loves those chances, too, by the way.

When I was an up-and-coming weekend warrior adult tennis player, the scouting report on me was to hit to my backhand – stay the heck away from my forehand. In fact, I know of at least one tennis friend who told another tennis friend to do this before playing me a couple of years ago. Have I forgotten about this violation of trust? Actually, I did. Until I started writing this blog post. And now I just remembered that I’m not happy with you, you supposed tennis friend. As soon as USTA is over and I don’t need you to win tennis matches for me so I can feel good about myself, I’m not going to talk to you for a whole week.

Hah! That’ll show you. It’s not like you’ll be relieved about not being bugged about yet another inane tennis thing for one glorious, peaceful week or anything.

Anyway, I’m here to tell you to throw that scouting report out the window. Don’t worry about not hitting to my forehand now. My forehand can’t kill you anymore. It can’t even hit the ball.

I have the blasted forehand groundstroke yips.

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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.

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Hi, I’m Christy Vutam, and I’m a singles tennis player.

Being a singles player in the weekend warrior tennis community makes you something of a curious spectacle. You…run? You…are okay with playing by yourself? You…don’t think the point of playing tennis is exclusively to socialize?

You…can’t volley?

Let’s get something out of the way right now. Asking someone if she plays singles or making any sort of references to her singles abilities after she’s just played a doubles tennis match is a slap in the face to that player. She’s playing doubles. She’s…okay, trying to play doubles, bless her. When you bring up her singles game, you’re essentially saying she’s not a good doubles player. You are being rude and disrespectful.

Unless, of course, your goal is to ignite an unrelenting, burning passion within her to become a doubles ninja who will eventually show you what a real doubles player looks like and then beat you on a regular basis at ease with her mad doubles skills even if it takes her several years to actually enact this revenge, then that’s cool. Ignite away.

Sorry. Back to singles.

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• Sometimes I’ll watch someone hit a forehand and cringe as the body and racquet are seemingly at war with one another and there’s awkward contact made with the ball. I’ll shake my head all dramatic-like at the terrible display of tennis form. Later at work, I’ll be listening to a song and start dancing to it…until I catch a reflection of my nonrhythmic self in the glass and think, “Touché, world. Touché.”

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