[This is an email that my friend Jeremy once wrote to Jason Sokol and me. We all grew up together in Springfield, Mass. –Dan]
To: My Brothers in Competitive Arms
From: Jeremy
Competition really is one very strong tie that binds us, isn’t it? And tennis does occupy a unique place within our collective mythology. I think a big reason for this lies in the fact that, for a short while, it was the one sport that all three of us could compete with one another evenly, and also because the brand of tennis we played shared a similar ethic (or at least so I believe), and in some ways our tennis demonstrates some larger trends and truths about us.
None of us were the beneficiaries of fancy tennis lessons. I spent the mornings of a summer or two attending public lessons at the Forest Park courts, and I imagine that you guys received lessons from somewhere or someone. But I think we all played a somewhat similar, and dare I say, blue collar brand of tennis. When we played, the goal was most certainly not to help the other develop a particular stroke, it was to fucking win. No matter how that worked. Maybe had we continued playing together past our early teens, this would have changed. But because we stopped playing together at about the time that Jay started playing for Suffield and got much better than either Dan or me, my relationship to and understanding of tennis is locked in the mindset of a 13-year-old, hyper-competitive boy.
I realized the disconnect between the brand of tennis that we practiced on the Forest Park courts circa 1988 and that played by much of the rest of the world when Amanda [Jeremy’s wife] and I played tennis together for the first time.
Prior to playing with me, the only person that Amanda had ever played tennis with was her father. And their playing was always premised on developing ground strokes, and getting a good workout. When Amanda and her father play, they warm up for awhile, and then play a game that does not involve serving.
The game works like this: one person stands at the baseline with a ball, and strokes the ball into play. This first shot is not intended to be a winner. It is supposed to be an easy shot that the other person is then expected to hit back to the originator. This shot can be slightly more challenging than the initial shot, but can certainly not be a winner. And this continues, with norms mandating that the pace and challenge of subsequent shots build gradually. Amanda’s Dad is a good player, and while making sure to not lose the game, he used it as an opportunity to help Amanda work on her backhand and forehand, and move her to both sides of the court, without trying to hit balls by her.
And I knew none of this when Amanda and I played for the first time. So after rallying for a short time, I suggested we play a game. It started poorly. Amanda, unaccustomed to serving, "won" the right to serve first, and immediately proceeded to bury a series in the net, giving me the first game predominantly through double faults. Now Amanda is also a very competitive person, so she was none too happy to be losing early.
Things did not get better when I took over the serve. I don’t remember the exact shots, or series of shots, but I do remember aiming balls as far away as possible from where she could easily hit her ground stroke, the coup de grace being when I placed a drop shot close to the net on her side. The drop shot was anathema to the game that Amanda knew. The game that she and her father play is premised on deep, solid ground strokes. Even excessive top spin is verboten — being too showy and potentially point ending (because it can result in hitting a ball long, burying it in the net, or accomplishing the goal of hitting a winner). And in their world, ending points prematurely is bad.
In retrospect, I realize that the game played by Amanda and her father makes a lot of sense. I could already see in Amanda the roots of a tennis player with much cleaner strokes than I will ever have. But it’s not my game because it wasn’t our game. Our game was to beat the other guy, through drop shots, hammering away at a weak backhand, chucking rackets or any other combination of scrapping, psychological gamesmanship, and predatory practices. And Amanda didn’t get to the drop shot, and we got into a fight, and that was it for tennis on that day.
By now, we have played a lot more tennis with one another, and can make it through entire sets without getting into fights. And I have played with her and her father, and better understand the norms of their game. But it’s still not the tennis I know.
