Point of View: The Teen Within

After interviewing Cory Lillie and Kyle Solomon about the soon-to-be East End Sharks, a nascent high school ice hockey team that ought to be fun to write about this winter and in winters to come, I went onto the last court open to play that remained, the hard court, to practice my serve, which had been tweaked the day before at an adult clinic at the East Hampton Indoor Club.

I recommend these Wednesday morning clinics given by Lisa Jones: You can always learn something. Every week it’s a different stroke, and by the time they go around again you’ll probably be in need of reminding.

Having reached an age when things can go south pretty quick, I try to pace myself, though the high-strung teenager (interestingly, I string my rackets loosely now, preferring power to control, as I suppose an out-of-control teenager might) remains within. I was called to account the other night by a player on a neighboring court who had had it with my acting-out and told me in no uncertain terms to quit it. I stared. He glared. And so the confrontation ended.

I had been justly admonished. I who had recently written, in good faith, a column about how keeping your head when all about you were losing theirs (not literally, of course, at least in our immediate environs) was the key to winning tennis.

Shame, shame. Go and sin no more.

I emerged from a full immersion in the subsequent serving clinic reborn, competitively rearmed and, dare I say it, morally so as well. Well, maybe I oughtn’t dare to say that, though my renewed intention is to speak softly and carry a big racket, to let my racket make the racket in other words.

I’m hoping my serve will be salvific in this regard. What is the Ross School’s motto? Ah, “Know thyself in order to serve.” A good one, wouldn’t you say, for a school to which a tennis academy’s attached? With me it may be the other way round.

The rest is silence . . . or license. It’s all how you look at it. We’ll see.