Tennis and Stuff

I took up tennis after I got out of college. Before that my entire experience with the sport was a tennis racket my sister used in a college PE course and some discarded balls and a garage door. I'd wanted to take it as a PE course in college myself, but I never managed to get in and dispensed with college PE by taking gymnastics, field hockey, folk dancing and badminton. (PE was required back then. Do they still do that?) I hadn't every played any organized sport save a season of softball when I was eight or nine.

But after college, I was commuting to my job in Dallas with a co-worker from my old college town, Denton. I was taking a graduate course at night or on Saturday or something and living in a ramshackle apartment I'd shared with college friends but was now renting more or less by myself. My friend and co-worker was a good tennis player and showed me how to hit a forehand and a backhand. Using the practice wall at the college and that old racquet, I started playing.

Without ever having a lesson, I built up some simple skill and started hitting for fun with friends. When I moved to Dallas, I got serious playing with co-workers and with a retired guy I met in a bar. I bought another racquet, but it was a discount wooden model (wood was it then) and cost about five bucks. When I moved to Austin, I found a few people to play with and, at some point, organized a USTA team. I was so into tennis! I played, I bought clothes and equipment. People gave me tennis-themed knick-knacks. I coveted all things tennis. I bought my first color TV in 1977 because I noticed in a store that the ball in a tennis match showed up so much better in color.

I finally realized having a team was a lot of work to give other people an opportunity to play tennis. I just played in parks with friends. I had several long-term games where I'd meet a friend in the park at 6:30 or 7, play an hour or an hour and a half and go home, shower and go to work. Or I'd meet a friend early on a Sunday morning and play at the park and then maybe go to a joint for Mexican breakfast. I watched TV coverage intensely. When we got our first VCR, my big focus was recording tennis matches. (That's why I have all these as-yet-undiscarded VHS tapes of twenty-year-old McEnroe matches and such. Yes, they are deteriorated. But I'm still having trouble tossing them.) I used to have an elaborate Breakfast at Wimbledon party, complete with multiple TVs, pastry, coffee, champagne, strawberries and cream and tennis and Wimby-themed door prizes.

I finally decided that tennis was too complicated and made me buy too much stuff. Not to mention inspiring others to give me tennis-themed pens, posters, bookmarks, etc. I still buy new shoes now and then and have my tennis racket restrung or regripped. I have an oversize Wilson Hammer of composite something and it is about ten years old. I bought a backpack tennis bag I intend to keep for a long time. I have to buy balls, of course. If I find a case at Costco, I'll buy them and use them for a year since other people pop cans all the time in my games. I have three pairs of shorts I like to play tennis in and some polo shirts. I have to get a new cap now and then due to profuse sweating. My current favorite is grimy and rusting from a metal button in the crown. I bought some wonderful new socks the other day but only after I had discovered severe wear in the ones that were used over and over, for tennis and gym. These new high tech ones are reserved for tennis now.

In 2000, we joined a tennis club. I didn't immediately find a lot of games at the club and they restrict guests to two visits a month. But gradually I became a substitute for regular fun doubles games that had been going on for years and for teams organized by others. Now I play two or three times a week. I'd like to play more singles but so it goes. There is a singles championship coming up and maybe I'll sign up for that in the duffer division. (Actually they are ranked by USTA levels.)

I've greatly reduced the 'stuff' and bother surrounding my tennis passion, though. There are some towels, head bands and wrist bands in my bag and my spare glasses with the clip on sun glasses and a spare hat in case I forget one. I try to have a new can of balls at ready in case it's my turn. I give away the used balls mostly although I have some in the trunk in a ball hopper in case I'm inspired to practice my serve. Which I rarely am.

In going through my stuff I've found some tennis 'souvenirs' (other than those old tapes) and think maybe I'll offer them to the kids who run my club's tennis programs. Somewhere around here I have a Wilson T2000.

And the picture? (You still reading?) Well, it's a bendable posable figure of a tennis player. But, I think, maybe not one I own. Maybe it is one someone was selling on ebay. Then again, who knows? Because the boxes of bendable posable figures are still lurking under the stairs.

Tennis is still my passion. But I'm not so into the stuff of tennis anymore. Nor likely to organize a tennis event or give a tennis-themed party. Still, after I escape from the year of real estate heck, carefully timed for the year of world real estate crisis, I plan to try to make trips to each of the grand slam tennis tournaments (in London, Paris, Melbourne and New York). And, OK, maybe I'll bring back a little souvenir!