The trouble with tennis

The biggest trouble with tennis is that I am not very good at it. I did not take up racquet sports of any kind until I was in college, and then it was racquetball, which, I will admit, is fairly easy to learn. (Harder to get good at, but easy enough to learn, as long as you are somewhat coordinated). Tennis on the other hand, is rather trickier. When we were unable to play racquetball for a while, Benjamin bought us tennis racquets and we proceeded to teach ourselves to play by watching tennis on TV. So, we understand the rules, and the way it ought to look when played correctly, but are very far from reaching that goal. My main problem is that I either hit shots way long (attempting to hit the non-existant wall) - I once lobbed a ball over the very high fench and into an adjoining swimming pool, or way short, trying to get a kill shot, as it is called in racquetball. Now, it isn't that I do these things on purpose - no, my hand and arm just react when I see the ball. Retraining is proving quite a challenge. And then there is the racquet itself - the handle is so much bigger, and the racquet so much heavier. And there is no wrist strap to hold it to you if you let go...

I bring up tennis because we took advantage of the lovely weather yesterday to play a couple of sets, and because Wimbledon has started. We are casual tennis watchers, but we do follow it, especially at Wimbledon. Ah, grass court tennis - will Rafael Nadal finally beat Federer somewhere other than on clay? Will Serena or Venus pull out another title? Will Andy Roddick finally live up to some of his promise? Who knows - all will be reveled over the next two weeks.