What I Learned From Tennis

Google Earth provides a view of the club I belong to (and the water treatment plant next door). In any case, you can see tennis courts. I've got to admit that whenever I see courts with their neat lines marking ins and outs I want to be out there batting the yellow balls around.

As I type this I'm watching James Blake play tennis. It is raining and in the 40's outside. (Which seems like nice weather after the big freeze.)

Tennis is the only sport I've ever really pursued with much spirit. As a small kid I played a little softball. I used to throw around baseballs and footballs. As a twenty and thirty something I played a little softball again. (I was terrible.) I got a little exercise pretending I could play racquetball for a while. Tennis, though. I got into it after college and have dabbled ever since. I'm not great but I can put the ball in play and keep up with duffers.

I've learned a lot from tennis.

I've learned why people like to play and watch sports. Everything is reduced to a few easily understandable rules. (Tie breakers excepted.) It's not like life where you can't get a clear enough view of things to sort everything out. On any given day with a sport you have winners and losers. It might be 7-6 (7-5), 7-6 (7-5) but it's a victory.

I've learned that some things are not in your control. The call belongs to the person whose side of the court the ball is on in a casual tennis game. You may control where you hit it, but there is also a certain psychology of fair play.

I've learned that you might not win the game, set or match. You might be confident you won't. But you might win a point. You might win the next one in fact. And the less likely your victory in the bigger segment of the event (game! set! match! championship!) the more it will irritate your opponent if you do get a point. The next point. So I concentrate on that next point. Which is not a bad way to go through your life.

And finally tennis taught me that I don't control the weather. When I ran a low-level USTA team years ago my mates always thought I could somehow divine whether we'd have a rainout. Well, no. The weather does what it wants. There you go.