Me and Sports: Forgettable but Not Forgotten Past

Me and sports, we have a mutual understanding.  Our relationship is fine so long as I don’t cross a certain line.  That not-so-thin line between observing and playing.

I’d like to whack the person who came up with the saying  “practice makes perfect”–and slap anyone who continues to use it.  Practice ain’t no good when you’ve ain’t got no talent, and I have the unpleasant memories to prove it.  Lest you think I’m ad hoc rationalizing my failure to be dedicated to sports, I have this horrifying memory of stinking in soccer at a local rec camp in the summer when I was 8 or 9, during the age of innocence when I was far too young to rationalize and make excuses for myself.   I simply sucked and I knew it.

Of course, even a chimp can be taught sign language if it’s taught long enough.   Since I took tennis lessons since I was in elementary school, by the time I was high school, I could beat an athletically-inclined person who had never played the sport.  Since this statement, upon further reflection, is not particularly  impressive, I feel compelled to emphasize that:

1. I played competitively in tournaments.  Play, mind you, not win, which I did once in a little over ten tries.
2. I was on my high school’s varsity tennis team, which was one of the better teams in the county, in a position best characterized as “First Bench”*  I had the mighty impressive cumulative record of 10-2 at the varsity level, which some cynic (not I) would discount by pointing out that I only played when opponents were so weak even I can win in singles and when coach showed some sympathy and played me in doubles.

Now that I’ve become an office potato (as opposed to couch potato), there are times that I wonder, though, whether I really gave it my best shot.  Yes, my hand-eye-body coordination was (and is) so bad it’s a wonder I didn’t trip over myself walking and no, I didn’t work out or anything, but now that I don’t play at all, I realize my high school play wasn’t at the  nethermost of my athletic ability.  Having realized that I could have sunk lower than I was in high school because I actually have, I have to wonder how high I could have gone had I actually committed.

And committed, I probably wasn’t.  I never worked out, I never trained. I went to practice, took lessons and played minimum number of matches.  My first thought in losing the first set was I don’t want to play a third.  My inclination when I went down early is I want to get this over with.  Tennis, even more than golf, is a lonely game.  All alone in the court, if you’re not mentally tough you don’t have a chance.  And in that sense, I never gave myself a shot to win.

I’m far too shallow to have regrets in my short life, but the one I constantly carry is my implosion at the county tennis tournament when I filled in for third singles.  Having patted myself on the back with a come-from-behind victory in the preliminary round (I was down 0-3 in the first set), I proceeded to throw away the first round match in the main draw in a wholly uncompetitive play against an opponent who was at best on par with my level.

I have a buddy who was on the tennis team with me who won’t let go of my play that day–he lobbied for me to play–and I can’t say I blame him.  It was an unmitigated, unqualified disaster.  If I had a shred of mental toughness, the match would have been close.  True, unlike purely intellectual exercises, I’ve never enjoyed physical exertions so mental toughness to persevere in the physical was not my strong suit.  But that I never cared to even think about being tough, to gut it out, to see how high I can reach, that I essentially gave up in the first sign of trouble, is deeply disappointing and somewhat troubling.

If sports is a metaphor for life, and I think that’s more true than not, then what does my past in tennis say about where I am and where I’m going?

*  For those unfamiliar with high school tennis, there are seven players who play:  3 players for singles, labeled First, Second and Third Singles and 4 players who play doubles, deemed First and Second doubles.  It’s an unwritten rule that players are designated for a position from First Singles down to Second Doubles in their level of play.