Tennis Diary #2

                                                  Tennis Diary # 2

                                    2/28 7PM-8PM, Sutton East, Red Clay

The new racquet is an old racquet. The Wilson BLX Pro Staff Six.One 100 was released in 2012. I know this because it is the first new racquet I was ever aware of. At the time, I was in living in Ames, Iowa, on an NSF Summer Research Fellowship, studying gene expression patterns in retinal ganglion cells. What I was really doing was playing a lot of tennis even though I didn’t know how. My main tennis partner was this Egyptian guy in medical school. I was playing with a borrowed racquet from the son of the woman who ran the summer research fellowship, an nCode. It was my first time playing with people who knew how to play. In retrospect, the Egyptian guy (Alex, I think his name was) was probably not very good. But he was better than me, and, more importantly than that, he had the brand new Roger Federer racquet. Or the one that looked like it, the Six.One 100. I begged him to let me use it, but he wouldn’t. Ever since I’ve coveted that racquet. And now I have one.

The issue is that the racquet arrives so late in the afternoon that there’s no time to have it strung before my live ball session. Instead, I play with the dead strings still in there. According to the sticker on the throat, they’re Luxilon 4G, initially strung at 56lbs. I test the current tension and it comes in at 43lbs. When I adjust the strings, they don’t return to their original position. These bad boys are dead.

The live ball session is not great. The guy running it is one of the silent guys, who just stands there feeding balls in with hardly any interaction with us. What directions he does issue are lost to the noise of the bubble. But it’s fine, for the most part. I step up to the line to take the first swing with the Six.One, and wow, it’s…so good. The ball flies far and deep, and though the strings are dead, the feel isn’t harsh and grating. No sting in the arm. I step across to take the backhand, and it’s the same thing, nice, deep shape on the ball. It flies.

Warming up with the racquet reminds me of why I love hitting with the Pro Staff so much. You have so much control over the ball flight. Placement is like second nature. Because the strings are dead and because the Pro Staff is broadly a control racquet, I take a couple hard cuts at the ball, and wow, such depth, so much pace. There’s a shocking amount of available to me when I swing the racquet. Before I brought it out to the courts, I added weight to the handle and to the 9 and 3 positions to bring it closer to the specs I prefer, and I am happy that I made that choice because the pace and spin I get out of the ball feel so right for the kind of game I imagine myself playing.

The other players in the session aren’t really intermediates. Or if they are intermediates, I have no sense of what being an intermediate entails. At a certain point, I realize that they’re just bouncing my top spin shots back at me, not even doing anything, just holding the racquet out and hoping, which I find to be the lowest form of pusher. So I decide to play their own game against them. When the coach feeds the ball in, I loop it deep. Then I loop it short. Then I loop it deep again. I run the pushers into the ground. I grind them senseless and when they float something short, I step in and crunch it.

This unsettles them. They’re used to my pace. They’re used to absorbing and redirecting. They are not accustomed to trying to accelerate. They hit the ball long or wide. I extract many free points from them. They get frustrated. They try to hit through me, but find that they cannot. The hour passes.

                                   3/1 5PM-6PM, Sutton East, Red Clay

I had fresh strings put into the Six.One: Yonex Polytour Rev, 17g at 55lbs, White. This is my go-to string at the moment. I like the combination of comfort, spin, and power. I go for the thinner 17g to compensate for some of the irritating aspects of poly strings, and I do find it on average to be livelier than the 16g.

This live ball session features the same very silent coach from the night before. We warm up. I am eager to see how the new strings feel. I strung it higher than usual, thinking that the 100sq inch head would need some tempering. The racquet does feel less wild than the day before, but also more comfortable. It feels alive in my hand. I can put the ball anywhere I want. We play games, and it becomes clear to me that one of the people, a woman, is a bit of a complainer. She complains about the unevenness of the feeds (if someone gets one more ball than she does), about the fact the coach is on his phone (I didn’t see if he was), about how he doesn’t tell us we are doing well, about his general demeanor. One has the sense that she wishes he were a little more responsive to her needs.

The rest of us take our turns playing on her team. She does not always understand the rules. I don’t really blame her for that—the coach is not a strong communicator, being both silent and kind of a mumbler. At a certain point, his feeds start to get aggressive. Or aggressively bad. For the volley game, he sends short, dipping ones at our feet. Or he feeds while we are still moving forward after the approach. Which he told us to take from the baseline. Anyway, it’s a bit of a shamble.

Then something funny happens. A guy says to me, “Are you Brandon?” and I say, “Yeah.” And he says, he saw me the other at the 11am. And I think, oh, the only 11am I did was for my weekly tennis clinic. Then he says that he is married to the woman I played live ball with the other day. And it occurs to me that he means the lady with the very good defense. “Oh! I say! She is so good! Please tell her I say hi!” That is the best thing to come out of this otherwise kind of dull session.

You know how I said that I sometimes make people my project. Well, I could feel two of the people in this session try to make me their project. I could see them make up in their mind that they were going to win a point against me. And I decided, no, no, I am not going to let you do that. It is nothing personal, but when I feel someone try to make me a project, it is my reaction to grind them into dust. I hit a lot of forehand winners in this session.

                                   3/2 3PM-4:30PM, Roosevelt Island, Green Clay

In my efforts to play more at my level, I have been going to Drill and Plays on Roosevelt Island because (1) they have more sessions than my usual club and (2) the people who annoy me in my usual club are not at Roosevelt Island. I thought I was signing up for a 3.5+ class, but I am instead in a 3.0+ class.

You might think there is little difference between these two sessions. But you would be wrong. The woman I am warming up with cannot even keep the ball in a straight line, and I know right away that it’s going to be a long day. The guy who runs the Roosevelt Island programs is really funny. He has a machine that calls lines and offers data. He is having us practice depth control. He wants us to aim for the deepest part of the court. Then he has the other group aim for the middle. He compares the results, and shows that aiming for the deep part corresponds to roughly 5% increase in long misses but virtually no difference in the number of shots landing in the middle zone. The lesson, he says, is that maybe it’s not worth it to aim deep, and that we should focus on getting the ball in the middle, that a certain number of our shots will land deep anyway, and that’s good.

I am more concerned by the fact that I thought this was 3.5 and the volley feeds are so slow I could walk home and back by the time the ball gets over the net. We play games. Can this really be 3.5? I wonder. On the way home, I check the app and find, oh, well, that explains it. I was in the wrong class.

                                   3/3 5PM-6PM, Yorkville Tennis Club, Hardcourt

I am with Tate again. This time I arrive early and have time to complete my stretches. The usual warm-ups. Two at the baseline, two shots each. I am using the Six.One, and I like the way it makes the ball jump on the slow blue hardcourt. But after a while, I switch to the TFight 305. Switching between the two racquets is a bit like time traveling with respect to tennis technology.

Modern racquets are more muted. They have more vibration absorption technology. They are also more aerodynamic. The TFight 305 is the newest model, so the swingweight has been brought down from the previous iteration, allowing for faster swing speeds. The additional mass in the racquet makes the Six.One (almost 6 grams lighter even with the weight I added) feel slightly flimsy. My ball flight is lower with the TFight, and I can tell the other people in the session are struggling to adapt to the weight of shot. The sound too is different, like a gun going off, bang, bang.

The replying shots are always high, soaring. Their initial shots are usually slow, skimming just over the net, lashing over the line. If you don’t cut the angle off with the women in this session (I’m the only man again), the ball will get by you. I realize I am playing with flat hitters today. Tate gives me some advice on how to shape my ball. How to get more loop on it so I’m not hitting so flat. I take some shadow swings while I wait for it to be my turn. Then, when I am fed in, I take the ball up the line, and when I get the short reply, I zip it up the middle, trying to get by the person at the net. This usually works, but sometimes, they’re a step faster and they get the volley back and it’s too short to do anything about, just too good.

The session has a good vibe. People are working on little things here or there, polishing strokes, mechanics. Tate runs a good vibes only session, I think. When it ends, he smiles at us under his floppy hair and asks, “Did you guys enjoy yourselves?”

                               3/3 8PM-9:30PM, USTA Tennis Center, Flushing, Hardcourt

Today we work on volleys. They have us take turns standing just behind the service box to hit a series of volleys in various configurations. The first volley up the line. Second volley up the line. Third volley an inside-out volley. Then switch sides, forehand to backhand, backhand to forehand. Then, hit two cross-court volleys, the first from behind the service line, then just inside the service box, one deep cross, one shorter, and then an inside volley up the line, closer to the net.

Then, we run a simulated game for points. One team just behind the service box, the other team at the baseline. The baseline team gets the feed from the coach, and their sole objective is to drill the ball at our feet. Our objective is to get the ball back and to close down the net. It’s an aggressive, flashing game, one that quickly robs you of your fear because to stand any chance at all, you must be able to resolutely face down the rocket coming at you. Eventually, you have to be able to be more than just not scared. You have to be calm. Calm because you need to be able to direct your volley with purpose with very little time at your disposal.

I come to really like this game in part because it helps me get over my fear of getting pegged by a ball. And to think with my hands, to trust my instincts and to move with decisiveness. Catch the ball on the strings. Watch it, watch it, watch it, and then punch, sharp, clear, authoritative.

Then we play a game of serve and volley. As a baseliner, this is not my chosen strategy. We are given instructions to throw a kick serve to the opponent’s backhand and then to use the time it takes for the ball to get there to close down the net. If you do not approach the net, you lose the point. The game is fun, tough, because the receiving team can do whatever they want, and you’ve got to do this one thing and do it well and do it on purpose and be able to summon it at will.

But strangely enough, I take to it. I do enjoy a kick serve. I can hit that serve in my sleep. It’s the volleying that gets to me. But because my volleys are warmed up from the earlier exercises, I can see the ball so clearly. Still, I dump a few into the net. We all do. I change racquets. I hit with the TFight-305 because it suits my serve better. We play on and on, throwing down heavy serves, rushing into the net, punching volleys, chasing down overheads. We’re all really fucking in it.

This is my second session of the day and I feel like I could run down balls forever.

                               3/5 10AM-11AM, Sutton East, Red Clay

I taught last night. I am playing tennis twice today. The first session starts with a liveball. The same people from last week’s session, funnily enough. Warm ups, the usual. I am trying to play with a Babolat Pure Aero 98 because Stefanos Tsitsipas has been using one lately and it suits his game.

The first few balls already tell me that this is not going to be a pleasant experience because I cannot control this racquet. I have used this racquet before, to fine results, but today, it is not in the cards. I spray all over the warm up. Nothing lands in. I switch to the Six.One, and find better results. Gross, I thought. Bad form. I don’t know that I’ll take that Babolat out of my bag again.

We switch to games. The same ones. First, king and queen of the court. Then playing for points. I lose all of the games. Even with swapping teammates, I am still the session’s big loser. I think it’s because I got off on the wrong foot or maybe the I’m still irritated me. Either way, this session is a wash. We finish. I pick up the balls. I go to wait the thirty minutes before I take the tram to Roosevelt Island.

                               3/5 12:30PM-2:30PM, Roosevelt Island, Green Clay

It’s a somewhat full session. Enough for two courts. We do the usual drills. It’s been wet, so the balls are rather cold and heavy. That’s one of the things I don’t like about Roosevelt Island. The ball hygiene. The bubble leaks, or they water the courts weird, I don’t know, but you always end up with wet balls there. Wet balls that then collect and attract clay. There are also these dead lesions in the court.

At Sutton East, the clay is red, but it’s for the most part hard. The green clay is softer, sandier. There are more concealed voids, divots, so that when the feed lands, the ball may just stop moving. They also only give you one ball feeds at Roosevelt Island. I don’t mind that so much. But if the ball lands in a dead spot, and trickles at your feet, what are you supposed to do?

At a certain point, the coach makes us play singles while there is a double’s match going on. It ends with me playing this one guy with long braids. He breaks my serve at first. He has a strange, crawling game. He seems to move on all fours before slapping at the ball, so his shots are low and sharp. There is something wild and strange in his game, and it catches me off guard. He’s spent an hour of the session on a zoom call in the waiting room, so I haven’t had lots of time to study his strokes.

Then he steps up to serve, and I take him apart. Once I have a sense of what his second serve is like, I just step in and hit the return sharp and cross. Then when it’s my time to serve, I just a slice out wide on the deuce side and alternate between kicking to the backhand and putting it up the T on the ad side. I hold. Then I break him again. And in the end, just before they call time on the session, I hold serve, though not without difficulty, him getting a couple break points I have to fight off.

I come out ahead 4-1.

I am tired. But restless. Annoyed.

                               3/7 11AM-12:30PM Sutton East, Red Clay

Back at my weekly. I am going to work on my forehand, I decide. I want more spin. I am taking the ball early and I am going to put a lot of spin on the ball, but also hit with pace and margin. I am going to be a good boy.

After we warm up, the coach has us doing a volley game. I am actually pretty stoked for this because I started my week with volleys. The ball is so much slower than the feeds and terrifying shots hit by my Monday classmates. So my partner and I make light work of the first round. Then he goes to the far side, and I get one of the women on my side. The guy who just went over has a cannon for a forehand. And he likes to go up the line. But he also knows that the woman now on my side is afraid to cover the middle, which means I’ve got my work cut out for me, reading his shot. It does not go well at first, we go down like 6-0, playing to 11. But then, I start to read his forehand. He tries to hit one up the middle, and I put it back at his feet. Then when he digs it out, I send it to his partner on the other side, who isn’t quite ready. We fight our way back, and the game is tight.

Then he and I are on the same side again, against the two women at the net. One of the women says she is afraid to volley. She does not like it. She is not fearless. She has not had the fear drilled out of her yet. To volley, you really do need to be faster than you are scared. If you are fast, proactive, you do not have to be afraid. But it is a quality of sight you can only acquire by facing down the terror in your heart as someone blasts a forehand pass at you.

But my partner and I hear her, and so we lower the throttle. This is problematic. You see, you can’t decelerate on a tennis stroke. It’s not about how hard you hit it. It’s about acceleration. You want your racquet to be speeding up so that you transfer momentum to the ball. Acceleration, an increase in velocity, is everything in tennis. Sometimes, when you are trying to hit slower, you also start decelerating, which is what happens to both of us, so our shots start going into the net or wildly out. We both have to readjust, re-find our swings, so that we can hit it with good acceleration but without terrifying the woman.

She is still scared, but at a certain point, someone else’s fear is no longer burden to carry.

Then we play team singles. You stay in until you lose a point, then your teammate takes over. I make sure to hit with good depth and margin, not going for a winner on the first strike, but building a point, using what I know about their games to get them out. It’s two mixed teams, so I make sure to feed the ball high to my opponent’s backhand or to roll it sharp across. Watch out for short balls, sprint the minute I see that racquet face open.

Then we serve and play doubles. By the end, we’re all too tired to play well.

                               3/7 1PM-2PM, Sutton East, Red Clay

I was still feeling really irritated, so I signed up for an extra session. I am glad I did because even though the weekly has just ended, I have more frustration to vent.

It’s an advanced beginner session, so I mostly use it to hit backhands and try to get some reps. The silent coach is back. It’s me and…you guessed it, four women. Five people is awkward, but not un-doable. At a certain point, the coach banishes me and one of the women to a side court so we can play singles. I was happy just hitting the ball, to be honest, but here we are. The woman plays a high, looping game. I am using it as a chance to work on my front to back movement and my movement up to shortballs to put them away.

We have some fun rallies, and I find myself timing the forehand really well. Hitting through her lobs. She hits some nasty short balls cross to the backhand and I’ve got to get up to them and slice them back. Then she hooks the ball sharp cross from her forehand, and I’ve got this choice to either take it up the line as is my habit or practice the safer, wiser shot, going middle or cross. I hit it middle. And get the error.

Then the coach comes to my end and hits with me while the women practice their serving. He hits with a lot of spin, and I feel my whole hand vibrate when I try to find off his ball. I am having a hard time timing the shot. I’ve been seeing too many different kinds of balls lately, too many different kinds of speed, and I can feel my vision fuzz and fizz out.

By the end of the hour, my arm is sore, but I feel good, like I’ve given it everything I have.

ball in.

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