Tennis Practice

If I’m being honest, I don’t remember the last time I picked up a tennis racket, in fact if I remember correctly, it would have most likely been sometime between the 4th and 6th grade. Now, nearly 5 years, 2 COVID lockdowns, and one Australian Open viewing later, something has prompted me to give the game another go.

What inspired me to randomly go grab my racket from the garage you ask? Well, that would be the Australian Open Finals which I randomly tuned into on TV on the 21st of Feb. Now, although I had grown up playing tennis, even competitively since the 2nd grade, I never really kept up with the professional aspect of the sport. However, what I did know was that Serena Williams being beaten by a rookie was without a doubt a big deal; Naomi Osaka was being called the future of the sport and taking the world by a storm.

So, I decided to put my work aside and sit down for a good 2 hours on a Sunday to watch the finals between Jen Brady and Osaka and then, the game which crowned Ivan Dodig and Filip Polasek the Men’s Doubles Champions.

It was only then that I had realized how much I had forgotten about the game and how satisfying it was to win a game. Although, I thrived in the sport when I was a kid, at some point I grew out of touch with it; primarily because I dedicated more time to badminton which is similar in many ways but still very different, and even though I missed it dearly, I never saw a window of opportunity for me to get back to playing it.

In fact I think that part of me stopping my tennis training had to do with the fact that one of my coaches said that playing both sports at the same time was not beneficial to one another; i.e. because of vast differences between grip and stance etc.

On another note though, watching Osaka bring home the trophy was sensational. It reminded me of how fast paced the game was and how heavily it relied on technicality and athleticism, i.e. precision, angling and power, whereas in badminton for example, the game relies more on the pace and ability to play the shuttle out of the opponent’s reach.

I was in awe watching the finals as a calm and collected Naomi Osaka kept her composure and then proceeded to skillfully and effortlessly win the game with copious amounts of technique and athleticism. It’s almost as if she knew all along that she would win and she saw Brady’s blind spots from the very start.

As for the men’s doubles, I was awestruck when I realized I had forgotten how intense a game could get and how quickly points could be won or lost and how it relied much less on rallies but placement. Once again, I was shocked by how each of them maintained such calmness while playing under such massive amounts of pressure when the winning duo recovered from a pretty bad lead.

Either way, I was delighted by both wins, I was rooting for Naomi from the start, especially since she had done so much to use her platform to promote the Black Lives Matter movement and her persona really shined in the way that she was humbled by the whole experience. Moreover, I found myself in awe of how much she has accomplished being an Asian, considering how much our culture tends to often times restrict the bounds of what girls like myself and many others from our side of the world can dream about achieving.

I had a renewed sense of energy and immediately made a pitstop to the store next to our house to get a tennis ball. Now, things weren’t ideal, I didn’t have a coach or a proper court close by , but if there was anything that lockdown had taught me, it was that you just had to make do with what was available to you. And so with a new sense of determination I vowed to myself to  take 30 minutes out of each Sunday without fail to make 40 volleys each on  forehand and backhand off a wall, 10 good serves and if my little brother was up to it, hopefully a little match which could never get too intense for the fear of breaking a window…

As to whether I want to play competitively again, I’m not so sure, but it’s most definitely a huge stress reliever for me and not to mention a really fun way to spend time, in fact I a part of me is even hoping that I would be able to head to a court with some of my friends sometime, since a few of my friends  used to train with when we were kids all the way back in primary school!