The USTA Owns My Ass

Tennis at San Quentin

2011-07-27T05:54:00.000-07:00

Here at Sports Illustrated...

Wimbledon (Royal Tenenbaum style)

2011-06-17T05:22:00.000-07:00

Tennis bookart - a first!

Tennis Night in America

2011-06-14T06:49:00.000-07:00

I was watching reruns of 30 Rock last night, and revisted this little gem...

An Interview Among the Weeds

2011-02-24T09:33:00.000-08:00

It's true. There's nothing sadder than an abandoned tennis court.

This tennis court, this blog is starting to grow weeds from disuse.

As I get out my scariest gardening tools and wack away at these annoyances in the cracks in the cement, I wanted to share with you an interview I did at Galatea Ressurects about my poetry, that ended up being somewhat about tennis.

As a longtime student of doubles, my new book is called I-Formation (Book 1). While it's not overtly about tennis, I love the idea of the phrase: how the "I" forms on the court, and how we create an "I" in the world. The book is the first half of an oblique Genesis story - it starts like the famous one, in a garden, and moves on to when Eve meets her boytoy. Book Two will pick up after they are booted from the garden.

In the meantime, I'm weeding.

Serve Corrections...

2010-10-18T13:26:00.000-07:00

Last night we were able to fix my serve quickly on two points:

1. When I toss the ball, I need to extend and hold my arm up after the toss. It will make the toss more consistent.

2. I have to make sure I follow through and get my right shoulder to point toward the other side of the court to get full rotation, hips facing left wall.

Of course, on the latter point, I may not be able to recover from this twirling to serve and volley. Part of the fun!

Changes to racquet...

2010-10-04T11:20:00.000-07:00

If you play USTA league tennis, you can play all year long these days. Tri-level in the fall, mixed dubs in the winter, women's tennis in the summer. Which means for the last three years, I've competed All. Year. Long. Ack! So I never get any down time to make fun and dramatic changes. My pro has been wanting to tweak my racquet (object of cult devotion: the Head Protector) for a while now, but hasn't because I've been relentlessly competing. It's hard to make changes and play important matches while adjusting to new things. So I'm taking the fall off (at least) from USTA to make some equipment changes, and see if I can learn some new things in the process.

First, there is the Tweak that Shall Not be Named. And then we enlarged the grip on my racquet (easier to hang onto now, and my hand is more relaxed), and really bumped up the string tension.

So far, my talent lies in hitting the back curtain on the other side of the court. Which has been a little demoralizing.

But last night, I learned a couple of subtle but important things I want to remember by writing them down here. If I can loosen up my arm, and really lengthen my backswing (I tend to keep my elbow close to my body and it makes everything tight), I can get that elusive effortless feeling. When it's right, it should feel like nothing. Crushing the ball should feel like air. If I can lengthen my backswing, lower the arc of the ball, it will be a beautiful thing. The interesting problem is that my forehand is so dialed-in for the previous racquet setup, that I have to consciously lower the arc of the ball. I feel like I'm hitting into the net, but I'm not. Once I can both loosen up my arm, and take a big, wide backswing (it's like a gigantic heart-opening Anusara yoga asana), the racquet head speed will take care of itself.

The other thing we played around with last night was hitting volleys with a backswing. It appears that these racquet changes will let me do things I couldn't do before. If I can learn a swinging volley, it will be like playing with the big kids. Be afraid. One subtle point was to "show the face of the racquet" before every volley, almost like a tiny bit of racquet preparation. And I've also got to get to the side of the ball before I hit it. Not so much "out in front" anymore. It's funny how the same corrections for groundies are now coming up for volleys. My backhand groundstroke was corrected by "letting the ball come back" instead of hitting it out in front.

My lesson coincided with a USTA tri-level match in progress. No one looked happy until it was over. Taking the fall off, and getting to play around with these equipment changes feels like beach vacation. Lucky, lucky!

How Power Has Transformed Women's Tennis

2010-09-01T11:41:00.000-07:00

in the New York Times Magazine this week.

The videos are stunning...

Big Match, Small Match

2010-08-06T13:29:00.000-07:00

I spoke with my best friend, Maryrose Larkin, earlier today. Her dad, Bud, is 79 years old, and is now on a ventilator, after his second round with cancer. Rose is waiting for her brother to fly in from Phoenix later today, and hopefully agree to remove the ventilator.

Bud is a tennis player, and even though he’s a cantankerous guy that I didn’t know that well, I adored him. My adoration was much more possible, not being his daughter.

We got to play a few sets of singles once, when I visited Maryrose in Oregon in 2006. I won the sets, but he liked to brag to his cronies that he lost to a 4.0 woman. Bud’s philosophy on the tennis court was this: “You may have won the last set, or the last game, but I will fight you for the next point.” I’m not sure where this number comes from, or if it’s even true (maybe I made it up or Rose’s mother told me this once), but Bud had been in rehab for alcoholism 23 times. The last time, his psychiatrist took him out on the tennis court and taught him how to play. Once he managed his anger, he was able to fight the alcoholism. “You may not know this about me, but I was a heavy drinker once.” And he’d tell that story about learning to play tennis from his doctor.

I hoped to play tennis with him during my visit in 2007, but he wasn’t playing much at that point. In 2009, he wouldn’t see me – he’d just found out he had cancer of the esophagus and couldn’t speak for long. When one is cantankerous, this is devastating.

In 2008, I curated the 18th Annual Subterranean Poetry Festival at the Widow Jane mine in Rosendale, NY. He flew out to see Rose perform a neo-benshi piece about Joan of Arc. He once said to Rose that she had the life he always wanted. That’s the last time I saw him.

That he was a friend of both poets and tennis players (um, how rare is that!), made him a friend of mine.

I’ve got a big match coming up, but I can see that it’s actually a small match. Living and dying are really what I’ve got to learn to do well.

The prayer candles are lit all over the house. Some promise “Alleged Good Luck.” My only hope is that he can get to wherever he's going, relatively painlessly.

July Updates...

2010-07-28T05:49:00.000-07:00

Almost recovered from a long (too long) bout of summahtime bronchitis. This has royally sucked. The Z-pack took a while to work, but I've kept playing, despite the gasping.

I am so lucky to be part of a women's 4.0 team that has won our local division after eight tough matches. Next we play against trophy wives who play tennis as their day jobs (probably at least 40 hours a week). That will be a really fun match.

Just finished up playing my first tournament ever. Played Senior (40+) Mixed Dubs with my delightful partner Fred who is 73. I played like garbage in our first match, and we managed to win it when our opponents retired in the excessive heat, while I hacked away like a tubercular poet. We played great in our second match, and beat last year's champs. We played fair in our final, and were outplayed. Fun all around! Some very good tennis, and a pleasure to be around people who adore the sport (I can't always say that's true in USTA tennis - sometimes people seem to have some really weird reasons why they play this sport, Alley Cats excluded).

Court Position after Approach Shot

2010-07-28T05:43:00.000-07:00

Notes after yesterday's lesson:

After playing a few matches lately where my partner and I got nailed repeatedly up the center of the court, I finally understand what's wrong.

When I hit an approach shot, most of the time I alley out that shot. My partner will move to cover their alley, and I've got to follow the ball in on a diagonal toward the middle of the court. Not straight in, like I've been doing, and leaving the center of the court open. This subtle change of only a couple of feet is the difference between making a solid volley, or being out of position and stretching beyond my reach.

I also have to remember that hitting my approach shots closer to the center of the court (assuming my opponent at net doesn't poach that shot), will also allow me to angle off my volley.

Northern Lights

2010-06-25T06:17:00.000-07:00

As soon as I got home last night from my match, I called my pro and asked him if I'd reached the USTA Suicide Hotline.

"Tell me about your match," he said in Freudian tones. Greg keeps the schedule of a teenage boy who watches Letterman, so I can call him at ridiculous hours. Poor guy.

I've been doing nothing lately but prepare to play outdoors matches (see: The Great Outdoors). We don't have a lot of them, but they can be difficult. They can be the difference between a team win and a team loss. My version of recent preparation was to play twice over the weekend outside, have a lesson indoors (because rain thwarted us from going outside), have a hitting session with a friend outdoors, followed by a seredipitous practice with our men's 4.0 team when they were down a player (all outdoors).

My match last night was, duh, outside. Fine. Ashley and I dominated the first set and we're up 5-3, when the skies opened. The slippery courts forced us indoors. We go from a bright near-Solstice evening, to dank, slightly dungeony indoor courts. Even though the courts have been recently resurfaced, the light inside this club is that of an untended aquarium. Think glass covered in algae. I insist on another warmup to give myself time to adjust to the new conditions.

We pull out the first set indoors 6-4.

Our opponents take to the aquarium light like fish born to it. I was the fish that kept bumping into the glass. Blind. Ashley does better. Our opponents play great, a combination of intelligence, touch and power. We drop the second set 6-1. I am enraged. We decide to channel our friend Gail's advice for tiebreakers ("go out swinging, be aggressive because your opponents will be tight"). Which we did, and we win by the skin of our teeth. Our team needed our win to take first place. No pressure.

"So what you're telling me is that you couldn't see."

I've probably played a couple hundred USTA matches at this point. I've had only three that involved a change in lighting (outdoors to indoors) because of rain. I lost one because my eyes didn't adjust (and I never knew that we could take another warmup under the new conditions - lesson learned). Won one when my eyes DID adjust and it ratcheted up my game. And now won one blind because I played steady in the tiebreaker, and my partner played amazing.

Greg told me this great story last night. When he was a junior, he'd go hit balls at night against a brick wall behind a friend's store. The light on the building came from those orangey, industrial work lights. Later, he has to play a match under strange conditions: indoors, wood floors, under those same orangey industrial lights repurposed for a tennis club. Everyone loses but him. No one else can see the ball. But by happy accident, he had practiced under that same light for years against a brick wall, and he adjusted unlike his teammates.

"Did you tell the club owner you'll come back when there's better lighting?"

The conversation ended with the realization that I simply can't prepare for every eventuality. I don't do this for a living. Hell, I don't even play that much compared to some of my Westchester peers. But my perfectionism is maddening. How would I play under the Northern Lights? Apparently I don't do well in aquariums.

The conversation ended with him laughing, and sending me off to drink a beer.

I can do that.

Reason #487: Why I play this sport

2010-06-25T06:02:00.000-07:00

I can't remember who came up with this observation (am certain it's not me), but playing or watching sports one of the only parts of life where the narrative and outcome are completely wide open to possibility. For those of you that know me, you know I have a distinct distrust of the narrative.

I can watch a Hollywood movie and know exactly what will happen because of the formulaic emotional arc I've seen a thousand times. I can barely read fiction, because I can see what's coming a mile away.

My favorite art is where I have no idea of what will happen next.

A few off-the-cuff examples of this in film: Jodorwosky (Santa Sangre), Bergman, Ray (Man and Satyajit), Kurasawa (Dreams)...

In fiction: Duras, Faulkner, Maso, Min, Mishima, Nabokov...

And tennis. Every single time I go out and play, I have no idea what will happen. I LOVE that feeling.

Tennis Dream 2

2010-06-25T05:49:00.000-07:00

I was walking back home from a great meal at one of my favorite restaurants, the Global Palate,(go support - they rock!) with my tennis team and my husband, Peter. We're all wearing our salmon colored team shirts.

As we're walking back to our house, the captain of my tennis team is explaining to my husband that she has offered me "a great benefits package: two weeks off in the summer, a flexible schedule..."

At which point I'm standing in the middle of the street, surrounded by my teammates, screaming dramatically at the top of my lungs, "But I don't get PAID to play tennis. Wouldn't THAT be part of a great benefits package?"

Must have something to do with the tricky, intense match I played last night. And the fact that it's been a bazillion degrees out and I haven't slept well in days.

Soccer Lessons for Tennis Players

2010-06-14T06:35:00.000-07:00

In the past week, I've read two wonderful articles about soccer. The first was in the New York Times Magazine about how they train up and coming soccer players in the Netherlands. The second was a New Yorker profile on Tim Howard, goalie for the American World Cup soccer team.

The New York Times article got to the heart of one of the dilemmas I face as an American tennis player. In Europe, soccer players drill much more than they play when they are learning the game. In the US, soccer players play much more than they drill. Hmmm, which approach is better? How well has America done in World Cup Soccer? Not great.

I have ALWAYS needed to hit a lot of balls to maintain my tennis skills. Thus, I have always graviated toward drillings and clinics. I hit more balls in 10 minutes of drills than I do in an entire match. But all my tennis peers would rather play sets than practice. Thus I am at perpetual odds as to how to spend my precious little tennis playing (first typo-ed as "tennis paying" - ha!) time. And it's been difficult finding people to practice with.

One last note to myself:

There was an observation in the New York Times article about the Dutch players (who are currently ranked 4th in the world - the US is ranked 14th), and how they would rather lose an elegantly constructed game, than win an unbeautiful one. That their admiration for their opponents' brilliant shots and strategies is a badge of honor.

When I read this, I wanted to move to the Netherlands. In the meantime, I can surround myself (and I am!) with tennis players who have a great love of the game and a large capacity for joy.

Hitting Hard (and not knowing it)

2010-06-14T06:00:00.001-07:00

My racquets are devotional cult items.

I play with a Head Protector. They've been out of production for several years and are hard to find (I found my two from a guy in California on ebay). I heard that the Head rep to my club will only play with these sticks. They supposedly have computer chips in them that modulate stiffness in the racquet depending on how the ball is struck. Or maybe that's a myth to add to their mystical reputation.

Right before my 4.0 team went to Sectionals in 2008 (the year we went to Nationals), on a whim, my pro said, "Here, take my racquet and hit a few balls and see what it feels like." Well the Mormon Tabernacle Choir rose up in the background. It was like those two fingers reaching for each other in the Sistine Chapel. And actually touching. My game immediately went up; it felt like hitting with the side of a barn compared to my old racquets - I couldn't miss. So I hunted down the racquets, had them strung up like my pro's, and entered Sectionals. My first Sectionals match was the first time I'd played with my new sticks. Fred (my racquet stringer), and Lou (my club owner) acted I had agreed to follow Jim Jones to Guyana. That I had lost my mind.

Clearly, it all worked out, and they tell this story repeatedly now. "Sometimes it's NOT a bad thing to change racquets before an important competition," they say.

At first we strung them with gut, and it began to blow out my arm. Then we strung them with gut in only one direction. Now we string them with synthetic gut. The gut offered the most amazing feel, but I couldn't control the vibration - dampeners did nothing - and it hurt my arm too much.

Anyway, after two years to worshipping at the shrine of these racquets, I'm discovering that I can't tell at all how hard I'm hitting. This became apparent a few weeks ago in my Tuesday night clinic. Four of us hit a ton of balls over the course of 90 minutes. We were doing a drill where we had two at net, and two at the service line. The volleyers were to hit the ball lightly back to the players at the service line. Greg barked at me that I was hitting the ball too hard, and I had to learn how to take the pace off (hmmm, sound familiar?). I thought I was barely hitting the ball, and I was whaling on it. I couldn't tell.

About a week later, we had a lesson and he realized that I really couldn't feel what was happening at the other end of my racquet in terms of pace, that I wasn't just being an asshole in my clinic. Apparently this is a congenital problem with these sticks. So my match with The Ant yesterday was an object lesson is really paying close attention to HOW I'm hitting the ball, how much I have to restrain myself to take the pace off, how I have a really hard time modulating between pace and soft touch. And running forward on the court and hitting the ball lightly? Not quite yet...

I hope I can learn a larger range of expression on the court.

The Ant and the Lob

2010-06-14T05:29:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting at my computer, drinking jasmine tea, trying to figure out to describe what happened in my match yesterday. As a poet, if anyone ever asks you to describe what you do, you can always beg off and say "read the work." Matches are fleeting and unrecorded. They only exist in memory and require documentation. And when I play a match, I can't necessarily remembered what happened all the time because I'm in it. To experience and analyze simultaneously is a skill I have to cultivate.

My partner (we'll call her The Ant) yesterday was new to me: a tiny fierce Italian woman who played Fed Cup in the 70s; a teaching pro who clearly learned her topspin groundies and disguised dropshots on the red clay of her home country. Waaay less than 5 feet tall, she was dressed like a miniature Rafael Nadal in clam diggers, with racquets that perfectly color-coordinated with her tennis bag. Formidable!

We dropped the first games fast. It was like trying to hold onto water - they just slipped away. I was doing what I always do - come in behind the return, behind every short ball and try to cover enough real estate to put a volley away. My deep balls were returned as lobs. The Ant said to me in her heavy accent: "They are eating up your pace. We've got the take the pace off and wait for our opportunities." The Ant is a tennis pro, and I was her student yesterday. Anything she wanted I tried to do.

"Patience," she would tell me, "It's show time."

As we changed gears, the match began to look like a competition between 12-year-old girls. When I mentioned this to The Ant she replied "Yeah, maybe mom will let us have soda afterward and we can have a sleepover!" The lobs became moonballs (thankfully the match was indoors because of rain). When I was "at net," I'd hang around the middle of the court waiting for a short lob I could put away. A foot taller than The Ant, I often let her take the front of the court, while I chased down the lobs from the back. The only thing I regret is not taking more lobs out of the air and moving in, but the quandry was that the next lob might fly over my head.

We ran out of time with our new strategy in the first set and lost it 6-4. Our patience was rock solid in the second set and we won it 6-1, and won the super tiebreaker 10-5. One of our opponents said afterward, "Any one of my lobs would ordinarily be a winner against a 4.0 player." We just chased then down like retrievers. The Ant said to me afterward that even though I was poking fun at the match, it takes a skilled player to move out of their comfort zone and play a type of tennis that one dislikes.

When I told my pro about the match afterward, he agreed that smart players adapt to what they get, not only playing how they want. Maybe once in a while I AM smart on the court. And tenacious.

Three in a Row

2010-05-18T07:36:00.000-07:00

In the past week, I've experienced a pretty rare occurence: three USTA matches in five days. I'm not one of those players that joins a bazillion teams and has a ginormous amounts of matches. I've only had this happen a handful of times in my last 10 years of playing USTA tennis and only at Sectionals (twice) and Nationals (once).

When I can play several matches in a short time, this luxurious focused and tired feeling replaces the nerves that I get when I play a match a week or every two weeks. I see everything so much better. I become tempered metal after being battered and strengthed in a forge of competition. I read once that Chris Evert found juniors' tennis much more nerve-racking than professional tennis. Because she had many fewer juniors' matches, she was much more nervous. At the pro level, she had many more matches, and her nerves went away with her increasing experience. It makes sense that more you play, the easier it gets.

My first match of the last three was the hardest against a former partner (we acrimoniously broke up as tennis partners a few years ago, which also destroyed a close friendship) and another wily, experienced player. It was very difficult to master my nerves and play through all the previous history. But my current partner was the voice of reason and we worked through it and won the match. Someone asked me afterwards if I got rattled when my former partner (and now opponent) threw her racket, and amazingly enough, I was so focused I never noticed.

Then I had two days off, and played some practice sets one of those days.

The second match was my first ever at 4.5. I played with a terrific partner (and our team captain), with whom I only rarely get to play. Her positive attitude buoyed us through turbulent waters, and we won our 2 AND A HALF HOUR match, losing a match point, staving off a couple of match points until we earned our own and closed it out. I wanted to quit tennis because the match was so beautiful - everyone up at the net playing aggressively. I told my pro that it was the kind of tennis he always hopes for us, but we rarely achieve.

I wasn't supposed to play the third match, but an injured player on our team needed replacing, so I stepped in to play with someone I'd never played with before. It was the kind of match that could have easily gotten away from me if I lost focus. One of our opponents was inconsistent and doesn't play much, but hits hard. The other was a steady player with a light touch. We outplayed them, but I'm proud of us for not getting distracted.

I feel lucky to get to play three in a row, to have that profound taste of calm through experience, and to play some of the best tennis of my life.

The Great Outdoors...

2010-04-27T05:41:00.000-07:00

My tri-level team plays tennis from the northeast fall through the northeast winter. Indoors. But if your tri-level team wins your local region and makes it to sectionals in May, suddenly you find yourself playing outside, presumably because there isn't enough indoor space to host us.

Sure there has been time to practice; we had a handful of early April 90-degree days already. But that was followed by many 40-degree rainy days.

Ack. I'm complaining. I go through the same thing every year. I find it very difficult to transition from the contemplative perfection of indoor tennis, to the seeming ADD impossibility of playing outside.

Outdoors, there are bugs. I've swallowed some over the years. There are balls rolling around from other courts. I've been HIT by errant balls from other courts in the middle of my own match. Balls roll into patches of poison ivy, and then you brillantly stick them under your spandex bike shorts. For some reason, there are more pornstar grunters when you play outdoors. A few years ago I played a match next to court with TWO grunters playing singles against each other. Get a room! My friend Dave finds the change in sound when a ball is struck to be so profoundly different, he can't tell what kind of ball is coming toward him (fast or slow, spin or flat, short or deep). A clear blue sky eliminates all possibility of depth perception. The courts are slower and the ball is harder to track.

The first few matches outside are like playing tennis on iceskates.

The best player in our club says that if he starts playing outside in May, he's acclimated to blueskies by July. That can be a lot of matches to survive by the time you start to feel comfortable with the conditions.

But then this magical thing occurs: after I've transitioned to playing outdoors, I'll get a indoor rain match. It feels like I can shut my eyes and see everything. The playing almost feels effortless. The ball seems huge and slow moving. It's a miracle of seeing. Not trying, only doing...

But until then, I've got a few outdoor hours under my sneakers. And a competition coming up. Unless my opponents have been practicing in a secret high-altitude training camp, at least we'll all hit the court on iceskates.

The Israelis and The Palestinians

2010-03-11T07:48:00.000-08:00

I finally get why world peace is so difficult, why people in close proximity can't get it together, even though their happiness, peace and prosperity depends on it.

My tennis club has about 20 active 4.0 women tennis players. With some good 3.5s thrown in the mix, to the untrained eye (mine, clearly), this would equal two excellent 4.0 teams and still adhere to the stringent 60/40 rule.*

What happens when many of these women have braided each other's hair and sung kumbaya together for years? Teams become huge, no one plays much, but the sorority stays intact. Smalls leagues like ours at 4.0 (we only had 5 teams last year) don't outgrow these slumber parties. The social aspects outstrip competitive tennis. And this make me existentially wonder what we're all doing here.

An idea floated around that our club oversee the construction of these teams because people are unhappy. One possible way to approach it would be to have everyone play on ladders, see where the chips fall, and create A and B teams. We used to play on ladders all the time when I was a kid. But this breaks up the current campfires, and the outcry was huge. And it's hard ego-wise for people to let their tennis do the talking.

What complicates things in my neck of the woods is that all USTA teams are formed out of tennis clubs. The clubs are gatekeepers in that you have to be a member to play USTA tennis. In other parts of the country, teams form out of public courts. I could play anywhere I wanted if I wanted to pay more clubs fees.

For the second year in a row, even though I pay a membership fee to my club that covers my participation in USTA League tennis, I have no 4.0 team to play on. I've got to travel an hour to play with a team playing out of public facility. While I love this team (Alley Cats Rule!), I'd rather play out of my own club.

And if 4.0 tennis seems like rarefied air around here, a 4.5 league has not prayer of existence. Yet. To creatively get around the fact that we don't have enough players for even two teams, we are playing this spring against two teams in a neighboring city 90 minutes away, for the privilege of berth at Regionals this summer.

Only if the 4.0 league grows, will 4.5 ever grow.

If USTA league tennis is virutally impossible to negotiate, world peace will never happen.

I get it.

* For you non-tennis players out there, a USTA tennis team must be stocked with 60% of players at that level. For example, a 4.0 team with 10 players must have at least six 4.0 players (with the rest being 3.5).

Spitzer's "Acute Lack of Tennis" Blamed for Downfall

2010-03-04T11:12:00.001-08:00

"Mr. Constantine offers one diagnosis for Mr. Spitzer’s tempestuous behavior that perhaps only a wealthy Manhattanite could suggest: acute lack of tennis. Mr. Spitzer dropped his weekly game with Mr. Constantine in 2006, worried that a tender hamstring would cause him to hobble on the campaign trail. That “deprived Eliot of an important physical release,” Mr. Constantine writes."

See full NYT article here.

You can't play tennis in Iran

2010-02-04T09:21:00.000-08:00

No tennis in Iran since the 1970s. Are we lucky or what?

See article here.

Note:

After checking with my friend Mehrdad, tennis IS still played in Iran. Women play fully covered in black on red clay courts (maybe it's just the colors, but that sort of sounds weirdly beautiful and unpleasant simultaneously). He thought that ITF tournaments were still held in Iran with lots of Russian participants, but I checked the ITF website, and it looks like those tournaments aren't happening this year.

Embodied Cognition

2010-02-04T09:12:00.001-08:00

A very cool article in the New York Times explores the body's ability to deal with abstraction... Look here

I don't want to jinx it, but...

2010-01-12T10:59:00.000-08:00

I've played four USTA tri-level matches in a row where I haven't been stumped by junkball. Meaning, our opponents were often of the non-hard-hitting variety, and instead of spraying my shots into the curtain, I was able to generate my own pace and keep the ball in the court. In the past, it has been all I could do to remain calm in the face of a lack of pace. I'm not sure what happened, but this is a huge change for me. I'm probably hitting more through the ball, which theoretically would give me more control.

Lately, Greg has been making me hit groundies from his hand-tossed feeds. I guess if I can wack the hell out of the ball when it hangs in the air off his hand, I can be successful against junkball.

Make no mistake, I do not in anyway underestimate, or undervalue the power of junkball to accomplish a win. But when faced with it, I want to be master of my own destiny, and not be a victim to it.

I look forward to see if I can make this leap even more solid...

The Shadow Shark: My Perfect Tennis Partner

2010-01-11T06:07:00.000-08:00

I'm convinced that our black lab mix Shadow would make a perfect tennis partner. First, he's passionate about the sport. Since he was a puppy, he's been obsessed with tennis balls, digging through my tennis bag for used ones after I played a match, cramming two balls in his mouth at all times when he got older, peeling with his teeth the green fuzz off the outside with laserlike precision. The balls bounce much better without the fuzz - who knew? Peter and I would stand on our back deck armed with a warped wooden racquet more of a lacrosse stick than tennis stick and fire tennis balls into the woods for Shadow to retrieve. He could drop tennis balls at your feet much longer than you felt like hitting them into the woods. "Wanna play some tennis, Shadow?" His tail would wag like crazy.

The Shark part of his name came early on: when he was a puppy, he had all this extra skin on his back, that when pulled up, formed a dorsal fin, and because he loves to swim, he became the Shadow Shark. On his first day swimming in the pond at our old house, he brillantly clamped his jaws on his cousin Petunia's tail so he could be towed around in the water.

He was dumped as an eight-week old puppy at our neighbor's house in the middle of the night, tied to Shorty's porch with a piece of clothesline in a slipknot. Of course he became our dog.

As for being the perfect tennis partner, he's always encouraging, he doesn't mind if you blow a shot because he's so happy to be out playing, he's smilingly enthusiastic, and he's always willing to take an opponent off their feet in pursuit of a tennis ball.

He's the first dog I ever had. And he's got bone cancer now, so the athletic leaping days in pursuit of that electric green dot flying through the air are over. The electric green fades to olive in the yard. But he's still occasionally happy to roll that tennis ball in his mouth, losing it in the snow, only to find it again. He's the best dog, and most of his days have been

The. Best. Day. Ever.

Shadow has taught me how to have many, many best days.

Note: Photo by portrait photographer and poet extraordinaire (and good friend), Lynn Behrendt.

Tom Phillips' tennis ball art

2010-01-10T09:55:00.000-08:00

"Balls are not what they used to be. It is the old story: as soon as one starts looking at anything closely that one has hitherto taken for granted one finds a history of design shift and material alteration..."

More here...

I'm not sure how I feel about tennis balls covered in human hair.

Shhhhhhh...

2010-01-02T12:31:00.000-08:00

Tyler Durden:

Welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club! Third rule of Fight Club: if someone yells "stop!", goes limp, or taps out, the fight is over. Fourth rule: only two guys to a fight. Fifth rule: one fight at a time, fellas. Sixth rule: the fights are bare knuckle. No shirt, no shoes, no weapons. Seventh rule: fights will go on as long as they have to. And the eighth and final rule: if this is your first time at Fight Club, you have to fight.

The first rule of Fight Club (or the USTA) is you do not talk about Fight Club.

I hope 2010 doesn't find me dumpster diving at the liposuction clinic...

Tennis and Grief and the Holidays

2009-12-18T06:10:00.001-08:00

My good friend Gayle's husband died unexpectedly this week. He had a heart attack about 10 years ago, and probably had another one this week. He died screaming at the top of his lungs in his Tevas chasing a truck full of county workers through the snow. Everyone agreed that it was an excellent way to go. Even when I logically put together some facts about this occurrence (he was 67 years old, had heart problems), I'm still shocked given his high energy and intense community involvement. One of the amazing things about the bond between these two people is their backgrounds: Dietrich was born into Nazi Germany, and Gayle's father is a Holocaust survivor.

Dietrich died in the morning, and my friend left work and headed to the hospital. The stories ricocheting around were confused and conflicted. It bothered me all morning, so at lunchtime, I went out and got bagels and cream cheese, and headed over to her house to make sure she was as okay as possible. The food was not so much for her, but for the waves of people beginning to show up.

Then, I had to make a decision about my night. Would I bail out of 3 hours of tennis to go and spend time with her? Or should I go play some tennis, knowing she'd be in the capable hands of many, many friends that night?

I chose the latter. I felt sort of awful about it. I told my pro what happened that day and knowing much recent grief himself, he said we'd just go out and have some fun. You know what? I barely thought about Dietrich's unexpected death for three hours. Tennis winnowed this small, tolerable hole of time into my day.

Over my years of playing tennis, I've seen lots of people play through their cancer treatments, their miscarriages, losing their loved ones. And now I understand again why we do it: to make a microscopic oasis that's outside of pain, to create points in time where time stops and our brains stop processing our mortality, to keep going when that seems impossible.

On the one hand, I wondered if I was heartless when I went out to play tennis this week. And on the other hand, it helped me cope, and maybe I'll be a better friend over the long haul once the initial flush of visiting friends dwindles to a trickle.

This is (was) Dietrich's life.

Let's hug those close to us this holiday season. And hit a few tennis balls.

Stutter-step

2009-12-14T16:48:00.000-08:00

I had a tennis lesson yesterday and drove to it in treacherous ice (yep, I know, I hit the courts regardless). Ended up 10 cars behind a really bad accident. If I left 10 cars earlier, it might have been me. Since it took so long to clean up, I'm thinking someone was very seriously hurt. I waited at a standstill for an hour, as emergency vehicle after emergency vehicle did 78 point turns on the narrow highway.

By the time I got to tennis, I was out of sorts. But I tried to block it all out, and focus.

The best thing that came out of yesterday's lesson was the "stutter-step:" the most minute pause on the way toward the net when serving and volleying. My pro said he could not do a full split-step until he was a 6.0 player on his way to playing in the professional tour. My past attempts at the split-step are like jumping into a tray of wet cement: I can stop, but I can't keep moving forward. The "stutter-step" is less concussive than the split-step. It's the barest hesitation on the way in to the net so I can see what's happening next. Many times when I serve and volley, I'm so intent to moving forward as fast as possible that I'm blind to the balls coming back at me, which leads my pro to comment that I've been studying at the Ray Charles Tennis Academy.

I have to remember the "stutter-step," even when my body wants to forget it.

2009 USTA Year End Ratings

2009-12-01T07:39:00.000-08:00

After doing the math based on the table on the USTA website, the 4.0 level will grow from about 66,000 players nationally to over 91,000 players this year. Click on the link below to see the table...

From the USTA website:

USTA League 2009 Year End Ratings
Notice of Important Changes

The year end 2009 NTRP ratings will reflect a nationwide movement in which a higher percentage of players will move upward this year. This reflects the concerns of the National Oversight Group, the Observers (Verifiers), charged with protecting the integrity of our NTRP levels as defined below. It was also the clear consensus of many others including staff, volunteers, team captains and players that the system is in need of adjustment as too many players were above the NTRP level they were playing at. Additionally, the same issue was noted through player concerns raised in survey work. A growing disconnect was seen between the standards used in the Self Rating guidelines and the actual characteristics of players on court at various levels, along with players who had been allowed for many years to appeal their year end ratings downward.

Of the 300,000+ league players nationally, more than 90,000 will be seeing movement in their NTRP rating that should coincide with their appropriate skills. With almost a third of the players seeing movement, please know that if you are in this group, you will not be alone. We recognize that there may be initial concerns and questions, but we believe rating adjustments are necessary to protect the integrity of the NTRP and insure that the vast majority of all league players will have competitive matches.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact leagues@usta.com.

The table below shows the movement of players up and down from their previous rating levels. Players will continue to have compatible and competitive matches, although many will now be playing at a different level.

Players will also find that there will be far less ability to appeal NTRP ratings successfully based on current appeal guidelines.

Dude, so THAT'S where our membership dues go...

2009-11-24T08:52:00.000-08:00

U.S.T.A. Head Was Paid More Than $9 Million in 2008

Shooting Fish in a Barrel

2009-11-23T07:35:00.000-08:00

So your 4.0 women's USTA tennis team wins Regionals in 2008 (against a team of trophy wives that you theoretically shouldn't be able to beat, because they do nothing but play tennis - all. day. long. - we're dilettantes in comparison). Then your team goes on to win Sectionals. Then your team goes to Nationals, a far plane ride to Arizona, where 17 teams from all over the country fight to the top of 4 flights to go onto the semi-finals. We win our flight. It's an amazing priviledge to get this far.

Lou, who owns our tennis club, did some higher math and found that our team squeaked out wins in 13 consecutive third set tiebreakers over this epic journey. It was crazy how much luck (and experience) were on our side. I think Jack Nicholas said, "The more I practice, the luckier I get." That goes for writing too.

As the stakes at Nationals get higher and higher, some players are essentially benched to maximize our team's chances. Those players watch from the sidelines and go cannibal in their resentment. They'd like to eat the other players. A.L.I.V.E. It's like a plane crash in the Andes, except this is tennis. And you've invited your husband to come along because you thought it would be fun. Any time you sneak off to do something pleasurable in the midst of this debacle, you are accused of being unserious about the sport. While other Nationals teams are braiding each other's hair in matching "Go Wisconsin" t-shirts, singing Kumbaya and having a sleepover, our team simmers with an insatiable discontent and negativity, a ubiquitous hunger. Unaccustomed to losing, we lose badly in the semis to the eventual winning team, which played amazing tennis.

After Nationals, your team breaks up to comply with a USTA rule that a team cannot reconfigure for 12 months after Nationals. Now all these players are dispersed over many teams, and subsequent USTA matches often involve playing against your formerly discontented teammates.

Which is what happened last night.

Ashley and I played a Tri-level match against our former discontented teammates. After we dropped the first three games, I could see Ashley's eyes were a little wide, but I told her were we just warming up.

Sometimes, you play a match and this beautiful thing happens. You might not even know what it is, but it's like a key fitting perfectly into a lock, like a complex vault door opening, and you can do anything you want and you don't know why. The world is completely open to all possibility, to every opportunity.

This is why I play this sport. The feeling of the field opening. I tell my pro, Greg, that it's like shooting fish in a barrel when this happens.

After losing the first three games, we won the next nine, many at love. Then we dropped two in the brainfart that comes from boredom, and won two more to clinch it 6-3, 6-2. In less than an hour. That we maintained "gameface" and focus despite all our history, well, I'm patting ourselves on the back. On another day, the match could have been entirely different, but last night we did great.

History aside, our opponents are tricky players that can take you out of your best tennis.

But not last night.

Without a Net

2009-11-13T06:29:00.000-08:00

It was in Ridgefield that Man Ray met Marcel Duchamp. At the time, neither spoke the other’s language, but “the simplicity and pragmatism that would mark their long, easy collaboration and mutual affection was instantly apparent as they established a playful camaraderie,” writes Klein in the exhibition’s catalogue essay. When they were introduced, according to Man Ray, the two men decided to mime a tennis match without a net or a court: “I called the strokes to make conversation: fifteen, thirty, forty, love, to which [Duchamp] replied with the same word: yes.”

Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention
November 15, 2009 - March 14, 2010
at the Jewish Museum

Why this blog name?

2009-11-12T20:09:00.000-08:00

For you poets out there, the USTA stands for the United States Tennis Association.

After playing USTA league tennis for 8 years, I've accummulated a frontloader's worth of tchotchkes: refigerator magnets, key chains, plastic picture frames, old-fashioned glasses, men's t-shirts that only come in size "ginormous" and never fit right, towels (so many towels - sigh - which I don't use), an umbrella, visors...

Best of all was last year's series of three increasingly large, ball and obelisk shaped crystal trophies in various stages of weird testicularity that when grouped together become dildo-esque when arranged on one's dining room table. When I was telling folks at my tennis club last night about this, someone who shall not be named said, "The USTA gives you ladies dildos because yer not getting any." Speak for yourself. These trophies now live on a remote and dusty bookshelf.

But last spring, the USTA got it right for once. My Tri-level team made it to Sectionals (we even got to play at the BJKNTC - yes!), and we got the very first women's shirts I've ever seen from the USTA.

Very. First. Women's. Shirts. Ever.

These long sleeve (I live in the chilly Northeast, so they're handy) white shirts sport a heraldic shield on the front that says "Property of Eastern USTA." I got two (thanks, Shannon!), and I wear them all the time. They are the first USTA objects I have loved. But being a wordy person, the phrase over my sternum started to bug me.

I know that the USTA is a huge bureaucracy. My dear and patient husband (any spouse has to be when married to a tennis player poet) is a long-time member of the Sports Car Club of America, and even their massive bureaucracy looks like a farm-stand in comparision to the USTA. I thought about buying the USTA an ill-fitting tee-shirt that said "Property of Anne Gorrick," but I realized how pathetic that would be. I don't yearn to equal their behemoth proportions.
So when I started this blog, I named it the first thing that came into my head: The USTA Owns My Ass as part of my on-going investigation into what the hell am I doing here, why I am inappropriately in love with a shirt that fits me. Shouldn't I have higher expectations?

Thinking back, my participation in USTA league tennis was completely accidental. I returned to tennis after being away from it for many years, and when I came back, I never realized that people were watching me play. I got recruited for a team. And now I've got lots of strange objects to prove I'm part of it.

When I look around, there are a lot more women than men who play in USTA leagues, and I'd imagine this is the case across the country. So how come all my USTA tchotchkes are largely "unisex" (which basically means "for men") when women are the backbone of this organization?

Since I AM the USTA's demographic...I want a makeup bag AND a baseball hat.

The Failure of Neutral

2009-11-11T07:35:00.000-08:00

I love the phrase "the failure of neutral." I discovered it last night when it unexpectly flew out of my mouth at my favorite tennis weekly gig: the Tuesday Night Group. Amy is back from two work weeks in China, so we were a full house last night.

Every week, we start our 90 minute clinic with all four of us at the net. One side hits down-the-line volleys and the other side hits cross court volleys. After a while, we change targets: down-the-line becomes crosscourt and vice versa. It's a collaborative drill designed to warm up the hands, and in the end, it's a meditation in how to correctly position the body to the side of the ball over and over bringing the racquet back to "neutral" every time.

"Neutral" is when the racquet is in front of the body, held in both hands, so that one is equally prepared for the next forehand or backhand. "Neutral's" equivalent in sportscar racing (my husband's sport in a way) would be to put on two rain tires AND two race tires when the sky looks like it's about to open up. "Neutral" positions us so that the next work to be done is equal and time is minimal despite the unfolding circumstances.

This drill (I always call it "volleyvolley" - as in "Hey, Ashley, wanna get there early and do volleyvolley before our match?") is a collaboration in that no one is trying to hit winners, and we're all trying to get sideways on our volleys. There have been endless variations to it over the years: hit high balls, low balls, incorporate random body shots... I find myself shaking out my right hand repeatedly, because after 15-20 minutes of this, my hand is tired. It's sort of like having writer's cramp.

Then we all head over to one side of the court for the next related drill. Two at a time, we face each other on either side of the net by the netposts ("in the green" outside of the redbrown of the court). We get three balls, or three attempts to run (or shuffle) across the court parallel to the net, keeping the ball airborne by volleying it back and forth. On the rare occassion when this is successful, we have to speed it up and make it across the court in four volleys. The key to success in this drill is to always return the racquet to "neutral." We cross the court again and again, glad when we can make a few passes without blowing a shot. My pro occassionally shouts, "Gimme green!" to make sure we're touching the outside of the court. In this drill, it's hard to keep breathing and blinking.

After missing a couple in a row, he barked at me last night, "What aren't you doing that's causing you to miss those shots?" "The failure of neutral?" I spit out breathless. At which point we laughed because these are the phrases that happen when there's a poet on the tennis court.

Sport informs the writing. And my ongoing investigation is whether or not writing might inform the sport.

Historic Moment

2009-11-11T07:30:00.000-08:00

Last night, Krysta tipped a volley off her racquet frame, then the ball bounced off her partner Amy's racquet in a Rube Goldbergian kind of way, and landed across the net for an angled winner. An illegal shot, but a winner. In all of Greg's years playing tennis, he'd never seen that before.

Meteor Shower

2009-11-04T05:48:00.000-08:00

Last night, I hit thousands of tennis balls over three hours.

The first 90 minutes was with a new group of guys made up of the Existentialist, the Dead Head, and the Southern Gentleman. The first hour we all hit against a ball machine, and the idea was to be aware of "early preparation" when we hit each ball. In other words, to get the racquet head back as soon as possible. Which is all fine and great when you know exactly where the ball machine will shoot out a ball, but much harder when you are playing a human being. Three times, Greg adjusted the machine to shoot out balls with more pace and strange arcs.

By the end, it was clear how unprepared we really are.

Then we played 30 minutes of doubles. Since these guys are mostly singles players, it was a really strange experience. They were virtually unable to construct any coherent points, until the end, when things got a little better. I partnered up with the Existentialist, and I had to keep him from committing tennis suicide the whole time. "Put away your tennis gun." The worst way to lose is to beat one's self.

Then I played 90 minutes with my girls. My standard Tuesday night gig. It was like night and day, the difference in vibe from the two back-to-back classes. By the end, my sneakers were filled with concrete and my legs hurt. I'd zone out on easy stuff, and then string together some beautiful shots, actually hitting two winners against Greg, which is virtually unheard of.

I wish I could will the beautiful, that I could conjure it when I wanted it, but it's like seeing shooting stars out the corners of my eyes. I can't make it happen. But I can drag my chair onto the deck and wait for the meteor shower. I can be prepared.

A Terrible Splendor

2009-10-25T18:47:00.000-07:00

Latest riveting tennis read:

A Terrible Splendor by Marshall Jon Fisher

Read the review in the NY Times...

"One afternoon in late July 1937, an American redhead and a German aristocrat graced the noble lawn of Wimbledon, spinning an unforgettable spectacle. Tennis was never so civilized — or so it seemed."

If you've read John McPhee's Levels of the Game, you'll recognize the form of this book right away.

Tennis dream...

2009-10-24T18:17:00.000-07:00

In my dream, I'm playing tennis and break a string in my racquet (in my actual life, I've NEVER broken a string - not once). I go into my tennis bag and pull out my other stick, and the strings in that racquet have turned into limp spaghetti. I decide to find my old racquets and all their strings are in some state of unplayable fray. I'm supposed to play a match...

Also, as part of the "find my old tennis racquets" section of the dream, I discover that we have entirely new and enormous rooms of the house and barn I've never seen before that are filled with someone else's stuff.

For more dreams by poets, visit the Annandale Dream Gazette where this dream first appeared (after it appeared in my sleep, of course).

Blink (and breathe)

2009-10-22T06:42:00.000-07:00

My tennis pro Greg yells at us when we're doing really demanding drills, "Don't forget to blink. Don't forget to breathe." Ashley has been my doubles partner over the last couple of years. She takes a deep breath at the beginning of a point, and doesn't take another until the point is over. If it's a long point, she's exhausted.

Malcolm Gladwell writes in his book Blink, that if you try to imagine someone you know in your mind, you can do it, until you're asked to verbally describe that person. At which point, your verbal description will make the visual image disappear. In other words, the verbal destroys the visual.

Which brings me to the problemmatic nature of this blog. If I'm trying to capture what I'm doing verbally, I'm going to destroy any learning I'm doing visually. For example, I'm trying to improve my serve, so I relentlessly break it down into sections, and try to think my way through improvements to each movement. At which point, you're rolling your eyes at me, while I say to you, "Welcome to my brain." Greg's suggestion is to lower my toss on my serve, so all the other parts speed up and I don't have to think about it. Not thinking? But I'm a damn poet! It's what I do. But because I am a poet AND a visual artist, I'm very interested in how the verbal and the visual intersect and trump one another.

A few weeks ago, Greg videotaped my serve on his phone, and I was able to correct a lot immediately. Weird how the visual can make me change what I do, in ways that a thousand verbal instructions cannot.

The secrets of the Bryan brothers...

2009-10-21T07:01:00.000-07:00

in the New York Times Magazine from 08/24/09

There was another great article about them in the New Yorker, but you can't view it without a paid subscription...

One of Dante's Rings of Hell

2009-10-05T07:19:00.000-07:00

Hypothetically speaking, you want to change your serve to mimic the beautiful arc-ed back serve of one's dear tennis-playing sister. So one practices the new serve for four straight days. During those four straight days, because one's dog is dying of bone cancer and paces all night long in discomfort, one barely sleeps. This is a perfect recipe for a visit to the chiropractor. Or two visits.

And then one decides after a particularly poorly and tentatively played match this summer at Regionals, that one would rather hit out all the time rather than go down that tentative road again. One decides to try that life philosophy in a USTA match this weekend with a brand new partner. By the end of the second set, we were in the groove, but it took us a hair-raising hour and a half to get there. The tape at the top of net was the boyfriend I tried to break up with during this match. We won in a not very close tie-breaker.

Our opponents are the toughest type I know - well seasoned USTA players, probably playing for more than 20 years, who play a deceptively power-free game of angles and treachery. I never, ever underestimate this type of player.

I can't tell if it was fun. Only that I survived. I'm pretty sure Dante would find all of my tennis clothes are flammable.

USTA League Tennis

2009-10-01T07:18:00.000-07:00

Here's Michelle Slatalla's New York Times version of what it's like...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/fashion/01SPY.html?ref=fashion

New Serve...

2009-09-28T07:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I served with Greg for over an hour. "With" sounds a little too kind. It's more like I serve one out of 20 right, and he barks corrections at me. He wants to change the rhythm of my serve which is maddening, but I can see the difference when I get it right. I have always had a hitch at the bottom of the downswing on my serve, which means I end up with no racquethead speed. In a perfect universe, the idea is to hitch (or load) with a pause when the racquet points down behind my back. It's like replaying a reggae song as a samba - same song, different rhythm. It's wacky that we're doing this now, and my Tri-level season has started... But I'd love to have a consistent, hard, well-placed serve. It's not bad as it stands, but it would be fun to get it better.

The weird thing is that I have a perfect serve as long as there's no ball involved.

The Elegant Trogon

2009-09-28T06:28:00.000-07:00

Last winter, I visited an old college roommate and her sister, who built an off-the-grid house on the border of Arizona and New Mexico. Their town is home to a famous birding site. People come from all over the world to catch a glimpse of the Elegant Trogon in one of the only canyons in America that shelters it's northernmost reaches.

Because I'm a 4.0 tennis player that went to Nationals last year on a team that placed 4th in the country, AND I live in New York's Hudson Valley which does not boast a lot of tennis in the sport's northnmost reaches, at most there are about 25 4.0 women players in my neck of the woods. Many of us think of ourselves as Elegant Trogons, until you go further south and we're a dime a dozen.

That said, I play tennis with a group of strong women players on Saturday mornings, many from my old 4.0 team* from last year. When the morning sun shines through the milky old pexiglass skylights, the courts are positively cathedralesque. On the right mornings, the light is pale yellow, buttery, perfect, reaching down into the green canyon of this metal building. We flit in our electrics, our pastels, our whites.

So this Saturday, I had a little Saturday morning breakthrough. I got to play against M. (singles player with the perfect lob) and Sister Elizabeth (leftie doubles player who teaches Catholic school), with S. (singles player and last year's Nationals team captain) on my side of the court. For some reason it clicked for me that day, something that Greg taught us briefly late last spring: that I can stand anywhere in the box if I'm the net person, and play a lot of "bait and hook;" I can move around to force errors; I can "I up" to hug the center line and play a modified I Formation even if my partner is a singles player who might have no idea about doubles strategy. So instead of being bored and waiting for the ball to come to me, I actually stepped it up and played around with starting my net position in a bazillion places around the box. It made a huge difference, and I was able to poach more balls than usual, and it sometimes suckered my opponents to go down the line as I waited for that shot.

This ultimately makes it even more fun and dynamic for me to play tennis with anyone, not just a partner I've grooved with for years, because I can force things to happen without the help (or even knowledge) of my partner. And paradoxically, it makes me much less of a Elegant Trogon... I can play in any canyon.

* I call it "my old team" because once a USTA team reaches Nationals, the next year the team must break up at that level for one year. No more than 3 team members can form another 4.0 team. The team could only reform at the next level (in our case, 4.5). Because we only have 2 (!) 4.5 women players in my region, we don't have enough bodies for a league, let alone to form a 4.5 team.

5,000 Balls

2009-09-23T05:45:00.000-07:00

Last night was the inaugural late night Tuesday Night Clinic with my compatriots Amy, Kath, and Krista. I also refer to it as the Battan Death March. Luckily I'm surrounded by their smiling optimism which helps us all get through this night.

In an hour and a half, we each hit somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000 tennis balls. And my job was to get to the side of every single groundie or volley. To hit through it, and not get under it. As my friend the poet Maureen Thorson says on her blog, "To much theory means too little practice." Well last night I practiced.

On my way home, my hands were sore to hold onto the steering wheel, and the Buena Vista Social Club playing a live version of "Chan Chan" on the radio was a form of arnica.

The alarm clock was incomprehensible this morning.

A Monday Afternoon Luxury

2009-09-21T12:50:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm a poet. A notetaker. Wordiness becomes me. And after years of taking notes on Citibank notepads with "Do Great Things" printed in red on the heading of each page, years of covering their pages in my lesson notes and finding the note pads exploded in my tennis bag, I thought it was time to get organized and write down my observations online where they can't self-destruct.

Of course, oh USTA, this means I'm going to need a laptop for every match now...

Today I had an unusual afternoon 90 minute lesson. Because of my secret writing life, Mondays are usually an inviolate day to write, but given that I've seen two fantastic poetry readings in 24 hours by people at the top of THEIR game (Don Byrd, Robert Kelly, Kim Lyons and Chris Piuma), I broke down and decided to go in today and, as always, let my pro Greg do his systematic dismantle and rebuild. It's not easy to take something that works okay, destroy it, and hope to find a phoenix in the ashes. But it's a matter of trust. And even if he IS an asshole, he's a trustworthy one and the best tennis player I know. Because of him, I actually have a volley now. And that is a miracle.

Today we played around with the serve to get my legs working, but never came up with anything that actually increased MPH. So the plan for now is to start with the ball pressed into the strings in front of me (this is a change and I can't always remember this basic thing yet), drop my arm down and back without my right elbow popping out to the right, lower the toss so it forces me not to hitch at the backswing, and hit the ball out in front. Lower the toss and increase arm speed to remove the hitch is what it boils down to, without the back swing wacking my right leg. If I can time all that correctly - the creative options I have from a full Western grip to Continental and beyond could provide me with some serious entertainment. IF, I can put this into play under pressure, when I tend to suffer in the repetition of my own comfort.

We also spent some time on volleys and groundies, making sure I get to the side of the ball and really push the head of the racquet through the ball, instead of doing that 70s/80s topspin stupidity that appears to be embedded in my DNA from when I played as a kid. Get to the side of the ball and push through it, taking the racket on a horizonal plane, instead of low to high. Sounds like the dumbest thing on earth to master, but still I can't always do it.

Mentioned to Greg that he should read the Malcolm Gladwell book Outliers, because, well, he IS an Outlier. He's played more than 10,000 hours of tennis and it's obvious. I did some math and figured that I may have played around 4,000 hours of tennis, but it was split in half by 17 years. Maybe I'll be a tennis Outlier by the time I'm playing Ladies 80s.

My hope is that if I write this I will physically remember it all. The poet Anne Sexton had to take notes on her therapy sessions at one point because once she left the couch, everything went out of her head.

Can writing press new ideas into the body and make it remember new things?