Twas The Night Before City Playoffs

Twas the night before city playoffs and all through the house, not a creature was stirring...except the one that should have been asleep! I'm sitting here surfing the internet and watching Oprah's big give. Hmmm....I hope I give big tomorrow! Big hard serves, big high lobs, big smashing overheads, big numbers on my side of the scoreboard! But most of all...I feel a big accomplishment, not because we have made it to the city playoffs, but because we didn't give up after being knocked out of the playoffs over and over and over again. We kept playing, we kept trying, we kept learning and finally we have arrived. But that is the funny thing about competition, we have arrived here and are feeling the satisfaction, but tomorrow after the match, we will be forward looking to our next dream....arriving here again at the next level of play. It may take us years again to arrive here or we may never arrive, but the journey is so exciting it can not be resisted! Tennis rules!!!

Is good sportsmanship still alive in tennis?

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!