Court #5
professional tennis, the cruelest mistress
One of my few experiences of playing in a competitive atmosphere of this sport of tennis was years ago in Florida, when I was on a trip and I joined a tennis ladder for an evening through a public Meetup. It was doubles play, which is not my jam but that’s all there was, and the night was warm and beautiful so why not? Since I was an unknown quantity to the already established league, the administrator didn’t know where to place me, so I started at the very bottom, meaning court #1. There were nine courts – each team that won would move up a court. I suppose you could say that winning three games on that ninth court would be the equivalent of winning Roland Garros. (Please humor me!)
I made progress quickly, which fed my ego, of course. Sometimes paired up with those with lesser skills, I was even able to help them out with my superior play and move up. (Keep in mind that everything is relative – I’m not that good of a player.) To keep things varied and interesting, when your team won a match, you moved to the next court but switched partners with one of the members of the losing team. So in essence, you had two chances to move up to the next court…or, if you are a pessimist, two chances to stay or fall back to where you belonged.
It was at court #5 where I ran into my wall. There were two gentlemen who looked to be in their mid to late thirties who knew exactly what they were doing. One guy was bald and wore a white headband; the other a white cap backwards. They were tall and lean and after just one game figured out my glaring weaknesses: my poor excuse for a one-handed backhand and my timidity of overheads. Once these deficiencies were established, I could almost feel something turning off in them: the sense of competition. No longer was I a player but rather an obstacle to be eliminated. I had been reduced to these faults of mine and the duo targeted them with brutal efficiency. Come on! I wanted to scream. Hit to my forehand, you cowards, play me at my best, not my worst? But no, they were good players who wanted to move up a court as quickly as possible, since the night was only getting older.
My partner was a curly-haired, jumpy guy who was much more well-rounded than I was. I had the better forehand of the two of us, but what good was that prized shot when the players across the net would never hit to it? When he saw how I returned a straightforward overhead not by smashing it but letting it bounce and slap it back weakly over the net, he turned to me with an expression that can only be described as betrayal. How could I, a man who seemed like a decent player at first, turn out to be the guy who would lead to his ignominious, undeserved downfall back to court #4?
We fell back. I returned to court #5 twice more, but I was summarily sent back down. I could see court #9 from where I stood, and since it was a tennis court like all the others, it looked no different. And yet…maybe it was lit a little brighter? Did the players move like winners? It was plain I’d never get there, since I couldn’t even get to court #6.
Last night, as my friend here in Paris and I walked his dog around the block, we chatted about how emotionally damaging it must be for the top players we’d be seeing today to run into their own walls. Players who have given their lives to this gorgeous, cruel endeavor, some since they were toddlers barely able to walk. Some of them are the best in their own country who perhaps hardly encountered any difficulty on their ascension, beating every player thrown in front of them. Can you imagine being the best in your own country at something, and then going to some other country where a bunch of other people like you are also present, and then finding out you are never, ever going to progress beyond court #5?
I don’t think we give enough credit to these professional tennis players simply for keeping their sanity. More than ever, attending Day 2 of Roland Garros 2025 with the dearest of friends, I’m grateful to be a spectator on this red clay, for this grueling sport to be an entertaining pastime and not my livelihood.
