Playing Ball: The Winter Game

This has been, according to the TV anchor who delivers the weather forecast to me each morning, a “proper winter” in New York City. Unfortunately, that anchor is Canadian, which means he has higher—or lower, depending on your outlook—expectations for the elements at this time of year. By proper, he obviously means a relentless two-month stretch of freezing temperatures, slate-gray skies, and slush-strewn streets.

What’s a tennis player to do in an environment like this? How do we stay dry in our water-unresistant sneakers? The winter game for northerners is, more than anything else, about reducing. In the summer, we play at outdoor clubs and parks, surrounded by trees and sun and high blue skies. When I play during those months, I can see branches above the courts, old Victorian homes that line a nearby street, and, far off in the distance, poking its towering head above a line of apartment houses, the Empire State Building. What can I see when I play in winter? A bubble. Soft, smudged, greenish-white, and not all that far above the playing surface, it keeps the cold winds out, but it also keeps your lobs from flying as high as you might like. Instead of birds in the trees, all you can hear indoors is the ceaseless hum of the heating system.

In summer, every court can seem available. If you’re at a club, morning singles might turn into pick-up doubles after lunch. If the facility at one park is full, you can try another across town. In winter, little seems available; all of your partners are packed into one foursome, on one court, for one hour, once a week. There’s no time for lingering, for talking politics or movies on changeovers—you barely have time to mutter a complaint about the snow. When the bell rings at the top of the hour to let you know it’s time to go on, you’ve only got so much time to find a groove and work up a sweat before it rings again to let you know it’s time to get off. Not long after the soreness in my shoulder has vanished, and the tightness in my hamstring has gone away, it’s time to put on my coat (and hat and scarf and gloves) and head back into the cold.

As a car-less New Yorker, I’ve spent as much time this winter traveling to and from the courts as I have on them. It’s a journey that starts in the sudden, stuffy heat of a rush-hour subway train. There, amid weary workers heading home and hopeful revelers heading out, my tennis sneakers look bizarrely, childishly white, and my long Adidas racquet bag takes up valuable between-person space. While the U.S. Open is played in New York, tennis as a recreational sport will never fit comfortably alongside the city’s grunge and hustle. A basketball court, with its pounding rhythm and masses of people moving as one, makes more metaphorical sense.

Yet it’s the long cross-borough trips that I’ve remembered most this winter. The steady snow and freezing wind that greets me—i.e., smacks me in the face—as I head up the steps and out of the subway. The silence of the residential neighborhood I pass through as I walk to the courts. The obstacle course of ice and puddles on the sidewalk. The park that I pass, the depth of the darkness inside it, and the mutely massive statues that stand at its entrance. These century-old figures, and the marble horses they ride, look like they’re hibernating until April, too. Finally, there's the light at the end of all that darkness, the greenish glow at the top of the bubble. It’s not beautiful, but it looks welcoming to a tennis player. You know there's action happening inside.

Each week, I start out wondering why I’m making this trip. Each week, I finish my hour on the court remembering. Our foursome is often missing a player; for some groups, that would be a problem, but none of us seem to mind. We don’t love playing doubles, mostly because it’s not much of a workout when you only have an hour. With three players, we can play two-on-one baseline games, which is the best workout of all. Fending off two people, you end up running more than you do when you’re playing singles one-on-one.

Sixty minutes of that wouldn’t be enough at other times of the year, when the weather makes you want to linger. But by the time the bell rings and the next group of foursomes invade the courts, I’ve forgotten all about my sore shoulder, aching back, and tight hamstring. I can slide across the clay without worrying about talking a spill in an ice patch or dunking my shoe in a puddle. For a few minutes, I'm warm again; for a few minutes, I know this winter will end, and a proper spring will take its place.