Because of the beauty of the day we had to wait 45 minutes for a court. But that didn’t prove to be a problem because Don, the club pro, and I got into a long conversation about hockey (as men will do on a sunny summer morning). It started when Don told us about a friend who realized when he got married that he had to give up some part of his single life. He eventually decided to make a major sacrifice: not following hockey anymore. Unfortunately, he missed it too much and went back about a month later, sneaking downstairs to watch taped Buffalo Sabres games. That led to a discussion of bad Rangers and Flyers teams of old, and the various rascals and ogres who populated them. Thus, as often happens when the subject is old-time sports, even bad sports—particularly bad sports—we completely lost track of time and forgot to take our court, leaving it empty for a good five minutes. I’d say it was worth it; it almost made me want to become a hockey fan again myself.
This being a match with Don, student of the game, we engaged in our share of on-court conversations as well. I look forward to them as much as I do the actual play. First we talked about how stupid and ineffective it is to warm up your volley by standing still and hitting down the middle of the court, two things you never do on a volley during a match. (Ever wonder why your first volley during a real point feels so much worse than it did in the warm-up? That could be your answer.) Not sure what the solution to this is—ask your opponent to stand in the corner and volley to him there while he moves you around? I’ve never seen it done.
Next, we stopped at the net and talked about how our games have changed as we've gotten older in some ways, but not as much in others as we may have predicted. I said I thought I served harder today than I did at 20, but the shot I’ll never hit as well again is my offensive forehand when I’m on the run. I can’t quite get to the corner of the court and bring the ball back in down the line the way I used to; many, many more of these shots sail wide on me now. Overall, we decided that as long we played guys near our own age, we'd never have to feel like we were getting older and losing it. And it’s true, only when I go up against someone significantly younger do I realize that I ain't quite what I used to be. In the end, Don and I decided that the real key to playing as you get older is to hone your excuses. Don had forgotten to bring a towel, and his grip was sliding a bit in his hand. I offered to let him borrow an extra one that I had, but he said no, he didn’t want to ruin a good excuse.
Just as we were getting ready to head back to our respective sides of the court, a motorcycle roared into the club parking lot (i.e., the 20 feet of gravel next to Court 5) and one of the members jumped off. Don watched the scene for a minute and turned to me. “A guy on a motorcycle is kind of like a cricket, right? 'Look over here, I’m making noise!'”
We got around to business eventually, hitting ground strokes down the line and crosscourt to begin. Whenever I do this, I think about a story I believe Vitas Gerulaitis told about having Bjorn Borg and Harold Solomon over to his house to practice. Vitas watched them begin hitting crosscourt forehands, then went to eat lunch. When he got back an hour or so later, he got out of the car and saw them finishing a crosscourt forehand rally. Borg looked at Solomon and said, “Down the line now?”
Which means that the pros are better than you or I in part because they’re simply willing to practice more. At this point, I love getting in 15 minutes of this kind of baseline drilling, but I wonder how much it can help me in match situations. As I said in this column last time, I can hit pretty much anything in practice. I can put my forehand into the corner at top speed or hook it near the sideline with a vicious spin. But does this do me much good when I know I won’t be able to pull these shots off during a point, and likely won’t even try them unless I’m already up two breaks?
As Don and I kept hitting harder and more accurately, I began to enjoy the shot-making in its own right and forgot about its utility altogether. Our rallies became grooved to the point where they began to seem choreographed; two steps this way . . . turn . . . smack . . . two steps back to the middle, like an easy dance. I experimented with different ways of hitting my strokes—open-stance, then closed; big topspin, then flat—and enjoyed the aerobic exercise you don’t normally get in matches, where the action is stop and start. Mostly, I enjoyed the almost meditative catharsis of hitting a ball with a racquet, hard, in the same spot over and over.
By the time we’d stopped hitting and begun taking serves, I was thinking of another former pro, Torben Ulrich. The Danish eccentric always made the point that there was a lot more to enjoy in tennis than just the final score. He described winning and losing as nothing more than an “announcement” at the end of a contest that involved so much more. Facing a young Tony Roche for the first time at Wimbledon, Ulrich won the coin flip at the start of the match and elected to receive, saying, with total sincerity, “Tony, I’ve heard you have a beautiful serve, and I’d love to see it!”
We’ve been told to think that nothing matters in tennis (or sports) except the bottom line, who’s “mentally tougher.” Everything else is BS in this formulation. But Ulrich was right, of course, there’s a world of tennis to enjoy before the “announcement” of winner and loser is made. One of them is hitting the hell out of a little yellow ball, straight into the corner of the court, and seeing it come back just the same way again and again. Tennis is a skill as much as it is a competition, and there’s a Zen-like satisfaction to trying to master it that exists independently of your won-loss record. It's a beautiful skill, too; one to practice for its own sake.
PS: In case you're wondering, I lost the subsequent set to Don, 7-6 (8-6). I'm sticking with my practice game.
