I am standing on a court of clay in the south of France getting an absolute shellacking from a swarthy French topspinner who I swear has not missed a ball either in the warm up or the match. He has a really flash name and a game to go with it. I look at the sky, I look at the surrounds, I look at the French people watching the match and I think to myself ' is this really worth travelling over the other side of the World for ' ?
I am on a mission to gain knowledge on the game of tennis as a 21 year old and I am in the wine growing capital of France, Bordeaux playing a brand of tennis that I thought owned substance. I ask myself many questions.
Why is this guy so much better than me ? Why is this guy not missing a ball and why is it that he can read me like a book ? Have I not hit enough balls in practice to know how to handle this guy ? He probably hasn't hit more balls than me yet he knows how to play this game like a chess player who knows all the right moves. He knows how to check mate me every single f..... point.
Tennis wasn't meant to be this difficult, I can beat anyone in practice, I am fit and strong, I am someone who can do 100 push ups in a single go, I am better than the score suggests. I am totally confused at the current situation.
Why am I in France in the first place ? I am not good enough to be a tennis professional. I am playing a league down from the Challenger Circuit against some of the most remarkably gifted tennis players that I have ever seen and I am not up to the challenge. Is it a mental thing ? I can run all day, I just can't match it with these guys because my mind is not as strong as my body. I momentarily hate the game as well as hating myself.
Maybe that's harsh but if I win at tennis I win at life, if I lose I suck, I am no good, I won't sleep at night because I will be asking myself why I was not good enough to hit more balls over than my opponent. Tennis not only gives me confidence if I win on court but it gives me a sense of credibility, a sense of worth, a sense of being someone who can feel good about themselves. It is a sport that asks many questions not only of a player but of a person.
Do I have enough answers in a sport that keeps asking those questions of me ? I am getting belted by someone who has way too many answers but the problem is he is asking the questions also.
My view on tennis is that it is an argument between two players, not necessarily verbally but a test that requires one to answer more questions correctly than the other. It's like an exam. If you get 50 per cent it may be enough but it probably won't pass you, 60 per cent may be good enough though. How do you find that extra 10 per cent ?
I tell myself it's all in the head, tennis is a mind game, not necessarily a sport that is just physical, that's just one element of it all, you have to be able to out think your opponent. I am losing to a guy who has not missed a single ball and my mind is crucifying me. How do I get out of this hole and if I don't will it make me feel worthless like I usually do when I lose or will it make me work even harder next time I get on that practice court ? Is this building character or is it ruining me ?
I sit down at a change of ends and think about why I am there 'You signed up for this when you bought the plane ticket and entered a series of tennis tournaments across the other side of the World. You weren't after a Walt Disney version of tennis, you were after the real thing. Quit your mind battle and focus on hitting the ball, you know how to hit a tennis ball but you don't know how to stop asking yourself silly questions while you are playing'.
I get two games in the second set after 1 in the first, I walk to the net and shake his hand. He says 'well played', I reckon he was just being polite. I walk to the dressing room and peel off my brown socks that have clay all over them and put them in a plastic bag for a later day wash. In the shower I watch the clay wash down the drain and ask myself is this what I imagined it all to be like and is this something that I can recover from because losing is getting to be a habit. The answer is yes, I can handle this because I am doing what I told myself to do right from the start and that was to test myself.
You can turn up at an obscure tennis tournament where nobody with any tennis ability even bothers turning up at or you can test yourself. Do you want an honest assessment of where you are at or do you want to be like that golfer who had the 'perfect' round but forgot to tell anyone that he kicked the ball out of the bush when no one was watching ? Do you want to finish the game one day knowing that you tested yourself against the best possible opposition that you could or will you retire with many questions unanswered ?
Tennis is all about credibility, it is irrelevant as to what grade you play. I used to think that I was totally worthless because I didn't make the pro ranks but in time I learned that tennis is a sport that as long as you reached your full potential then it was an exercise that paid dividends. Tennis is all about you beating the odds and not just an opponent. It's whether or not you can beat the things inside your head that tell you that you can't beat the guy down the other end. It's not just whether you can simply hit a tennis ball well.
My journey in tennis quite possibly only just began in Bordeaux, France in 1991 yet I had been playing nearly ten years. I am now 47. I look upon my first ten years as merely scraping the surface of who I was as a player and who I was as a person. That trip to Europe shaped me as a person, not just someone who could play a reasonable game of tennis but who struggled with their mind when that in fact was the one thing that could have brought me more success.
I am a philosophical coach of tennis now days because of that trip to a land that I dreamed of going to as a kid. I saw my heroes Borg and Wilander many years earlier play on the dirt in Europe that seemed all too easy to one day replicate. The naivety of youth, yet it drove me to practice an outrageous amount of hours per week as a kid who had one goal in mind, to make it as a tennis professional.
My journey in tennis began in 1980 or there abouts and is still going 36 years later as I teach students both young and old that the sport is not just about hitting a ball back and forth. I am blessed to have seen just how tough the sport can be and I believe in teaching with a realistic view that most probably will not include that Walt Disney ending.
The trip to Europe gave me an insight into a sport that I am glad my own kids do not play as I believe it is one that can strip you of your self confidence in more ways than one. I am glad they play team sports. I do not dislike tennis but I do not like what it can do to someone's head. Perhaps I was too fragile a person to handle the brutality of it, it's something that I ponder much of the time yet I believe it can in a way create a strong character. I call it 'the nature of the sport'.
Tennis takes a unique mind to play at a high level for long periods of time and I know that my mind was weak, not my game. I developed many philosophies on coaching, ones that could perhaps help future stars of the game but it's not just philosophical thoughts, it's the reality of tennis.
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