After today's match, I pondered the question if good sportsmanship is still alive and well in tennis. The ladies we played didn't do anything wrong exactly, well...a couple of line calls, but beyond that they didn't do anything wrong. However, I felt that they didn't do a lot of things that were right. First of all, they beat us soundly in the first set. We gave them lots of positive comments, such as "good serve", "nice shot", "good return". They however, never even uttered the words, "Thank you."
During the second set, my partner and I decided just to be overly polite to ourselves. When one of us made a good shot, we would turn to each other and say.."nice shot" and the other person would reply "why, thank you!" and then the first person would reply," you are welcome!" It almost became entertainment to us, which of course relaxed us and we began to play better. Suddenly we found one of our opponents saying nice shot, good serve etc. while her partner became more and more agitated. She didn't seem to be having as much fun as the rest of us on the court. In fact, her actions became more aggressive. When returning loose balls, she began throwing them in the opposite directions from where we were standing so we had to chase them. She even hit a ball directly at me when my back was turned. (lucky her...she missed!) At the end of the match, yes, she did shake our hands. Mine is still tender from her strong squeeze. However, she did not say...good match, kiss my ..., nothing.
I thought about many of my matches over the years and realized that the competitiveness in us all is slowly eroding good sportsmanship. Myself included. While pondering this, I thought of some of the people I have played that have shown good sportsmanship and plan to incorporate some of these examples in my own game. My partner and I once played a team that would say "good call" when those tough line calls were made...even when they weren't in their favor. We marveled at that match. Thought it was interesting and wondered to each other why they would do that, but the next week we found ourselves doing it. Sometimes I still do it. Not as often though.
So I say to you all, lets bring the manners back into our game and enjoy the game and each other just a little more!
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The amateur tennis player is right - I'm the first to gripe about someone's bad sportsmanship, but am I guilty of it? Sometimes, absolutely! What I've learned is that the more I compliment a good shot or good serve that gets by me, the better my mental game is because I know the opponents aren't seeing my frustration. I guess good manners can actually be used as a strategy. But beyond that, it's just good manners to use good manners. I'm often so focused on the game I forget that I don't know ANYTHING about the lives of the people we're playing. If they're acting badly, maybe that's because something terrible or disheartening just happened in their lives. If they are just a nasty person in general, maybe I'm the only person that week who actually treated them as I'd like to be treated and not as I feel they DESERVE to be treated. Point is, if you want to embrace decency in life, you need to do it on the courts as well.
Having said all that, I behaved badly in a recent match (more toward the fans) and am well aware that this is a blog written by me and directed mainly AT me! :)
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