johnguinness's Diaryland Diary
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Hi. My name is John, and I'm a tennis fan
I just deleted a load of rubbish here. I made the mistake of lapsing back to the bike forum to see if the SI article about Lance had hit, and was sucked in by a thread title vilifying pro tennis as a horrible doping sport, point by point against pro cycling. Eight guys piled it on, using illogical statements I ranted about and deleted, and condemning guys in a sport they obviously know nothing about. There was a guy who said he knew pro tennis had a bad doping problem because Roger Federer never mentioned a doping problem, and also because Federer never complained about dopers hurting his livelihood. (Federer owns his own jet, and was ranked number one in the world every week for five and a half straight years).
I got physically angry, and wrote a reply citing the absence of logic, and suggesting the guys watch the women at the Australian Open, and gave them a hundred different things to look for that can't be improved by doping.
As I compiled the list, I flashed back through my own efforts to learn the game, and improve, and all the practice and variety of shots. There were a lot of memories, because I studied the game every month of the year, even though I played other sports too.
I mentioned that Kim Clijsters will win some big points at the Australian by hitting a ball from the sideline up the sideline, hard, along a path that her opponents have seen thousands of times before, only she'll roll her wrist back a fraction to impart sidespin. The ball will bounce about where the running opponent expects, but by the time they're ready to swing, it will have faded six inches away from normal, messing up their reply. I recognize that shot when she hits it because I worked hard on it myself, hitting it lots and lots of times over the years (but a fraction of the times I hit flat, or sliced, or lightly rolled, or heavy topspin), and I knew where it would bounce, and where it would end up, and that my opponent would be vulnerable. You don't add that arrow to your quiver by doping. It comes from hand eye coordination, trained soft hands, timing, and a willingness to put in additional time beyond that devoted to regular shots. Not a lot of players hit it. Kim does.
I treated you (Hah!)to that, because the earlier process did more than give me a headache, anxiety, shallow breathing, accelerated heart rate, and a tension in my upper body and arms. It also made me recall how passionate I was about the game. I used to teach people, and after working on a certain stroke, say a sliced backhand, I'd say "that's my favorite shot". But there were fifteen or twenty strokes I described the same way. I used to think like a tennis player, dress like a tennis player (long sleeved white sweater with the navy and red stripes at the shoulder in winter), and live like an amateur tennis player. I need to get that back. Feeling passionate about anything would be a plus right now.
Meanwhile, I have more even more incentive to avoid the forum, because I don't like feeling this way, or giving jerks power over my emotions, and because the quality of conversation and argument was laid bare by them trashing another sport like bullies talking about someone who's not there. And the Aussie Open starts two weeks from today, with all day coverage in high quality on my free ESPN 3. I'm not even going to watch cycling until March, and that's only if Contador is declared innocent. Time to switch my identity from big pro cycling fan back to big fan of everything about the sport of tennis.
5:29 p.m. - Monday, Jan. 03, 2011
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