Its no secret sports retailers love the Australian Open. Those lucky bastards who are pro tennis players make it look so easy, mugs like me get the bug to go out there and hit passing shots like Federer on the concrete courts across the nation. And so, it was with anticipation that Adam and I had a hit yesterday. A run down of the events for you:
- Temperature – high 20’s. Sunny.... Ugly.
- Equipment – Ads 15 year old Stellar racquets, with furry handle that produced a blister on my desk-pan hands. But quite fine for a hit – no excuse in the racquet. Tennis balls also were quite new, dam it.
- Stretching before game – none, I got there and Ad was walking towards the courts. Will presume he’d spent the morning lunging in his living room, waiting for his formidable opponent to arrive and stretch him around the court
- Courts – new, painted concrete in a new housing development, so walking through the gym and club made me feel I was wlaking into some sort of tournament atmosphere, …. But with no fans or crowd. They wanted to be there though reckon. Long and the short of it is, courts were no excuse.
- Opponent – Ad was a long time junior tennis player at school, so has some form, but like me has taken to less physical and more social persuits in recent years, but make no mistake – he is not on the same journey I am taking (or failing).
Surprisingly, the ball was hitting well, and my memories of days at Anglesea tennis courts and at school clinics came back. Even the top spin backhands were coming off. But inevitably this joy lasted for the 2-3 clean hits per rally I could muster, or until Ad decided he’d like to up the ante. Bastard.
The worst of it came when I decided to ‘serve’. I’m not sure about you, but I somehow seem to defy physics when it comes to both lack of service motion and connection, and the angle, distance and trajectory the ball travels away from the racquet. I managed to frame 2 balls over the 20 foot high fence and into a neighbours yard, never to be seen again. This was the last of my service attempts.
Some good rallies were had though, so theres something there. The search continues … although the tennis bug has bitten which is nice – we’ve made a plan to play perhaps fortnightly ... or less.
3rd Lesson – Booking a tennis court for an hour doesn’t mean you can call it an hours exercise when you played for 40 minutes and chatted for 20.
1 comment:
This is an outrage! I first read this series of blogs in good faith. Now I find myself addicted - a state of affairs the author could well be expected to have anticipated. I need my blog fix but for days there has been nothing. How am I to know how the author's fitness journey is progressing? I imagine him to be running tirelessly along the beaches of the Gold Coast only halting his back-to-back marathons to canoe across the vast flood plains that now apparently make up the bulk of the home of high culture that is Queensland. I imagine all those things because I have no actual information. What exercise is the author doing right now, I ask myself 100 times a day.
And, that's all I can do: ask. I cast my questions into the void hoping that one day an answer will return to me like a bird's cry across still water: clear, beautiful, arresting.
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