oregon tennis

Changeover: A Tennis Tale (Part 2)

Fiction, NSP Meditations, Sports , , , , , ,

In the spirit of Wimbledon, which began this week, I present a short story I wrote a decade ago, but have recently updated. Enjoy. And get out there and play tennis this summer.

To this point in the lopsided match, Chet had employed various futile strategies to disrupt his opponent’s game: chip, lob, dink, come in, stay back, serve and volley, going for the lines, hitting down the middle, delay between points, speed up between points. Chet thought up these various strategies himself. Officially, a coach existed but Chet had not bothered seeking him out. The coach knew nothing about tennis, had never played the game, was morbidly obese, taught strength training and team sports in the school’s two fat-men physical education department, and only took the job for a few extra dollars and because the team needed an adult supervisor and no one on staff at Fir City High School knew anything about tennis—except Mr. Love—nor ever would since tennis had fallen so far out of the public’s imagination as a recreational sport or popular culture phenomenon since its heyday in the 1970s. About all the coach ever said to his players in embarrassing blowout moments such as these amounted to yelling, “you gotta suck it up!” or suggest drawing upon “intestinal fortitude.”

Who or what had created this youth tennis machine? Chet’s opponent seemed more the product of the Soviet Olympic bureaucracy or a sports apparel conglomerate sponsorship than a teenager from Oregon, a state hardly known for stellar tennis. Who was this kid? Before the district tournament, Chet had never heard of him. No one had. He came in unseeded, affiliated with a private Catholic high school not a member of the Timber Valley League. After the machine dispatched his first two opponents 6-love, 6-love while still wearing his warm-ups, a few enterprising players did some phone work and discovered he was ranked number one in the Pacific Northwest, had won the Washington boys’ championship in the fall without dropping a set, and then moved to Oregon so he could win the spring high school state tournament and thereby pull off a double victory heretofore unknown in the annals of Pacific Northwest youth tennis. He had quasi-legal endorsement deals from a dozen companies, a publicist, and a full tennis ride to any university in the country, although he was quoted in the press as saying he wanted to attend Stanford, at least a year before turning pro. He had Instagram sponsorship. He was a sophomore.

Before Chet sat down, he scanned the crowd. All his teammates had been eliminated in the early rounds and had rushed off to fast food jobs, get high or play video games. He did not see a familiar face: not his girlfriend Tricia, Mr. Love, his sister, mother, step father, father, step mother, or his last surviving grandparent, his beloved grandfather who introduced him to tennis while the other kids attempted the x-treme games they worshipped. Chet was not surprised by this collective absence. It had always been this way at his matches and it was all his fault. He never expressly told people not to come watch him play. Rather, he said things like, “Well, I know you have to work…it is a long drive to the match and that traffic is terrible…It is going to be a blow out…It will cost a lot of gas…I do not know when I am going to play and I do not want you to wait around…it is probably going to rain…”

And so on. Because Chet commanded respect from his family for his integrity, intelligence, hard work, straight A’s, and independence, which manifested in his propensity to seeing movies or eating restaurant meals alone, they left him alone, and never attended the matches, even the big ones, like the quarterfinals of the district tournament in Chet’s senior year. The family had always been a bit detached when it came to emotional support, but the love and allegiance were there. Just everything was implicit.

Tricia was absent too and that was also Chet’s fault. She wanted to come, but Chet undermined the idea. She even offered to give him a ride to the tournament site. If ever there was an adjective to best describe Tricia, it was taciturn, and when Chet said that she would be bored waiting around the complex for hours until he played, that it would waste her time, that he wanted to drive to the tournament alone to prepare himself, Tricia did not respond and gave away nothing in her face of the tremendous rejection she had received. She wished him luck and gave him a card.

Tennis On My Mind

NSP Meditations, Sports , , ,

I’m not sure why, but tennis keeps infiltrating my mind I’ve watched tennis film documentaries and read tennis books. I see tennis metaphors everywhere. I haven’t played in years but want to pick up the game that was once a major part of my life.

In recent months, I’ve written about tennis in poetry, fiction and memoir. Here are some excerpts:

Poem:

Most of these courts are gone now,

gone to seed, skateparks and the smartphone,

They’re never coming back,

but I am grateful I met you that way.

Short Story:

Several weeks ago, Chet and Tricia had driven to Portland in her vintage brown Pinto and hit ten thrift stores and it had been the best fun time of his life. After three stops, patterns emerged: the stores were full of wooden tennis rackets, many screwed in their presses, and also full of tennis instruction books, many never opened. Further patterns emerged: one racket model dominated—the Jack Kramer Autograph; one instruction book dominated—The Inner Game of Tennis. Jack bought a Kramer in mint condition for $5 and a heavily annotated The Inner Game of Tennis for $1.

Chet barely cracked the book and was certain the it would not end up in his paper’s bibliography. But now, The Inner Game of Tennis rested in Chet’s hands during a changeover with Chet behind love-6, love-5. He opened it at random and read one of the underlined passages, “Observe how you feel if you fail.” He turned to another page, “Only when the mind is still is one’s peak performance reached.” Then another, “It is a painful process to fight one’s way out of a deep mental groove.” And finally, “Let the flower grow.”

Short story:

Once tennis reigned as America’s number one recreational sport. Now, it was pretty much dead all across the country. In the 70s, 35 million men and women took up the game, indoors, outdoors, city courts, private clubs, back yards, taking lessons, playing singles, doubles, mixed doubles, (oh the mixed doubles with strangers!) wearing shorts and skirts and panties, headbands, wristbands, velour pullovers, drinking white wine, smoking grass and swapping partners. Was there anything sexier in the history of American sporting life?

Memoir:

In my freshmen year, Oregon City belonged in the Wilco League with schools like Lakeridge, Lake Oswego, and Tigard, some of the best white collar tennis schools in the state. There was really no such thing as a best blue collar tennis school.

These schools had the best courts in the state, all newly surfaced with crisp nets. All their players were club members and played year round with professional coaches, traveling to matches around the region. All their players had multiple rackets and wore the finest Fila and Rossignol European apparel and tennis shoes. They had harems of teenage girls at their matches, where they routinely defeated us 6-0, 6-0 in 45 minutes or less, and that included the warm up. Once, the number one player from Tigard pulled up in a convertible sports car, an MG I think, and left the motor idling outside the court, won his match in a matter of minutes, and then drove away with his super model girlfriend, feathered hair somewhat blowing in the breeze.

It was a peculiar feeling getting your ass kicked every match, right out there in public, inside a galvanized fence. I did cry after one particular humiliation. There was just no way to beat them, let alone compete. They had it all and often laughed at us and our cheap gear and terrible form. I mean, we had player who whiffed first and second serves for the strangest double faults in tennis history!

Then, divine intervention from the merciful Gods of Tennis who wore nothing but all white. They surely saw us suffer and moved heaven and earth. It must have been Arthur Ashe, the compassionate graceful one, not the other American tennis assholes of my youth.

Oregon City switched leagues, out of the powerful old Wilco League and into the newly-established Timber Valley League. The Timber Valley League was comprised of rural Clackamas County timber and farming towns such as Molalla, Silverton, Estacada, Sandy, and Sweet Home.

Just like that, Oregon City was the best team in the league. I went something like 53-4 the next three years and made it to state my senior year, in doubles, where I choked in the first round, and never played competitive tennis again.

Memoir:

I used to play tennis with my dogs. We went through a lot of balls.

Memoir:

In high school, I took her on a date to play tennis, or rather I would try to teach her how to play tennis, and she whiffed on every single shot. I didn’t know if that was charming or a turn-off.

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