LEAGUE WATCH: Mission ... Probably Possible

Sometimes, the work you do doesn't reflect in tangible benchmarks. You're not paid what you think you should be. You've still not lost those pesky 10 pounds. You studied hard for that test and you didn't get 100. 

I had been feeling pretty good about my game towards the end of last year. I won a doubles tournament with a good friend and was playing better league tennis. I wasn't always winning, but I was thinking through situations on court a lot better and it turned sets that could have been 1-6 into 5-7. No, not victory, but progress. That's good effort that can be built upon, so it's worth it. Right?

OK, sure. But sometimes, you do want to know what those tangible benefits are, and it can be difficult with USTA league play. Going from the league website alone, you can only guess how your rating is looking. But there is this other tool. Someone at the courts told me a while back about this website you can use to get a more specific rating, but when I tried to use it, I didn't get a rating because I was only playing mixed doubles, or something like that. But I knew other people who visited TennisRecord.com and were able to get a better read on their ratings. 

(If you're a tennis player and you clicked that link, I'll wait. I know you just checked yourself, the person you played last week, your first doubles partner, your rival in that one tournament. Just enjoy it. There's a lot there -- win/loss streaks, how often you've been bageled -- just have a ball.)

Anyway, at the beginning of the year, when I was (still) making resolutions, I was puzzling over my tennis goals. Last year, my goal was to win at least 50 percent of my matches, and when I went back to the USTA site, I realized I'd missed it, going 7-10 for the season. But I definitely ended the year stronger than I started it, so I felt good about myself and decided to set my goal for 60 percent. 

Then it occurred to me to check TennisRecord, just for giggles. I was pleasantly surprised for a moment to realize that my results were now registering a rating on the site. Then I realized what I was looking at.

I was barely a 3.5? What the what. Here I was, if I'm being honest, living in some delusion that my improving results were moving the needle for me and that maybe one day, I'd return to being a 4.0. I felt like that was going to happen soon. Meanwhile, if this site was right, I was a couple blowouts away from being a 3.0! 

I don't know about you, but nothing motivates me like a visual. I realized it wasn't enough to aim for winning a slight majority of my matches. I needed to run the tables if I wanted out of the red. But the thing you don't want to do is think about running the tables.

Because then you start swinging and hitting the fences on your second return of the game. You toss in some double faults. Your feet are basically rooted to the ground as you refuse to get into a hitting position. Not me, you understand, but in general. Of course.

When I made this discovery, league play was just beginning, and again, despite the rating, I felt good about my game. Then I played my first match against a familiar opponent, one who had beaten the everlovin' crap out of me in the previous season. At first, I bemoaned my fate -- I just wanted one easy win to get under my belt. Was that so much to ask? 

My request for a different opponent went unheeded, so I had to get out there anyway. And much like our previous matches, it was tight, with long points and multiple-deuce games. In this match, I was feeling that familiar tightness and I told myself not to go for any crazy shots and to focus on keeping the ball in the court and as deep as possible. Crazily, it worked and I won the set in a tiebreak. The second set was easier and just like that, I'd avenged a loss -- something I hadn't done in a long time. I played it off pretty cool after the match, but I screamed like a 14-year-old girl in a Harry Styles concert when I got in my car. 

The next match, I lost, but in a tiebreak. Late errors dogged me again and my opponent's serve got nearly unreturnable towards the end, but I was getting better at using my defensive skills to wear my opponents down a bit. This came in super handy in the next match I played. I lost the first set 6-4 to this younger player with possibly the weirdest serve motion I've ever seen, and then ran out to a big lead in the second set. At some point during this match, I realized that the most consistent thing about my game is my speed and that I should use it. I began to chase down more of her shots and making her hit one more shot. I decided in the moment that I was a wall and that nothing was getting past me.

On the changeover, my opponent looked at me and said, "I'm trying to figure out if we're the same age." 

Me: "Hm."

Her: "What year were you born?"

Me: tells her

Her: "What? Oh my goodness!"

Because I was older than her. And I wasn't tired yet. But she was. I won the second set and won a rather uncomplicated tiebreak. 

And it was this match that made me think I might be turning a corner. I was not having meltdowns late in matches, it seemed. In fact, I was starting to win games that I normally would have lost due to frustration. Often, I'd get down 0-30 or 0-40 on serve games and start getting negative. I don't want to sound woo-woo, but I think my meditation practice really helps here. At that low point, I've been able to stop and breathe and regroup. I recently had a match outside of league tennis where I was down on my opponent's serve 0-40 and turned it around to win it deep in the first set. 

It's not that I don't get nervous or frustrated anymore, but I took those feelings, and instead of pretending they weren't there, I acknowledged them and determined to breathe through it as best I could.

So yeah, maybe a little woo-woo. I'm also still losing some matches, including one last Thursday that I am still angry about. Overall, though, this next level seems to be here to stay. Wanna see another visual?

Tennis Has a Confidence Problem

So I'm watching the first round of tennis at the U.S. Open on TV and there are these spectators are positively yelling at this poor player, telling her where to serve and where to stand. What in the world. Where do these men, who are unshaved and sipping out of a cup they paid $20 for, get off?  It's the U.S. Open, so even though it's early afternoon, you have to at first assume that this is some drunken spectator. (It is New York.) But it's the player's coach. He's just yelling like a maniac.   The Open is testing out an on-court coaching system. Why? I ... yeah, I don't know. But I think it's because tennis has a super-low self-esteem issue.   Is there another sport that works so diligently to attract people who will never be interested in it? I can't think of one. When I was a kid, my dad watched baseball games that lasted for days, I think. Nine innings?! No one scoring?!!??? TF? To this day, baseball hasn't timed their games to fit my schedule. Where was I during these games. Playing Super Mario. Because why? 

Hockey. I don't understand hockey. They understand that not everyone is in. Oh well. 

Football and soccer. What is off-sides? Never mind; I've already checked out.  

Golf takes all day. The only real concession golf has made in 300 years of history (an estimation) is to allow us normal people to just play nine holes instead of 18. If it doesn't have Tiger Woods, they are playing 18 holes. You're either in, or you're watching Netflix. Golf is OK with this. 

But boy, tennis. One thing tennis will do is try to change to fit the relationship. It won't work, but I feel like tennis must be a Virgo. It's happening, dammit. One way or another.  

Seriously, the lack of self-esteem is staggering.  

Every sport has its thing. The thing that sets it apart from others. Tennis has (had) that too.  

Tennis has best-of-five sets for mens matches. These matches can take 40 minutes (a Nick Kyrgios marathon) or five hours. And you are either in or you are out. Or, if you are tennis powers that be, you are shortening doubles matches and taking away ad points as if they are playing in your local USTA tournament. Some people are happy to spend five hours watching baseball and some are happy passing the same time watching tennis. They call those people fans. In singles, all Slams now play a tiebreak if the fifth set gets to 6-all. I don't like this. I get it. But again, I ask myself: What other sports contort themselves to give fans what they are not asking for? The players don't ask for this stuff! 

And now the coaching from the expensive seats. I'm not even sure what they think this will achieve. But it, like most rules in tennis, is already not being consistently enforced. The players allegedly can only receive guidance while they are on the same side with their team. So why did I watch Nick Kyrgios violate that, and several other rules (swearing, busting racquets), last night, without much of a peep from the chair.

Can I tell you why I like to play tennis? I like tennis because I don't like people yelling at me while I'm trying to do something. That's why I left journalism. 

One time, I got into an argument during a tournament because I was calling work to tell them I was going to be late because I had to finish kicking my opponent's butt in a tournament. It was a Saturday, so my boss was cool with it, but my opponent turned out to be a teenager. Her dad was watching and wanted me defaulted -- "What if she's calling her coach?" I'm in journalism, dude. Do you know what I'm paid? Less than anyone in this tournament, trust.  

But anyway. Another reason I like tennis is because it's roughly 99.98342128 percent mental. You can spend hours on court working on your shots, but in a tight moment, you can also melt down mentally and all that practice means nothing. That's horrible if you've ever experienced a mental collapse despite feeling like you were the better player. It's horrible, but man, it propels you. You are back on those courts the next damn day. Determined that it'll never happen to you again. (And it won't. Not like that. If your serve lets you down the first time, it'll be your volley the next. And you run straight to the practice court with a pro, or you book the ball machine. Because that won't happen to you again. And it won't. Not like that. Next, it'll be your footwork.) 

It's occurring to me now that I like tennis because it's something I can do.  

Tennis is like a puzzle. Not everyone likes puzzles. They can be tedious, take forever, require intense concentration. If you were a puzzle fan and opened a puzzle box to find it already assembled, you would be disappointed. If you were a tennis fan and you came to watch your fave play, only to learn that they are an automaton who only knows how to win if someone is telling them what to do, you would be disappointed. You want to see the sausage being made, not the thing fully formed, untested.  

Look, I know what tennis is doing. It knows that they casual observer is here for Serena Williams' farewell tour and hoping they stay for the second match on Ashe. Next year, they'll do Roger. And in a few more years, they'll do Venus (and I will be truly be leveled on that day). The casual hookup folks are not staying. I promise. My socials light up with tennis mentions when the big names make a run and then those people don't care about tennis ever again. Like if Mike Tyson decided he was going to box again, I'd watch it. And that's all the boxing I'd watch until the next time Tyson decided to fight again. Boxing is not my thing, and frankly nothing that relies on arbitrary opinions of "judges" I don't know who use methods of scoring that eludes the public, is not going to do it for me. Looking at you, figure skating. Every four years. 

But anyway, they're not coming back. I'm OK with this. I get a little snippy about the bandwagon being crowded, but whatever.  

Tennis is not OK with this. It tries so hard. THEY ARE NOT COMING. AND IT IS OK. Maybe give those of us who have been watching tennis for certified decades a thought. If I watch a Slam in which a player is being directed to their first major win by their coach on every other changeover, I will lose it. Let's not even go there about the lack of diversity in coaches. Let's also not even consider the fact that not everyone can afford a coach and one who can gets a huge advantage because they can feed their player stats in the moment, straight off ESPN. That isn't fair.  

Tennis is tennis. Let it be. Let players figure it out on their own. I have two kids. When my kids figure out something on their own, the light that comes into their eyes? You can't replicate it. When I figure out about 40 minutes into a match that my opponent has trouble moving side-to-side? You cannot replicate that light-bulb moment. It changes everything. 

As a fan, watching players win on the biggest world stages because someone is telling them how to win is like unveiling the Wizard of Oz.  

I don't make the rules. Obviously not. Because if I did, rule No. 1 would be to stop tinkering tennis for people who don't care about tennis. They're definitely not doing it for the people who do. 

Rule No. 2 would be Rafa Nadal's ass, especially after he's played a set and his shorts are all clinging to it. In as many places as possible. 

But I don't make the rules. 

Now That Was a Wrap! (Australian Open 2022)

As I was saying, the Australian Open didn't need Novak Djokovic, which is what made their decision to try to accommodate his mess made no sense at all. 

Just look at how this tournament turned out. The women's side had some great matches in the fourth round on and the reemergence of familiar faces (Amanda Anisimova, Alize Cornet and Simona Halep). Plus Kaia Kanepi. I don't know how she does it. She picks a slam, shows up, and as the kids say, chooses violence on seeded players for a good week. The women's game is full of solid players who can win a point in any variety of ways and we're lucky to witness it. And this is mostly without two of the young stars who have already made their presence felt -- Naomi Osaka (who did come to the Open) and Bianca Andreescu (who didn't). So who knows what will happen when/if they are at the top of their games again. But what we have now is Ash Barty. With the early-morning match times here in the States, I didn't get to see much of her because she was wiping her opponents off the court in straight sets and with little consideration for mercy. Surely, you think, she'll have trouble with Jessica Pegula, who upset Maria Sakkari. Surely. (6-2, 6-0). OK, but Madison Keys, who racked up a warmup tournament title and had been serving well and hitting terrifying groundstrokes all over the place? Surely this matchup would be concerning to Barty. (6-1, 6-3). The last American standing was Danielle Collins, whose cackle went viral during the tournament while her game carried her through a few three-set tussles in the last two weeks. Even that was more of a challenge borne more of Barty's nerves, I think. And I've never seen her more fired up after a win. 

And don't get me started on that men's final. Seriously. I had an errand to run and left just before Rafael Nadal was broken for the first time. When I came back, he was in real trouble in the third set and I was glad I'd missed most of it because I didn't want to see him go out like that. And I didn't see him go out in any way. That was an unbelievable final and I hope it shuts down the five-set haters forever. No, not every five-setter is this good, this dramatic, but there's nothing like it in all of sports. I see matches like that, and consider that I'm old enough to remember that tennis commentators predicted that Nadal would not be able to have a lengthy career due to his hard-charging style. Listen, that ass is built to last. But we'll get back to that ass in a second.

First, Daniil Medvedev. Have I mentioned he's like watching Gumby play? The swings, the body contortions. Gumby used to slide around pretty fast, and that tracks too because he can run everything down. He's a tough guy to beat and Nadal had to do take the scenic route to take Medvedev down -- just by wearing him out. Even worn out, I was worried at 5-all in the fifth. So was Nadal. 

Second, of course, it was tough to listen to his takeaway after the match. He was really disappointed by the crowd response to him, which is ... confusing? I don't know how familiar Medvedev is with the guy he played against, but he is actually pretty popular and a fan favorite. So getting mad about people supporting Nadal over him is probably understandable in the moment, but not something to take personally. The other piece of this is how much energy Medvedev puts into trolling the crowd. He makes a real effort at it. Does that translate into making yourself a crowd favorite? I'm trying to think of a situation where that happened and am failing. John McEnroe, maybe? But he didn't seem to need the crowd on his side and it was never clear that Medvedev did either. His post-match comments were just a lot. 

I didn't even get to Nick Kyrgios winning a major on his home soil and being a bigger audience troll than Medvedev in the process. Congrats to him and Thanasi Kokkinakis for prevailing in the all-Aussie final. 

So it was a great tournament, and no one needed you-know-who to make it memorable. I often wonder what I would do if I got a chance to travel to the Australian Open. It's obviously be great to be in a crowd and feel that energy. But sometimes, I dream bigger. What would I do if I were on a post-match stage with a man who just made tennis history and has a world-renowned backside? I'd probably be fine and be able to hold it together. Or I'd have to just take a small 

OK, she wins. She wins!

But Why?

Where do I start? With the nerve of this dude? The apparent ineptitude of his team? With the frustrations of a country who has (by and large) followed the rules, only to watch an athlete try to bypass those same rules? Tennis officials?

Yes. Let's start there. 

I am sorry I can't type this any louder but the biggest takeaway here is that TENNIS DOES NOT NEED NOVAK DJOKOVIC, A WALKING HEALTH RISK, AT A SLAM IF HE'S A WALKING HEALTH RISK. And based on the last two years of my experience with how selfish people can be in the midst of a pandemic, you know that if you're someone who is going to claim a medical exemption to avoid a vaccine, then you are also the type of person who will forget his mask and will forego social distancing as well. Why did Tennis Australia think tennis needed him to play in this situation? Why is this dude worth the risk? The answer is that he isn't. 

Djokovic claims to want to be loved and then does exactly what you would do if you wanted to be universally hated. He's not doing what's good for the game -- he's doing what's good for him. And putting himself at risk by refusing to get vaccinated isn't even good for him, not in the long term. Djokovic just needs to grow up. 

Now, Djokovic is in limbo right now, awaiting a court hearing to determine whether he can stay, and all the information about his case is coming out. Probably the best overview of the situation is here, but there are three things that I will always hold true regardless of how things shape out here:

• This is Djokovic's fault. He should have gotten vaccinated if he wanted to chase history.
• This is the tennis authorities' fault. This is a pandemic and the safety of everyone involved in these events should be paramount. Trying to find a loophole for your dimwit No. 1 player instead of making him get vaccinated shows how little they care about everyone else.
• If he plays -- and even if he wins -- this will have been a disaster. An entire, avoidable, useless, disaster. Especially if he wins. Some of us live in places where people in power are urging people to pretend this pandemic is over even though it obviously isn't. And we wonder why this isn't over yet. 

OK, so. 

There is actual tennis going on and it is good! Ash Barty is in good form, Naomi Osaka is looking good, Simona Halep is pushing people around on the court again. Most is right with the tennis world.