Maggie's Farm

I see someone keeps popping his head up out of his hole and sharing half-truths.
Thankfully I am not going to discuss anything there because we all know those half-truths are...well...half-truths designed to mislead.

On the other hand, tennis is something which I know well.
I took a few clinics as a child, and wish I'd stuck with it. My mother wanted me to play a sport. Of course, I wanted to play what others played. Baseball, football, etc. I wasn't very good at any of them, but I got to be with friends.
Soccer I was good at. But as a youth it is a fantastically boring sport. I played until I graduated high school.

In college, I discovered volleyball and I have a particular skill level here. I played for many years, even two-man on the beach, and managed to do rather well with that. Kids brought all that to an end. Try carting a family to the beach and playing on a crowded stretch of sand with increasingly younger single men.

But volleyball brought me back to tennis. My wife took up tennis once a week as a way to get her out of the house while the kids were young. Eventually, she convinced me to start going to clinics at our pool, which it turns out were part of our annual fee. At first, my instincts were awful. I had power, but no head for the game.

Soon, I learned the details and I became good at a high intermediate level. It's a game you can play late in life, too. No, I can't compete with the high school kids who run the clinics, but the reality is I compete well against others my age - and thankfully I've remained in better physical condition than most 10 years younger than me (and, in some cases 20 years younger).

Aside from a back problem causing me to miss 2 weeks to start the summer, I was out every day playing when the kids were available to run the clinics - and if it weren't for weak kids (really, I do think this) I'd have been out every day. For some reason, for the first time ever, they'd close the clinics if the temperatures exceeded 90 degrees.

I don't know why. Hell I was out there ready to go, and I'm much, much older than all of them. If I can do it, they certainly can. All you need is your water, some Gatorade, and a cooling towel. With regular rest and breaks - which are part of the game - why not?

Tennis is a wonderful game, and while I followed from a distance in my youth (who doesn't remember Evert, Connors, McEnroe, Borg, Lendl, etc.?), I really didn't start to follow it until I was about 40.

It's a honorable game. Hence the uproar over the excessive behaviors smashing racquets. Nadal has never smashed a racquet - he recognizes they are expensive and some kids can't afford them, so why break them? Maintaining your cool is essential to success.

That said, there is some considerable dishonor taking place. I happen to love Kyrgios' talent. He is someone who could run the game and just own anyone. But he refuses to take a coach or be coached. He shows disdain for others. He is a troublemaker, needling the competition rather than creating friendly competition. His talent is fun to watch - he is annoying to watch.

McEnroe showed considerable disdain for the game's traditions when he played - but has now owns his past, and has shown that time has tempered his emotions. A vast talent he was - and one that helped introduce the game to many new people. It is nice to see him as an elder statesman, and also someone who is willing to comment on what he now understands is unacceptable behaviors. His temper tantrums were mild by today's standards.

Tennis takes tremendous physical skill, but requires a strategic and logistical mind. The strategy you enter a game with, much like war, becomes set aside if you logistically cannot implement it. At that point, you start to find things that work and build on them as quickly as possible.

Emotions are good to have, but will break you. Particularly if they are misused. Anger almost never helps. Hitting the ball harder out of anger leads to less accuracy, and also means you tend to focus on mistakes when the best option is to move past them (true in any sport).

A friend of mine lamented that fewer kids were playing baseball, and that hand-eye coordination would suffer. I said I doubted it. Games like lacrosse and tennis were (are?) growing, and I'd argue require more hand-eye coordination.
As one clinician taught me "In baseball, you have a strike zone that is pre set and you step into the batter's box for it. In tennis, you have to create your strike zone with each shot. It's a moving target that you have to recreate on each shot."

It's a great game, and I wish I'd picked it up when my mom first introduced me to it. Maybe I'd have been better at it in my youth. But playing with friends was more important, then.