The tragedy of the B level tennis player

The worst thing about being a B-level tennis player is that, often, you're just good enough to know how bad you suck.

Basically, I can hit the shit out of a tennis ball. Take me out on the court to casually bang a few balls around and I can consistently hit deep, penetrating top spin forehands with good direction. My two-handed backhand will find that perfect height over the net and angle sharply off the court. My form will be not quite textbook but certainly on-spot enough to show that I've had the benefit of good tennis instruction early in life. I have no problems just hitting with players one or two levels above me -- just warming up can be a Zen like experience where the limbs move with the order and precision that can only be summoned through on-court calm.

Then I start to play a match and, as they say, it's a whole 'nother story.

Of course, this is because when you hit a ball in practice you generally want it to come back so you can hit it again. In a match, the guy across the court doesn't want that and will do what he can to make you miss. It's harder to hit a forehand when you're scrambling around way too far behind the baseline.

But that's all doable, if you have the basic skills in stroke production and point c0nstruction, which most strong B players have. The problem is all that stuff going on between the ears. If I'm up two breaks in the first set, I'll suddenly think, I just have to get the ball in and the set is mine, a thought which I quickly follow with, No no no! Don't change anything you're doing, keep up the pressure! a thought that I then quickly follow with a nervous double fault. Or my borderline ADD will kick in just as I have a chance for an important service break and I'll spend three points trying desperately not to think about the book I'm reading or the project I'm finishing or the Battlestar Galactica episode that's upcoming or the fact that I really like ice cream.

In this, I am generally unsuccessful.

Some days, however, it all comes together and my mind calms down and my body complies and my game elevates itself by a level -- even two -- and I experience that moment that always brings me back to the court. The moment where everything clicks, everything is clear, everything works.

Which makes it all the more disappointing when the next day I once again play like the B that I am.

Disclosure that proves a point: In the photo above, I'm serving in a match at the Liberty Open in New York. I won the first set easily, and was up two breaks in the second. I proceeded to lose it anyway.

Comments

[coach suitcase]

Use a dictionary and grammar guide constantly. Keep a small English dictionary with you at all time. When you see a new word, look it up. Think about the word - use it, in your mind, in a sentence.

[Anonymous]

Makes you admire consistent champions all the more doesn't it?

Pretty close to a foot fault there SB.