The Square Life

A New Look at An Old Sport

I am not a sports person. I played soccer in second grade, and my memories of that experience are making dandelion necklaces in the outfield. I have perfected the spectator sport, meaning, of course, that being the spectator is the sport. So here I am being asked to write about the “everyman” sport, tennis. The problem is that I am apparently not everyman (or woman, in this case) and have never stepped foot onto a court in my life. My knowledge of tennis is limited: I know that at times I wear tennis shoes. I know Andre Agassi was married to Brooke Shields. I know the Williams sisters were on Oprah.
My first approach is akin to Harold Hill in The Music Man: The Think System. I will learn all about tennis, think really hard about tennis, and thereby be able to write about it. And if I accumulate all the knowledge, it won’t matter that I don’t really know what a backhand, forehand, or ground stroke are. In my first foray into research, I stumble upon a YouTube clip of a match where a man smacked the ball, which then smacked into a pigeon flying by, killing it on impact. That isn’t going to help me educate anyone on the sport, albeit fascinating (disturbing, yes, but fascinating nonetheless). But as I learn more, I gain a steady appreciation for this ten thousand year old game.
Tennis was played as early as the eleventh century by French monks. They would hit the ball with their hand, but for obvious reasons, they thought that uncomfortable. So they wore gloves, which evolved into webbed gloves, until someone came up with the clever idea for the racket which they strung with sheep gut (ew). All this occurred while the sport was gaining popularity with the nobility, who thought those monks were onto something. But really, where would tennis be without Major Walker Wingfield? In the late eighteen hundreds he patented the rules and equipment for what the game basically is today. But he called it sphairistike. It was a Greek word for “ball game” and thank goodness it didn’t catch on. This coincided with the wonderful invention by Mr. Goodyear himself, vulcanized rubber, which translated to a bouncy ball, thereby revolutionizing the game.
It is a preppy sport. And a quiet sport. Where is the fun in a sport without heckling, I wonder. There is no “Hey, racket racket racket, sa-wing, racket.” There are no taunts for offense during the serve, and you never hear “Aaair Baaaall” when it goes out of bounds. What good is a silent spectator? But then I learn that the harassing is covert, a passive-aggressive approach from the inside, almost undetectable. It’s in the vocabulary. The word “tennis” is said to be derived from the French word “tenez” which has many loose translations: play, take heed, or my personal favorite, take this—said as one player would serve to the other. I imagine it being shouted in the grunt of the serve: “TAKE THIS—UGH!” I’d yell. “What was that?” my opponent would ask. “Oh, nothing. Just Tennis,” I would say smugly.
And then there is the scoring system. As you serve you yell “Love,” so it must be the nicest game ever, I think—until I discovere its derivative and meaning. It came from the Dutch word “lof”—meaning “something for nothing.” Love is stated when a player has nothing. Love is the nice way of saying, “Sorry, bub. You have ZERO points. But I’m going to be nice about it, and we’ll come up with a euphemism for zero. How about Love? Everyone loves love!“ I’m beginning to like this game.
But I realize that I must actually play it. So I head to the Discovery Park in Pleasant Grove with my brother-in-law, a former tennis instructor at Ricks College. First we practice holding the racket. Then we practice swinging and stance. Then the rules and layout of the court are explained: the outside lines are for doubles only, you get two tries on a serve (any sport with a “do-over“ built into it is alright by me), and when the score is 40-40, you are at deuce—which is confusing, until I read that it is “deux du jeu,” French for “two points away from the game.” Well, if they just said that in the first place, people wouldn’t be so confused, I think.
It seems forever before I actually get to hit the ball. And when I do—and this is the strange thing—it was fun. The scoring actually makes sense and it turns out I’m kind of good at this. I actually won a match. It was only one out of many, but still. I leave the court feeling excited. I am Every Man—I played tennis.