Point of View: Tranquilo
Were victory and defeat becoming the imposters they are, I wondered the other morning as I told Mary how I’d perhaps arrived at long last at the threshold of wisdom, to wit, that being calm was the key to winning tennis, if not to life itself.
“That’s why meditation’s so big, why yoga’s so big — everyone wants to be calm — mental toughness is simply to be calm,” I said, recalling that I had been cast out of the only meditation session I’d ever attended because I couldn’t sit still.
Lately (and armed with new knees) I’ve begun playing singles tennis again, thanks to workouts with Rob Balnis of East End Physical Therapy, though the first time out in Monday’s B league at East Hampton Indoor — the first time as a singles player in eight years — I was decidedly not calm, and thus rather quickly proceeded to self-destruct, abetted as time went on by my energetic opponent, who almost fully overcame a 5-0 first-set deficit before taking me apart in the second.
Kevin McConville, the head pro at Buckskill, set me straight. Don’t try to be a world-beater, forget about hitting winners, simply play well enough to win, and don’t muff the serve returns.
That advice, plus a two-hand backhand lesson — I asked him if he thought it were too late in life for me to learn it, and he said not at all — set me on a better path.
Forget world domination, become one with everything and you’ve won, the wins would come. And the losses too, presumably, but in the past two weeks I’ve not faced defeat. It will be interesting to see how the calmer me handles it. Will I treat it as the imposter it is, or will I continue to use the Synthroid defense to excuse my embarrassingly ill temper as the Prince Shark racquet with the compound fracture in the office reminds me I have habitually done. And, by the way, it’s not easy cracking the frame of a racquet on Har-Tru surfaces.
Calm, calm, Jack. Or, as I hear them say at the men’s soccer games, “Tranquilo, tranquilo!”
It’s the key to tennis, it’s the key to life.
An Aging Tennis Player’s Prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the shots I cannot get; the ability to return the ones I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.