As I write this blog, the tennis world is gifted with three 20-win grand slam champions, and a one-in-a-generation player with 24 grand slam wins. I dare to say that tennis has never been better and has never been worse. The best part is the unequalled skills of the four tennis deities, the worst part is that their age of dominance is over. The chaos that now has befallen professional tennis overshadows the amazing developments in the sport. The new equipment is the result of 50 years of innovation and advanced technology. The rackets, the strings, the sneakers, and the other gear is just amazingly good. The industry has produced the finest equipment for the sport that allows the highest level of human performance.
If you never leaned with a wood racket, or played in a pair of crappy sneakers, you wouldn’t understand the idea of overcoming the gear. Other factors played in the difficulty learning tennis too: the unpredictable quality of the tennis court or the fluff from inexpensive balls that made the balls heavy. I was a good player as a kid, I learned by copying my father’s style of tennis. He was well known locally, having had an Eastern Tennis ranking of 3 in singles and 1 in doubles. “Fast Sidney” was famous for being part of “Lieberman’s Leap” in the New York state finals - Google it.
There I was as a gifted 8-year-old, bigger than most kids with a serve way too good for a kid my size and age. I loved tennis, I would play at drop of a hat, and I asked constantly to take lessons. The standard lesson plan when I was young was that kids would be able to play for free on open court time. Many of us kids got dropped off at the tennis clubs to wait for free time to play. There was also a Friday night ladder, where kids could challenge other players to win and move up or lose and move down. This was tennis for me for years, and I had the advantage of being bigger and having a good serve. Nobody noticed the warning signs: I was not mentally ready to be a good player.
The other kids caught up and I was no longer the biggest. The new wood rackets allowed players to hit harder and with more top spin. My fitness was fair, but I had size 13 feet and I tended to sprain my ankles when I switched direction quickly. The other kids were faster than me and worked harder, my serve kept me in the match, but I stopped winning. My attitude suffered and I started raging on the court, something I did sporadically, and I would throw my racket. During a tennis tournament at Port Washington Tennis Academy, my father came on the court and took my racket. I didn’t play tennis for two years after that.
Imagine if you can? A tennis nerd, a person who identifies as a tennis player when describing himself, not playing tennis. Add to that, I lived with a tennis court in my backyard. My dad and I fought a great deal, and I was punished by working for the company that put in tennis courts across Long Island. I carried 75-pound bags of Har-true from the truck back to the court. Then I would spread out the dusty green clay over the court and smooth it out. Very dirty work and the Har-true got everywhere. But I got big and strong and by the age of 16, I was bigger than my dad. I also learned about how tennis courts are built and maintained.
My sister went away to college, and I was left alone in the house. My parents traveled a great deal, so I was alone in the house. My friends would come over and we would get high. Every single one of them wanted to play tennis, so we would go and play at all hours, and it was fun. I had become quite fast, and my body caught up to my feet. No longer was I an injury machine and tennis was both easy and fun again. But two years made a huge difference in equipment, my wood racket turned out to be old fashioned and most players were now using Prince oversized metal rackets. In fact, most gear was a great deal better in the 1980’s and I wanted new stuff. Unfortunately, it was really expensive. I used what I had since I couldn’t afford to buy tennis equipment on my own. As luck would have it, it was clear that I knew tennis, and my old teacher hired me to teach tennis during the summer before college.
That summer job changed my life and gave me a chance to be a part of the tennis world. My first semester was a bust and I returned home with no direction. The five weeks after Christmas were some of the worst of my life. I was forced to get a job or be kicked out, but I wanted to go back to college. Luckily my SAT scores allowed me to get into LIU Southampton with little effort and I was going back to school after my five-week purgatory. My mother dropped me off at Southampton in the middle of one of the coldest and snowiest winters on record. She handed me her old tennis racket and my old wood racket, now restrung, and said that I should play tennis. The snow was everywhere, but there I was with my tennis gear moving into the dorm in the middle of a snowstorm.
I played four years of Division III college tennis: I was never great, and I never worked very hard. My serve and my tennis IQ allowed me to play far over my head, but my mental game was horrible. After all was said and done, I learned how to teach tennis, but I had no idea how to do it myself. I began teaching tennis after college and was able to become highly regarded as an instructor and it allowed me to make a living. It also gave me access to the best equipment which definitely helped my game. My game was competitive to the normal club player, my gear and experience allowed me to beat most of my lessons.
My ability to teach tennis was very good, but my body was beginning to break down. I had gained a great deal of weight and my right shoulder needed surgery. I had to stop teaching tennis. I taught school for more than a decade, but I never stopped thinking about tennis. Once in a while I would hit against a wall, or volunteer for some public lessons with the USPTA. After not being hired back at my teaching job, I was forced to look for work as a tennis pro. My 230 lbs. was a big obstacle, but I was able to find work. I was a good teacher, but my body could no longer endure the hours and the stress. I eventually lost the job along with 25 pounds. I luckily found another tennis teaching job for the summer. My body transformed and I finished the summer another 20 pounds lighter, my weight dropped to its low of 186.
My 46-year-old body broke down by the end of that summer and the simple act of playing became very hard. I couldn’t find work. That Fall, Superstorm Sandy damaged my home. I spent the next three years trapped at home fighting to get my home repaired, fighting the flood insurance company for our money, and looking, unsuccessfully, for work. I had failed at life, I had failed my family, and had lost all my friends. I had every excuse not to try, but it was a warm spring day when I forgot how to fail.
To Be Continued…
