Chapter One
DO WHAT YOU LOVE
(OR HOW I FOUND TIME FOR TENNIS)
The Most Beautiful Sport
It's a great time to play tennis.
I don't simply mean today, a few minutes on the court this afternoon. I mean that our times are great times to play tennis.
I submit that tennis is the most beautiful sport there is and also the most demanding. It requires body control, hand-eye coordination, quickness, flat-out speed, endurance, and the weird mix of caution and abandon, we call courage. It also requires smarts. Just one single shot in one exchange in one point of a high-level match is a nightmare of mechanical variables.
No silicon-based RAM yet existent could compute the expansion of variables for even a single exchange; smoke would come out of the mainframe. The sort of thinking involved is the sort that can be done only by living and highly conscious entity, and then it cn really be done only unconsciously,1e., by fusing talent with repetition to such an extent that the variables are combined and controlled without conscious thought. In other words, serious tennis is a kind of art.
David Foster Wallace, The String Theory, Esquire.
Perhaps the progenitor of modern tennis was a game like handball. Something like handball was played in ancient Greece and Egypt.
A form of the game was played by monks of the Medieval era. It later became quite the rage among Europe's royalty, particularly in England and France. Historians of the sport credit Italy with the invention of the racquet.
Henry VIII built a tennis court almost five hundred years ago.
The name itself came from the French as the server shouted "Tenez," meaning "hold," "take it," or "here it comes," much like the baseball umpire shouting "play ball."
Through the centuries tennis has grown more refined. The equipment is better, and the game has become more athletically impressive with the passing of time. Think about it. We've gone from lifeless tennis balls made of wood, and later balls with leather covers stuffed with hair, to vulcanized rubber balls with a bounce that seems to explode. Not to mention today's optical colors so that balls can be seen even on grey days when they come flying across the net at speeds in excess of 100 mph.
The sport has evolved from bare hands to gloved, to rudimentary racquets made of laminated wood, to metals like steel, aluminum and titanium, to carbon fibers that are lighter than wood and with frames that require less width than wood which means more string area and a bigger "sweet spot".
Strings have evolved from animal gut to the zing of superior performing and more durable synthetics like nylon.
Tennis shoes are of lighter weight, serving their owners in speed and support and providing improved mobility. And lighted courts provide busy fans longer hours of play after their daily work and family routines.
Then there is the contribution that HDTVs have made to spectator enjoyment. It wasn't so long ago that fans tried to follow a grey ball on a tiny, low resolution black and white screen. Today's matches are bright televised spectaculars of life-like colors and replays and slo-mo so that none of the action escapes they eye. Digital technologies tell us instantly the mind-boggling speed of that awesome serve and even take the guess work (not to mention the argument) out of wondering whether that passing shot near the backcourt line was actually in or out
Today tennis is one of the most watched sports in the world with over a billion fans.
What accounts for the appeal of tennis? Is it the mesmerizing rhythm of the game, from serve to rally to point? There is that. Indeed, an extended rally is met by applause from that stands. It is also its individualism, one man or woman, alone against another. There is no one to pass the ball to as in basketball or football. So alone are the players that during the match they are not allowed to even get the advice of coaches by word or gesture from the stands.
The popularity of tennis certainly has something to do with its match-long demands of sustained athleticism. But it's not just about power or brute strength. A tennis match consists of a physical confrontation, yet it is non-violent. It is competitive, yet peaceful.
Today's spectators are treated to performances of athletic prowess almost unthinkable a generation ago. Roger Federer plays with all the precision of a fine Swiss watch. No wonder Rolex wanted his endorsements. The Spaniard Rafael Nadal covers the court with all the fiery passion and intensity that gave birth to flamenco music and dance.
What a display of virtuosity these and other top performers provide!
It is no accident, I think, that tennis uses the language of life. Advantage, service, fault, break, love, the basic elements of tennis are those of everyday existence, because every match is a life in miniature.
Andre Agassi
There is an undeniable beauty to their play.
That is something novelist David Foster Wallace recognized in an appreciation he wrote about Federer. Covering him at Wimbledon in 2006 for the New York Times, Foster's piece was called "Roger Federer as Religious Experience."
Federer was "the best tennis player currently alive. Maybe the best ever," he wrote. Few would argue with that (not that Rafa, Serena, Novak and others aren't awe-inspiring players). But in writing about Roger, Foster shared a glimpse of something transcendent, something no less profound than the integration of the human spirit and the material world. "The human beauty we're talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings' reconciliation with the fact of having a body."
Okay. I recognize that I might be getting carried away here, but if I am it is because of my own love of the sport. And since you're reading this, I suspect you'll forgive me because you probably love it, too.
In any case, I'm not writing for future Roger Federers. That would doom this book to a very small readership. Instead, I have in mind readers of all sorts, young and old, gifted and challenged, men and women who play with friends and family at city tennis courts and at schools and in tennis clubs, and kids who hit balls against the side of their garage. Players of many skill levels and fans who may never have picked up a racquet.
Whether watching or playing, most people like tennis because it is simply fun. Millions play recreationally. And anybody at any skill level can always get better. In doing so, they increase their enjoyment of the game.
That's where I come in.
Lessons for the Rich and Famous
My name is Ross Dean. I'm a tennis pro. I teach tennis.
Before I tell you about myself, let me tell you about some of the people I have taught.
- The head of one of the world's largest media companies. I shall have more to say about him later.
- A woman anchor you would know from one of the major networks.
- A premiere solo ballerina who performed for years at the Kennedy Center in Washington and at the Lincoln Center in New York. When I gave her a drill that involved shifting her feet and using a crossover step to position to hit the ball, she surprised me when she instead stepped with her right leg and raised her left leg straight up in the air, forming a perfect vertical split. You could have dropped a plumb line from her left heel, touching her left calf, buttocks, right calf and right heel.
- It was an impressive move that left me wide-eyed in astonishment. We laughed about it as I explained that it wasn't quite what she needed to do to return the ball.
- A well-known economics professor who spent 15 years at the University of Chicago where he was a peer of Milton Friedman.
- A woman in her late thirties who ran a large hedge fund in New York.
- One day I gave lessons to a man from California who was here with his girlfriend.
- We hit it off well and after the lesson, he insisted on us meeting with his girlfriend for a drink. As it turned out she was the Attorney General of California, soon to be a US Senator. As I write, Kamala Harris is a presidential candidate.
It's not all the rich and famous, but even when it is, one of the life lessons I have been shown over and over is not to assume that such people are exempt for the challenges and tragedies of life. I gave three lessons to a man from Canada, by way of London and Switzerland. He kept his private yacht in the romantic Seychelles islands, home of turquoise tropical waters and stunning sugar-sand beaches. Prince William and Kate honeymooned there. So did George...
