For the love of tennis

I remember the first time I picked up a racquet. It was 1984 and I was tired of baseball. Baseball was war: long episodes of intense boredom interspersed with brief and intense moments of sheer terror. My terror was the left field, a position reserved for the untalented, a parking space. Every once in a while one of the talented would sending hurdling a missile aimed squarely at this, my position. I would panic fearing the attention and understanding that each of those relatively few failing moments further qualified my lack of skills and cemented my status with the team.

As I would chase after the ball, runners would score and leads would be lost. The only thing I really like about baseball was batting, but with a team of twenty, those chances were few and far between. It was due to the lack of precision of our young opposing pitchers that truly pushed me to tennis. After one too many bean balls, I hung up my cleats and search for something better.

My friend Kevin told me about this fascinating game where all you did was hit the ball! We watched it on tv and read books and magazines at the library. Soon I was able to coax my mom into buying us some racquets. She bought two racquets in a plastic bag and a can of balls at Walgreens for ten dollars.

Kevin and I took the racquets and all of our stored knowledge from Tennis magazine and books and headed to the courts. We sucked; but that didn't stop us. We played everyday that summer and listened to the old guys at the court. They gave us tons of pointers, mostly bad advice, but we got better. I imitated the big loopy swings of my idol, Lendl and Kevin did his best Becker.

With those big metal racquets the park police sent us home on several heavy thunderstorm days. We were fanatics, playing regardless the weather. That was the summer I initiated my love for the game.