Tennis Anyone?

My Life’s Editor put down her size 7. I was traveling to earn our daily bread, frequently gone all week. Golf games with pals ate entire Saturdays. She announced that I should log fatherhood hours with our children on weekends, maybe throw in an hour or two with her. I was shocked. Children plural? When did the second one arrive?

I chucked out my red leather golf bag, woods and irons, and my snazzy red Etonic golf shoes. We bought wooden tennis racquets (Jack Kramer for me, Billie Jean King for her), presses, and a can of Dunlop balls and started to play on a nearby public court. We set up the playpen to contain the children, slipped our racquets into the pegs on the fence, and waited for a court. I checked all the boxes: time with herself [check], time with kids [check], good exercise [check].  To top it off, the operating cost was $1.25 for a can of balls. If one of our children is reading this and says “Wait, you confined us in a playpen?!,” my response is, you turned out OK.

We graduated from public courts to the hard core: a tennis club. We wore white; I bought collared shirts, lost the Tees. We found tennis players of the more-than-once-a-week variety are a breed apart. They are intense. At changeover, they sweat in puddles, towel off and guzzle electrolytes. They mutter things like, “Keep my head up. Got to focus.” Golfers loiter around greens, tees or the bar at the 19^th hole. They banter. There are more golf jokes in existence than Avogadro’s Number. Number of tennis jokes: zero, nil, zip.

“Let me have men about me that are fat; Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’nights: Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much …” Caesar’s besties were golfers, fond of set tee-times on weekends, cruising the links in chariots, and drinking from the amphora cart. He feared Cassius, a tennis player, sandals covered in clay court grit, who carried his own water jug, and plotted when to drop shot a slow opponent.

Tennis players are energetic. Theodore Roosevelt’s idea of a fun day was a ten-mile trek across the veldt to shoot a lion. It only makes sense that he was a tennis player. In 1902, he installed a tennis court at the White House. Members of his Cabinet, Elihu Root, Philander P. Knox, et. al., were dragooned into playing on the court, giving them the name “The Tennis Cabinet.” In contrast, William Howard Taft, a hefty 300-pounder, was the first President to openly admit playing golf.

Tennis players are competitive. Henry VIII of England was a fan. It is rumored he had Anne Boleyn’s head chopped off because she double faulted in a mixed doubles match against Jane Seymour and Thomas Cromwell. Understandable, considering it was match point.

Tennis players are thrifty, travel light. Consider:

• There are no daily greens fees or lift tickets on a club tennis court.
• Players require only three balls, don’t lose them unless they are playing on the top of the Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai, 1000 feet up, like Federer and Agassi. Golfers lose balls in greenery or poke them into water, costing many ducats.
• A tennis player needs but one racquet unless he is Nick Kyrgios and disposes of them like Kleenex.  A golfer needs 14 clubs to thrash around the course, but is on speaking terms with only three of them.
• A tennis bag weighs two to three pounds, can be slung over the shoulder when boarding the plane to Wimbledon. A golf bag weighs as much as thirty pounds, requiring a cart to transport it and adult beverages during play. Country club golfers have minions load and unload their carts. Tennis players do not have minions.

There is biological support for tennis. Tennis playing generates endorphins. These are chemicals produced by your pituitary gland and hypothalamus. They are your body’s cheerleaders. When you are running all over the court, they say to your brain, “Are we having a good time or what?!” They are also important to sex, but that is another story.

When we first started playing tennis, we played singles. We were young, thought little of punishing our bodies. Doubles required too many phone calls and voice messages to set up games. Father Time tugged at our sneakers and doubles became more attractive. With doubles, we had someone else sharing the blame. Also, with four guys playing, the chances of someone offering to buy the beer after tennis doubled.

Old guys’ tennis, where I practice the trade at the Racquet Club, is deliberate, with unhurried strolls to retrieve balls. There are arguments over the score since calling out the score before serving is largely ignored. When the score is called out, it is not heard or, if heard, forgotten. At changeovers, conversation revolves around hips, knees, and the names of recommended orthopedic surgeons.

There is still nothing like stepping out on a freshly brushed court in the morning and saying, “Serve ‘em up!” Let the endorphins flow.