!Tennis-ball-rebound-1a The first in an occasional series on a rarely mentioned but ever present phenomenon in the world of recreational tennis: the player one court over from you.
He’s slightly built and well under 6 feet tall, but the player next to you has been around, and he thinks he’s pretty good. He knows how to play the game the way it was played before you were born. On his serve, he drops both hands down and brings them both back up together. The movement is a little awkward, but he puts the ball in the box most of the time. He knows how to execute a slice and move from the baseline to the net. He can even knock off a winning volley if the ball is in just the right spot.
You glance at the player next to you in between your own points. You keep an eye on his match as you’re toweling off during changeovers. When you shank a ball into the next court, you stand and watch him rally until the point is over and you can retrieve it. Somewhere, far in the uglier recesses of your mind, you hope he misses. You can’t help it. Like any truly—and therefore psychotically—competitive tennis player, it’s not enough for you just to beat the guy on the other side of the net. You also need the players on the courts around you to know that you’re better than they are. You’re not proud of this, but there it is.
The player next to you is watching you serve. He and his partner are in the middle of a changeover and you can feel their eyes on you as you toss the ball. You hit it harder than usual. It’s an ace. The opponent of the player next to you whistles in appreciation. But you already know him, so his appreciation means nothing. The player next to you, the guy you don’t know, just watches. He makes no sign that he’s seen you hit an ace.
A few minutes later, you see the player next to you stone a volley into the bottom of the net. He looks around furtively to see if anyone was watching. You keep your eye on him for an extra second, to make sure he knows that you were. He looks down at the ground.
Late in your session, the player next to you hits a ball into your court. You tap it back to him. As you do, you smile and look him in the face. He smiles back and says, “Thanks.” Walking away from this harmless encounter, you’re bothered by something. As you sit down on the next changeover, you realize what it is: Unconsciously, you wanted him to somehow—you have no idea how—acknowledge your superiority as a tennis player. You’ve won your match over the guy across the net, but you look distracted rather than happy as you walk off the court. You can’t help feeling like you’ve lost to the player next to you.
The player next to you is the self-proclaimed mayor of your public park courts. He’s a retiree who plays in high-tops and tube socks and sports an unconscionably deep tan. He never wears a shirt, hits nothing but slice, and never stops talking. His nicotine-scarred voice can be heard 10 courts away. It’s the first sound you hear as you open the car door in the parking lot behind the facility, and it’s the atonal soundtrack to all of your matches.
When your opponent grunts loudly, the player next to you laughs and says, “You should get a room!” While you’re in the middle of a long point, he watches and commentates on your play loudly enough for you to hear. As you opponent rips a winner past you, he bellows, “Oh, man, what a forehand!” When his own match ends, the player next to you doesn’t leave. He pulls his chair over to his doubles alley and watches your match from up close. When it’s over, he says to you, “OK, you won, but you really weren’t doing much with your shots.”
A week later, he’s next to you again. Your opponent hits a ball that floats close to the baseline and lands half an inch beyond it. You call it out. The player next to you has been watching you, and he immediately erupts, “Oh no no no, that ball was in! You need to change that call.” You know the ball was out, but you're not too surprised he's doing this. You consider trying to justify your call, but there’s no mark on the hard court to help you. So you say the only thing that’s in your mind at the moment. You turn your head and grumble over your shoulder, “Mind your own ----ing business.” For the first time that anyone can remember, the player next to you stops talking.
It’s a bright afternoon in the summer of 1986 and you’re playing on a cracked set of three hard courts next to your old elementary school. You were brought out here a few times as a third-grader for gym class, but you’re 16 now and the player next to you is the best-looking girl in your high school. She’s your year, she hangs out with the girls you’ve grown up around, but she’s never been in any of your classes. She used to date a fellow tennis player—older, wilder, dumber, of course—but you’ve never said a word to her.
You’re trying as hard as humanly possible in your match, of course, and you’re playing as well as you ever have. But you’re not sure what the player next to you is going to make of your opponent. He’s what you might call “local color.” Balding on top, he sports a long beard and wears the shortest, shiniest bike shorts imaginable—all the better to show off his pale pale legs. Well into his 30s, he still lives with his mother. Not too surprisingly, he’s an eccentric, if talented player, whose favorite weapon is a side-swiped forehand that cuts away from you so viciously that you feel like you’re going to break your arm when you try to return it. He likes to talk about his many tennis adventures around the world. Often they take him to places you're not even sure exist.
When the girl next to you and her partner stop at the net to get a drink of water, your opponent sees his opportunity. He stops his service windup and calls out to them from the baseline. “You know I just finished playing an exhibition with Yannick Noah in Florida, and he told me . . .” When you hear these words, you turn around as fast as you can to face the back fence, trying not to listen to the rest of this demented fairy tale. By the time you turn back around, your opponent is leaning with one arm on the net, and the girls are laughing at something he’s just said. You shake your head and slowly, grudgingly walk up to join them.
“When Leconte and I flew to France . . .” are the first words you hear when you get there. You glance at the player next to you and smile. Her lips are turned up in a thin smile—is she buying this? When she looks at you, you’re happy to see her roll her dark eyes and stifle a laugh.
Play resumes on both courts. A few games later, your opponent calls out to the girls again. “You know what Johan Kriek told me is the key to tennis?” You and the player next to you look at each other and nearly burst out laughing—she has her hand over her mouth. Your opponent rambles on obliviously. “It’s all about diet. Never eat meat or cheese. You know how long meat stays in your system? 14 years! And then it starts to…” This is starting to get weird, you think. You stop your opponent’s speech and get his attention back on the match.
Half an hour later, the player next to you slides her metal Prince into its green sleeve and starts to walk off the court with her friend. But your opponent isn’t finished with them. "Is that it?” he asks. "Let me show you something before you go, it’s good for training.” Your opponent jogs over to his gym bag and pulls out a small beige device. You’re not sure what it is—a dumbbell? heavy hands?—until he holds it over his head and starts spinning it around, like a crazed rube samurai. “They’re numchuks! You should try them,” he yells over to the girls. They chuckle a little and give me a little wave as they clank open the fence door. “You sure you don’t want these? I can give them to you.” He’s flipping them over his shoulder and behind his back now. He’s pretty good with them, you have to say.
You watch the girls get into a long dark Lincoln. As they pull out, they both look back at you and giggle. You gaze into the future and see your fate clearly: You’ll never stand a chance with the player next to you.