A Long Ways to the Court

[Ed. Note: Pete is on vacation in Montana until the 26th. In his absence, we are proud to present programming by various members of the TW Tribe.]

No one in my family plays sport; all are couch athletes who primarily watch basketball and boxing. Perhaps then, it comes as no surprise that my first exposure to tennis was watching 13-year old Jennifer Capriati play against Martina Navratilova on TV. The game didn’t make much of an impression on me.

Occasionally, over the next few years, I’d hear about Agassi, Graf and Seles. At the time, tennis was just another sport on the periphery of my existence.  Years later, two televised matches would permanently put tennis on my TV-viewing radar - Sampras v. Moya and Hingis v. Mauresmo in the finals of the 1997 Australian Open. Two very good looking men and two interesting young ladies.

From then on, I watched every tennis match on TV that featured my first tennis crush, Sampras, or my second crush, Moya. Along the way, I began to understand the game and managed to pick up two more tennis crushes;  Pat Rafter and Mark Philippoussis followed immediately on the heels of Sampras and Moya.

Then came the internet -- a whole new tennis world. The ATP website introduced me to the "New Balls Please" characters:  Marat Safin, Nicolas Lapentti, and Tommy Haas. The advertising campaign’s poster swiftly became my PC's desktop background.

On the fringes of my new-found tennis love (or maybe player love?) was the WTA tour. It had an interesting cast of characters: the bratty prodigy in Hingis, the ageing Graf, the is-she-or-isn’t-she Mauresmo, the game’s poster girl Kournikova, and the incomparable Williams sisters.

During all this time, the closest I had been to picking up a racquet was over one summer when my sister and I took tennis lessons. Unfortunately, after one session, nature decided to intervene and we both came down with chicken pox. That was pretty much the end for learning to play tennis.

Like any fickle teenager with an attention span of a 2-year old, I eventually lost interest in the game due to the decline or retirement of my favorite players. I’d still watch the Grand Slams but I was no longer emotionally invested in the game. Sampras vs. Federer? No comparison there for me. Furthermore, who could possibly replace Pat Rafter? I couldn’t seem to find Mark Philippoussis after the first round of any tournament.

I tuned out during the transition period from Sampras to Federer. This were also the years when the hotness quotient dramatically dipped.

Then, out of the sky, came the fieriest player of them all –- Rafael Nadal. I initially didn’t find him good-looking, as I had only saw him when he had a headband on. However, upon seeing him without the distraction of the headband, this guy managed to push Sampras off the top of my list. I had never seen anyone quite like Nadal, what with his butt-picking (doesn’t he ever get self-conscious?), exuberant celebration of winners, and cries of "Vamos!".

There seemed to be a contradiction between Rafael's on-court personality and off-court demeanor. Through Nadal, I had been lured back and hooked once again on tennis. He had also managed to do what no other player before had accomplished –- he made me want to pick up a tennis racquet again. At the ripe old age of 29, I was finally learning how to play tennis.

As it stands now, I’m obsessed –- both with Rafa in particular and tennis in general. It certainly doesn’t help that the internet has led me to TW, feeding and stoking both of my obsessions.

So, that’s how and why I began watching and playing tennis, in all of its' superficial glory. How about the rest of you?

--Abbey