Tennis and the Lying TV

by Joel Worford

Moises Alex

David Foster Wallace wrote about tennis so well, so comprehensively (with that brand of brilliance occasionally found in authors [shouts to Mark Z. Danielewski, Helen Dewitt, Fran Ross] that makes it seem as though adding the word “literary” before their “genius” only reduces the truth of its fact) that I almost don’t see any reason to. DFW did for tennis what James Baldwin did for the black church, what Herman Melville did for seafarers, and what Norman Maclean did for fly-fishing — he made it look really cool. Or perhaps better put — he took the reader there. Reading String Theory makes you want to play tennis. Or at least watch. Moby Dick is a great beach read. A River Runs Through it could make a vegan want to fly-fish. I do not, in this column, aspire to such heights. But I did play the game for many years, and I do have some thoughts.

Many people have watched tennis, but a lot fewer have seen it. That’s all I have to say, really. And even further, only those who are fortunate enough to be pros, or unfortunate enough to have faced one, know what it feels like. The tv can’t tell you. It doesn’t even try. That angle they give you is absolutely dreadful. It looks like the pros are playing patty cake with the ball. Compared to what’s actually going on on-court, you are perceiving a different reality. Watching tennis on tv is like listening to Pet Sounds on your phone speakers. Like it’s…fine. But find some nice headphones!

All sports are this way. You need to be courtside at an NBA game to realize, fully appreciate, and accept — that those humans are massive. And that charging into the paint is dangerous. I found soccer boring until I saw a match in person and realized it is one of the most fast-paced sports. For some things in life, you need to be there. Sports are one. I want to talk about tennis, though, because, well, it is my sport, and also, it is a sport that, in my and David Foster Wallace’s opinion, does not get its due. No one wants to get tackled by an NFL linebacker, but a surprising number of people, you would not believe how many, think they could step on a tennis court and rally with Serena Williams. You may think these things are very much not the same, but people I know have had surgery after getting hit with a tennis ball, so maybe they’re not completely different? I don’t know. In some ways, I get why you would roll your eyes. Tennis is graceful, so it looks easy. And the culture is a bit precious. But I can assure you that if you stand across the net from someone who can really play, you will be quickly disillusioned of all skepticism and belief. Tennis is one of the most difficult sports.

I have absolutely no idea what it’s like to try and return a ball that Novak Djokovic hit, but I do have some approximate concept of our disparity. When I was fourteen years old, my friend and I entered a low-level professional tennis tournament, just for shits and gigs really, but also with the slightest hope, I think in both of our cases, that our tennis genius would emerge, late but in full bloom, and that our careers would soar to previously inconceivable heights. At the time, we were okay, we were both ranked in the top 50 in the Mid-Atlantic for our age, and college scholarships were not out of the question. But there were division I college and international players in the draw, people ranked in the top 500 in the world — people who had returned a ball hit by Novak Djokovic. So our best hope, really, was to put on a good show.

For my first-round match, I drew the number seven seed. I don’t remember his name, but I remember that I couldn’t pronounce it. As an American tennis player, that’s when you know you’re out of luck. All of my self-belief quickly faded. I was looking forward to my match about as much as an Oompa Loompa looks forward to the dentist. I arrived on the day-of and was sitting courtside watching my friend play, wondering whether I would even be able to warm number seven seed guy up properly, when I got the news. Number seven seed guy whose name I couldn’t pronounce hadn’t shown up. Or he’d gotten sick. I don’t know. Point is, we weren’t playing. I was into the second round.

Being in the second round meant that I would play a person who had already beaten a person that was really good. Yet in my young, virgin brain, I held hope. The next guy I was set to play wasn’t seeded, had a name I could pronounce, and very little information about him available online. I imagined that maybe, by some stroke of luck, the person he’d beaten in the first round was someone like me who was just in this tournament to say “hi” and maybe it was all a beautiful fluke and I’d squeeze into the third. Of a professional tournament! I approached round two with a heart full of hope.

Round two occurred on the third day of the tournament, and by then, the people left milling about were significantly taller, scowlier, and with more muscular dominant arms than the people from the first day. And then there was me — a weak-jawed, baby-faced black kid standing 5’8,’’ 110 pounds, with one slightly less tiny bicep. Come match time, I stood before the tournament director’s desk, beneath the wooden patio facing rows and rows of clay courts, trying not to look as out of place as I felt. I tried to look as though I were bored and used to everything. I probably looked dumb. Eventually, the tournament director called my name, and called the other guy’s name, assigned us a court, and we were off.

At the amateur/semi-pro level, when a tennis player walks on court without a racket bag, you are either about to have the easiest win of your life, or have your ass completely handed to you. It is known. People keep towels and waters and extra sweatbands and stuff in their bag, and if someone doesn’t have one, they either a) don’t know the usefulness of those things or b) don’t think they will be on court long enough to need them. The guy I was walking to the court next to wasn’t too much taller than me, with sandy blonde hair and a pretty average tennis build. He was very quiet and wore a friendly-enough face. He only carried two tennis rackets.

The warm-up went fine, I was very clearly going to lose. We were on a middle court and there weren’t many people watching. It was a nice day. I had hope that the beatdown would be pleasant. Maybe I’d get to show off and impress folks a little. We finished the warm-up and he chose to serve. We took a little break, and I was feeling at peace with defeat. I thought I would win a game, maybe two. I’d made it through the warm-up, his shots weren’t too hard, all was fine. I took to the baseline with a grin on my face.

The first serve he hit past me, I will never forget. Do you know that feeling when you’re driving on the highway and everyone’s going about the same speed as you, and it doesn’t really feel like anyone’s moving too fast, but then you pull over, you stop on the side of the road, and getting out of your car, standing beside it, you feel a car go by you at eighty miles-per-hour and realize how small and fragile and insignificant your body is? That was what it felt like watching that serve fly past.

My job was to hit that car with a tennis racket. And it was going (at least) 110 mph, not 80. I felt like I was trying to redirect a train. And there was more to it than that. What the television can’t tell you about this sport is the amount of spin a grown human being with impeccable hand-eye coordination can put on a tennis ball. And how that spin will react when it touches concrete. Speed isn’t what separates the pro tennis players from the amateurs, it’s weight. That ball that looks fast is fast and heavy. Thing’ll pick you up and move you.

On that fateful Wednesday, I lost 6–0, 6–0. It all lasted about thirty minutes. I spent more time on the first sentence of this article than I did playing that tennis match. I still have no clue who that guy was, but he was division I college-level for sure. Which is a step below, division I “competing for championship” level. Which is some steps below the 700–300 ranked players in the world. Which is about a stairway to heaven’s length from Novak Djokovic. And honestly, I have left out many, many steps.

Those people on your tv screen hitting that little yellow ball across a net are super humans. They are the David Foster Wallace’s of doing things with their body. I don’t rag on the tv tennis angle to discourage you from watching tennis. I rag on it because I want people to understand that when something looks incredible on tv (and so much of it does!) it was about ten times more incredible for the people with a courtside view, and infinitely more incredible to those that understand the truth of what the highest level of professional sport demands. I imagine Roger Federer watches tennis the way Brian Wilson listens to music. There is so much more to everything, so much more to appreciate, once you really get inside a thing. It’s one of the truths that makes life beautiful. Humans have been around for a long time and have gotten really good at getting good at stuff. There’s a theory for everything.

If you ever get the chance to watch a professional tennis match in-person, I highly recommend you take it. Get a courtside view, don’t stand behind the players. You need to be somewhat parallel with the net to truly get a feel for what’s happening when the ball crosses it. I’m not going to try and be DFW and talk about numbers and angles, because I can’t, but what I can tell you is that if you live in/near a semi-large city, there are probably some low-level futures events that roll through from time to time. Those are free to attend, full of players you’ve never heard of who make the wage of someone working part-time in the service industry, that are absolutely incredible at what they do. I agree with David Foster Wallace that tennis is the most beautiful sport, but I imagine everyone feels that way about the sport they love. My only hope is that people won’t pass up tennis for the prize until they’ve seen it.