Re-connecting to tennis, re-connecting to family
There’s an old adage, “it’s like riding a bike.”
It implies that we know everything about an activity and can take off where we left off.
Lately, I’ve discovered tennis is very similar. There may be steps along the way. There may be some coaching for a while. There may be some period in which the intricacies — vectors, spins, various strategies — have to be mastered separately.
But once you know how to swing naturally, with good timing, and keep a rally going, the task is learned. And it is remembered all your life.
Of course, there could be rusty strokes and some new bad habits; muscles atrophy and joints get achy. But the skill is not forgettable.
Years away from the sport due to illness and injury led me to a comeback (of sorts), but it didn’t stick. I was busy, it would take several days to recover from a one-hour hitting session, and I allowed myself to find excuses as to why I didn’t want to play.
I hit a couple times in 2018, and had fun, but I didn’t really find my groove. We have a number of really good hitters on our staff, and you’d think that I could find an hour or two a week to go swing along with the group, who would go hit almost every day.
A couple weekends ago, when the afternoon thunderstorms gave us a bit of a break, my son rode his bike over here to the office so we could hit a few balls. It was hot — 95 degrees or so — and the rain-saturated ground kept the humidity fairly high.
My son is not a “tennis player”. He’s had a few sessions with coaches, and has taken a few youth clinics, but he’s never played a match.
He’s a very good athlete — he plays lacrosse, basketball, skis (at a very high level), rides mountain bikes (also at a fairly high level), golfs occasionally and competes in an annual adventure race in the mountains. He has played soccer, baseball and volleyball, learned how to rock climb, do parkour, and summited several 14ers. He’s a Colorado kid.
He heads to high school this fall, and is considering playing tennis, but definitely needs some time on the court to re-learn the fundamentals.
Neither of us had hit a ball in almost a year, when we joined our friends at their swim and tennis club to hack around a bit and giggle a bit more.
Instead of heading out to the big courts, we slid over to the 36-foot courts on the east side of Gates Tennis Center. I grabbed some red balls and smaller racquets and we just hit back and forth for a good 30 minutes before we were both so drenched with sweat we couldn’t see straight. We smiled, we joked, and then we grabbed a few cold ones (water bottles) and retreated to the air conditioned offices here at USTA Colorado HQ.
The take-away was this — tennis doesn’t have to be your number one sport. For my son, it’s not even in the top-five. Heck, tennis is my livelihood, and it’s not even in my top-five.
But every time I step out onto the court, I feel good. I have fun. I smile, I laugh, I joke, I connect with the people on the court with me.
Like riding a bike, once you have learned the fundamental skills for tennis, the sport is available to you forever. It is always there, waiting to re-engage you in the activity. And when re-engaged, the task is sure to bring a smile to your face.
I don’t know if my son will become a varsity-level player, or if he’ll embrace tennis the way he has embraced his preferred sports. But I do know that when he swings his racquet, he connects with more than just the ball. He connects with me.
And that connection, even it’s for just 30 minutes on a hot summer day, will be etched in my memory forever.
This story appeared in the Summer 2019 issue of Colorado Tennis magazine.
