Growing up in a sports family, I was destined to be athletic…right? My mom was a swimmer, my dad coached my brother’s hockey teams. And what did I do? Complain about being tired after doing literally any type of physical activity.
So when I decided to have a member of the club tennis team teach me how to play, I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Still I put on my cutest tennis outfit (cause that’s all that matters, right?) and met senior Drew Sciscione at the tennis courts.
Drew has been playing tennis for years and has been on the club team for two, so I was basically getting a lesson from a pro. Swinging a racket and hitting a ball; how hard could that be?
Well, pretty hard as it turns out. The first thing I learned was how to serve. You have to keep your feet behind the line on the court which was really hard to do and also get the ball of the net. After practicing that a few dozen times and almost, but not quite nailing it, we moved on to actually playing.
Once I got the swing of things it was pretty easy to hit the ball back and forth. We weren’t play for points yet, just practicing the game so there was no pressure.
The hardest part of it all was all the running I was doing trying to get to the ball or chasing it after I didn’t hit it. I thought it couldn’t get worse until Drew introduced the scoring aspect of the game.
“So there are three sets in a match. A set is composed of games where the first player to win six games wins the set. A game goes zero, fifteen, thirty, forty, and game,” Drew explained.
Sound confusing? That’s because it is. Apparently fifteen equals one, thirty equals two, and forty equals three. I don’t know why the creators of the game couldn’t just say that in the first place, but I guess if you think about it this used to be a sport played primarily by wealthy people in history so maybe they tried to make it confusing on purpose.
After getting the basics of scoring down, I was ready to play a real set (see, I’m even up on the lingo now!) Too bad I lost. But hey I just learned the rules and who’s really shocked anyway?
By the end of my lesson I was playing like I had been playing tennis for about an hour. But what did you expect? I’m not gonna become Serena Williams that fast. I learned that tennis is no joke though and it takes a lot of practice and hard work. It’s more than just bouncing the ball around, it takes skill and focus. No wonder the club team holds practice every night!
While I don’t think I’ll be starting my tennis career anytime soon, I’m glad I learned the proper techniques and the game. Shoutout to all the tennis players out there — you guys are crazy talented athletes. Now it’s time for me to ice my tennis elbow!