Junior Junior Tennis

Well, it seems the Little One has a new passion in her short life: tennis.

It began back in July. We spent a weekend at a relative’s summer house, which just happened to have a badminton court. Little One showed a desire to play with the big kids, so they humored her, but what she also showed was a talent with a badminton racket. After the games ended, both my aunt and my wife worked with her and to their surprise she was able to hit the birdie over the net more often than not with a heckuva good swing for a not-quite-five-year-old.



(Just a quick background note: My wife started playing tennis, at her own prompting and no one else’s, around the age of six or seven. She’d spend hours volleying off the garage door. Some lessons followed, then junior tennis and high school tennis. She went to two colleges on tennis scholarships, and at her peak was ranked somewhere in the top one hundred women players in the United States … My maternal aunt, her husband, and one of their daughters are all active in tennis, having played for many, many years. They even had me and my brother out on the court when we were little ’uns. My cousin coaches at a local high school. So, my Little One has some definite, invaluable advantages already going for her …)

Her birthday was about six weeks ago, and my aunt and uncle bought her a junior tennis racket and a bag of balls. She immediately took to it, and we had to teach her, with a little verbal force, not to swing the racket in the house. You know, glass cabinets, flat screen TV, one-year-old sister, etc. So she makes the knob of the door leading out to the deck the permanent hanging place for the racket and her net of balls. Hint hint?

About three weeks ago my wife and I went out to the deck. It was a beautiful fall day before the leaves fell, almost shorts weather, and we spent a good hour, hour-and-a-half out there. My wife began the first lessons: shake hands with the racket, trace out the letter “C” in the air, hit with one hand, hit with the center of the racket. Before we knew it she was belting them off the deck, over my wife’s head and out in the yard. I positioned myself out there and she had me running all over the yard.



The problem is, she gets a little greedy and whacks away with both hands on the racket, swinging for the fences. That iconic image of Mark McGuire swinging at the plate, breaking the home run record in all his ’roided glory, flashed through my mind. Later, I think I see flashes of Serena Williams digging in and smashing them over the net with incredible force, but that could only be parental pride peeking out.

So we keep reminding her to hit forehand with one hand. Yes, she’s still lacking a bit in strength, being only five, but it will come, my wife assures her. And she’s already working on the head game with the Little One. Psychological coaching. Did you notice how you felt when you blasted that ball way over Daddy’s head? Or, did you hear that nice fat sound when you hit the ball with the center of the racket? Yeah? Didn’t it feel good? Yeah? Remember that feeling!

We’ve been out about four times already, and I’m going out again with her later this afternoon after Patch goes down for her afternoon nap. Now that autumn’s fully here I have to spend about ten minutes sweeping leaves off the deck. We have a broom handy to scoop out balls that ricochet and wind up underneath the deck. As a corollary we’re also working on throwing overhand (underhand tosses are still a bit random), and I noticed she’s got a deceptive arm, hurling something like a knuckleball or slider at me. She takes about fifteen minutes to get warmed up, normal according to the wife, during which she slices and hooks balls here and there, and sometimes even completely misses. But she stays focused, and soon she’s volleying them straight over me out into the yard. Sometimes they go into the neighbor’s yard. Sometimes she fires one right at my head and I have to duck or else eat a Penn (and maybe lose a tooth).

My wife is working late tonight, otherwise she’d be out there with us, tossing the ball at the Little One, coaching her, praising her, both of them ecstatic. And I would be out in the yard, waiting for the yellow balls to come flying over the deck wall.

I will gladly spend hours in the yard chasing every one of her sky-high returns, without complaint.