(because this is a true story, the names of the guilty have been changed; the names of the innocent are true).<\/p>\n
One of my favorite things about tennis is that it is a sport of\u00a0 relentless second chances, of slates being erased and starting over, of shots at redemption.
\nConsider even the scoring.\u00a0 You can lose a game at love, but you have only lost a single game.\u00a0 You can lose a set 6-0, but the next set starts at 0-0.
\nThis is not like any other major sport.\u00a0 If you fall behind 6-0 in a baseball game, you are not likely to catch up.<\/p>\n
In the summer of 2008, I had my best ever tennis experience of redemption.<\/p>\n
Prologue: Summer of 2007.
\nI had a good tournament year, getting to the semi-finals of one 3.5 singles tournament, winning another, and winning a mixed doubles tournament with my wife.
\nThe men’s team I played on also did well, getting to two rounds of playoffs (called “districts” and “sectionals” in USTA team tennis parlance).
\nHowever, for reasons I will get to in a moment, the Captain of this team (let’s call him “Tim”) decided that I, and a few other guys, too (to be introduced
\nlater), were really not good enough to play serious playoff tennis.\u00a0 So, come the playoffs, we hardly played.<\/p>\n
Now, I am a dead serious competitor on the court, and my record and accomplishments have long often exceeded what my game appears to be.
\nWhich may help explain why I have often done well in tournaments, where people’s opinions of my game are irrelevant.
\nI do not have a lot of power, but I am wily and fit, and have a broad arsenal of shots, few of which are killer, but, which will keep many
\nguys at my level off balance.\u00a0 I am good at “winning ugly” — spin, and drop shots, and little angles, and just hanging in to make the
\nguy hit another ball.<\/p>\n
But Captain Tim was enamored of power.\u00a0 Nothing wrong with power.\u00a0 If I could hit consistently with more power, I would.
\nIf a guy can hit with consistent power, he will probably overpower me.\u00a0 But if he hits with power and also makes a fair
\nnumber of errors, I like my chances.\u00a0 Anyway, Captain Tim hardly played me in playoffs.<\/p>\n
And I was pissed.\u00a0 It felt like an adult version of being the kid who always got chosen last when playing sports in middle school.
\nSo, the weekend of our second round of playoffs (i.e., while I was purposely NOT being played by my captain),
\nI took off on a 60 mile bike ride to get the taint out of my system.<\/p>\n
Summer of 2008: The Unbearable Beauty of Tennis
\nI sign up to play in a 3.5 USTA sanctioned men’s singles tournament near Princeton in July.\u00a0 This tournament gets a pretty big draw, and some
\nvery good 3.5 players.\u00a0 Indeed, four of them got bumped up to 4.0 after the end of the season.<\/p>\n
Three of the guys from that 2007 team I played on signed up for this tournament.\u00a0 One was Captain Tim. Another was “Edward.”\u00a0 Edward was a big hitter, though he made errors and was not that fit.\u00a0 But, remember, Captain Tim loved big hitters.\u00a0 So Captain Tim played Edward almost every match throughout the two
\nrounds of playoffs in 2007, where Edwards’ performance was middlin’, winning some and losing some.<\/p>\n
The third was “Mark.”\u00a0 Mark was a singles specialist.\u00a0 Generally, the “best” players played singles, and Captain Tim played Mark at singles
\nseveral times throughout the playoffs.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, I start winning my matches.\u00a0 In the first round, I beat a guy who got to the final the previous year. I then have an easy second round match, and a somewhat tougher third round match.\u00a0 Winning three rounds gets me to the final.<\/p>\n
The other semi-final is between Mark and “Wu” (who I do not know at all), which Wu wins in a hard, tough match.<\/p>\n
So, my finals match is against a guy who emerged from the other half with 3 guys from that 2007 team.\u00a0 He actually beat Captain Tim himself
\nin an early round, and then defeated Captain Tim’s “preferred” singles players from the 2007 team in the semi. I do not know what to expect, except that this guy is going to be good.<\/p>\n
The Final
\nWu turns out to be this young guy who looks maybe mid-20s, and fit as a fiddle. He has a big serve and a big forehand. But I am playing well; my strengths are return of serve and backhand; plus, from all my men’s team doubles (see below), my net game is pretty sharp, too.\u00a0 And I am damn fit. Plus, his backhand is mediocre, and he makes enough errors to keep me in games. On the other hand, my forehand is mediocre, and my second serve is underhanded.<\/p>\n
The match becomes a tug of war: he tries to overpower me with his serve and forehand; I try to hang in and wait for an error and also throw him off with spin, and
\nplacement.\u00a0 I try to make the points backhand to backhand; he tries to make them forehand to forehand. I go up 4-1 in the first set; he battles back,
\nwe go to a tiebreaker.\u00a0 Which I win 7-4 (I have a very good record in tiebreakers, and love playing under the pressure).<\/p>\n
He jumps out to a 3-0 lead in the second set.\u00a0 I\u00a0 adopt the modest goal of stretching out this set as much as possible.
\nHe looks fit, but, even though I am 52, and he looks something like 27, and even though it is 90 degrees and sunny out,
\nI feel like I can outlast this guy, and that the longer it goes, the better my chances.\u00a0 I fight back, make a set out of it,
\nbut he wins 6-3.<\/p>\n
The format of this tournament is no third set.\u00a0 Instead, after splitting sets, you play a super tiebreaker, which is first to 10 by 2.
\nI love tiebreakers, and like my chances. BUT, I can’t help thinking, “Damn, if I beat this guy, what perfect vindication!?\u00a0 God it wouldn’t get any
\nsweeter than that.”<\/p>\n
BUT, then I realize that thinking like that is pure distraction.\u00a0 How am I going to return this guy’s power serves if I am thinking about
\nvindication and revenge?\u00a0 I have to shut it down, and get back to being entirely 100% focused on hitting the next shot and constructing
\npoints.\u00a0 This is probably the single hardest thing for me to do the entire tournament.\u00a0 Thoughts of vindication keep popping into my head
\nlike sugarplum fairies.<\/p>\n
He jumps out to a 3-0 lead in the 10 point tiebreaker, but there is still plenty of time, and I dig in.\u00a0 It becomes a dog-fight.\u00a0 3-1, 3-2, 4-2, 4-3, 4-4.\u00a0 I go up 5-4.\u00a0 5-5. When it is this close,\u00a0 it is very hard to take too many risks.\u00a0 Most of what I\u00a0 do is try to hang in the point, and wait for either a sitter or an error.\u00a0 I go up 6-5.
\nI think “I have to start constructing a lead so I can take charge of some points.”\u00a0 But he keeps battling back.\u00a0 He is damn good, after all.
\n6-6.\u00a0 I go up 7-6.. 8-6.\u00a0 “One more point,” I think, “and I would have three chances to win the match, and could really take some risks.”
\nBut he wins the next point.\u00a0 8-7.\u00a0\u00a0 But I win the next one, 9-7.\u00a0 I think “I have 2 free chances to win this thing, its time to force the issue, if I get any chance.”
\nAnd the way to get the chance is to hit to his backhand and come to net and take it to him.\u00a0 But he runs around his backhand, so it is not so easy.\u00a0 I hit to his *forehand* to open up the backhand.\u00a0 This works, I hit the next shot to his backhand.\u00a0 The ball comes back weakly, near the T.\u00a0 This is my chance.
\nI take it as a backhand (my better groundstroke) and drill it hard and deep to his backhand.\u00a0 He sends up a high lob.\u00a0 I hit the overhead
\nto his forehand, going for the open court and winning outright.\u00a0 But he is fast, gets there and sends up another lob.\u00a0 I pound this one to
\nhis backhand.\u00a0 He gets to this one, too, gets his racket on it, and sends it up.\u00a0 I get ready to hit another one, but this one does not
\nclear the net.\u00a0 The End.<\/p>\n
I won the final 7-6(7-4), 3-6, 1-0 (10-7).\u00a0 Two tiebreakers, surrounding a lost set.\u00a0 He actually won more games
\nthan I did; but I won the match.\u00a0 In pure tennis terms, it was the most exciting, toughest singles final I had ever played.
\nAnd I had probably played the best I had ever played in a singles tournament.\u00a0 I gotta think that Wu would have beaten
\nme 7 times out of 10.\u00a0 But that day, when it counted, under as much pressure as you can get in the kind of amateur
\ntournaments I play in, I won.<\/p>\n
In pure tennis terms, this was a huge thrill.\u00a0 Everything about it was a pure thrill.<\/p>\n
And then when you add in the back story, of me beating the guy who emerged from the draw with three of the guys from the team that hardly played me
\nwhen it counted, including him directly beating two of them (one of whom was Captain Tim himself), it was so sweeeeeet.\u00a0 In the world of sports vindication,
\nit does not get any better than that.\u00a0 As it turns out, I am glad I did not play either Mark or Edward.\u00a0 I mean, they did nothing wrong; they played
\nwhen Captain Tim told them to play; they are good guys, and I would have felt bad beating them (not that that would have affected my play).
\nSo, if this was a TV movie, the perfect revenge would have been beating one of them, or Captain Tim himself.\u00a0 Like a tennis Clint Eastwood shootout.
\nBut, in real life, I am glad it wasn’t so. This way, there was no “revenge” component at all.\u00a0 I just played a strong player in a tournament, and won.\u00a0 That’s why this essay is titled “gentle revenge and vindication.”\u00a0 It has for me a strong vindication part, but the revenge was just in the winning.\u00a0 I never had to do anything that
\nat all was harmful to any of the guys on my former team, not even beat them.\u00a0 Gentle revenge.\u00a0 But lord knows, very sweet nonetheless.<\/p>\n
Epilogue: My Men’s Team
\nNow, that tournament would have been enough for me.\u00a0 More than enough.\u00a0 Still, as it turns out, there is a bit more.<\/p>\n
I loved playing on the men’s tennis teams, but knew I would not be playing on Captain Tim’s team in 2008.
\nI had captained USTA tennis teams before, but never tried to actually win.\u00a0 I had captained those teams mainly
\nas a way to get to play some serious and competitive matches.<\/p>\n
However, I enjoyed the success of Captain Tim’s teams, despite not being played much when it counted.\u00a0 So I decided
\nto form my own team, in a different league (I did not want the sturm and drang of playing Captain Tim’s teams directly).
\nThe core of the team included me and two other guys who had been treated similarly by Captain Tim — being mostly
\nignored come the big matches.\u00a0 We should have called ourselves the “Castaways.”<\/p>\n
Anyway, with we 3 as core, we formed a team.\u00a0 These guys had good morale.\u00a0 There were 1-2 team practices each week,
\nwhich always got good turnouts, plus several of the guys would play with each other an additional 1-2x\/week.
\nPlus, most of the other teams had their matches indoors, and indoors matches had a 2 hour time limit.
\nThat meant all sorts of special rules kicked in with about 10-15 minutes left to go, in order to be sure
\nto finish the match.\u00a0 The upshot of this was that close matches often ended up playing 1 or more tiebreakers.<\/p>\n
This is important for the following reason.\u00a0\u00a0 Tiebreakers have a different rhythm than regular games;
\nthey are also very tense.\u00a0 The time for experimenting with shots is long over.\u00a0 Overwhelmingly, one has to not do anything stupid
\nin a tiebreaker, but, at the same time, you can’t play too cautious and conservative, either.\u00a0 It is very easy to choke either way, by
\noverhitting and making errors, or by being too careful.\u00a0 The key (for me, anyway) is to hit one’s best shots in a tiebreaker.
\nI don’t mean going for amazing winners that you can only hit 10% of the time.\u00a0 That is NOT one’s best shot.
\nWe all know what our best shots are.\u00a0 For some guys, its the cross court forehand.\u00a0 For some its the power serve.
\nMine is my backhand groundstroke.\u00a0 I’d rather lose hitting that shot than any other shot.<\/p>\n
So, we practiced.\u00a0 Not just tennis, but tiebreakers.\u00a0 Repeatedly.\u00a0 We played, in practice, tiebreaker mini-tournaments.
\nWe played tiebreaker king of the court.\u00a0 We played and played and played tiebreakers, till playing tiebreakers was a normal,
\ncomfortable thing this team did.<\/p>\n