All episodes here:
https://westy.substack.com/t/tennis
Sometimes on court, in the heat of competition, I will say the worst things to myself, about myself – mostly in the 2nd person.
“Grr. You, again?”
I can fixate on a “bad shot” or a double fault at 40-15, even if I’m up 4 games to 2. Like, I’ll be serving at 40-30, with another chance to win the game, and that shot sometimes haunts me right into Deuce.
Battered on rocks by waves. Every missed shot another wave taking me under.
Perhaps I’m addicted to the feeling of drowning.
When things are perfect, that’s when you need to worry most.
– Drew Barrymore –
Not every match, but every-so-often, I find myself eye-to-eye with a host of personal demons, dealing with my most critical self. I win a fair amount, but even after victories, sometimes I’ll walk off the court feeling like I’ve lost – that somehow I should have won with more authority. That I never took full control over the game. That I didn’t prove enough.
When I begin to tire in a match, bad habits always threaten to resurface. Physical fatigue can actually heighten focus, but only if you keep mental fortitude to block out pain, tolerate error, and stick to your game plan. Your mind comprises at least 1/2 the gas tank at ignition, and then, when you’re running on fumes, it’s all you have.
An hour or two into matches, after a few inevitable egregious errors, I can lose my nerve and become so deliberate with my movements that I almost forget how to swing. In these moments, my mind disconnects from my body, and my form falls apart. In the end, my biggest battle on court is not to lose confidence over mistakes, large or small.
I am a perfectionist in all I do. It’s not fun. I wouldn’t recommend it.
The expectations I have for myself were set long ago by a smooth cruise through early life. Until I was about 33, everything swung my way. Sustained personal, professional, and social success came with such consistency, that I whole-hog believed some of the myths about myself I’d bought into.
You’re made for the world.
Your creativity is relevant and vital.
You have nothing to lose.
You care not what others think.
You were born to win.
As success piled on, however, these thoughts made me a bit lazy, and I realized too late they were terrible armor against downturns in luck, skill, or circumstance.
With age came some inevitable decay. I made professional mistakes from which I couldn’t recover. The world turned out to be way bigger and colder than I imagined, and I started to lose more than win at life. At 53, most of those growing pains are in the rear view. But I still have yet to find the success that seemed inevitable in early adulthood.
Tennis came back into my life a couple years ago after a 15 year break, and through the game, I reconnect to my youth of endless potential. Even after the lengthy break, I retained a modicum of excellence and athleticism, but still, every once in a yellow-felt while, tennis counterintuitively holds a mirror up to everything I haven’t been able to attain. Furthermore, I left the competitive arena of the game in my late teens, because I couldn’t handle losing, and I still sometimes find myself in a 16-year-old’s arrested emotional state when I don’t win.
Yet again, the more you strive for some kind of perfection or mastery—in morals, in art or in spirituality—the more you see that you are playing a rarified and lofty form of the old ego-game, and that your attainment of any height is apparent to yourself and to others only by contrast with someone else’s depth or failure.
– Alan Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966) –
Is it possible to squelch the worst self-perspectives on a tennis court?
Tennis does take me to a dark place sometimes, where every missed shot (“unforced” error as they go) becomes a fractal of the disappointment I have in myself. I guess one reason I can’t stop playing, though, is that stepping on the court presents an opportunity to finally vanquish demons and fulfill my potential.
That’s a lot of pressure, though.
Can tennis be therapy? Perhaps.
I mean, I improve my game every time I play, but getting better at tennis is a glacial, incremental process. Getting better at life, especially when there may be less of it ahead than behind you, is even more difficult.
The worst is when your effort is evident. No one wants to look like they’re trying too hard at any endeavor, especially one that requires mastery of mind and body. The trick is to look effortless, even if you have no clue what you’re doing.
All perfect accomplishment in art or life is accompanied by the curious sensation that it is happening of itself – that it is not forced, studied, or contrived.
– Alan Watts –
Light flows through your body at the perfect execution of a task that brings you joy and meaning. The light phosphoresces you. You are not “radiant,” though. The moment is not about you. You are channeling. You are radiance itself.
Practice points you towards the light, but practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes you tolerate imperfection.
The feeling of perfection is more about performing at, or exceeding, your limitations, than it is about setting world records or winning championships.
That is to say, you don’t have to be “the best” to be perfect; only your best you.
I am able to achieve the elusive state of “imperfection acceptance” when I perform music and write stories. Tennis is a little tricker.
On stage, it’s you and an audience, striving for connections that blur the lines between you and the crowd. Sometimes you miss a note; drop a word; mess up timing… If you’re “on,” however, “mistakes” are almost imperceptible, even to you. As long as you end up where you intend, the journey is fulfilled.
Honor thy error as hidden intention.
– Brian Eno –
On the tennis court, however, I don’t play at a high enough level to perform for crowds. There is no transference of energy from me to other people – only from me through a racquet into a ball. There’s a twisted intimacy standing alone against an opponent in a singles match, but it’s a matador’s dance with a bull, not a tango with a lover.
In the thick of a match, I am alone with my thoughts, as stoic as possible so as not to give away my end-game, or my spiraling emotions, up or down. Unfortunately my poker face can turn into a tell. On a tennis court, though, whether you give away all or none your moves, you are your most relevant opponent and teammate all at once, at any given moment.
There’s no such thing as a blowout in tennis. 6-0 sets are always closer than the score indicates. Legendary tennis coach Craig O’Shannessy (Novak Djokovich, Team Italy, Team Australia…) uncovered that, on average, number 1 players in the world win 90% of their matches, but they do so winning only 55% of their total points.
That is to say, only a few points decide matches, and elite players can call on perfection when it counts.
So what puts them over the top?
Improvement is an elusive dynamic. In all areas of our life, we look to get better day by day. We seek to elevate our best and reach new heights.
But making your best better is not always the optimal way. What about eliminating the lowest-performing areas you are trying to improve?
Improving your best 20% is not easy. Removing your worst 20% is much easier to accomplish and can certainly elevate your overall performance.
- Craig O’Shannessy -
The upstream trick is not to focus on your worst 20% in such a way that you allow it to define you.
Your mistakes are yours, yes.
But you are not your mistakes.
Off and on in the heat of competition, ever since high school, a couple sportscasters named Craig and John will sit in an imagined press box in my head and call my matches. They think they’re broadcasting to millions, but oof, I’m their only viewer. Jokes on them?
Trust me, Tennis Channel announcers in your head scrutinizing every point you play is not a winning headspace. Too often, a 40-15 game goes to Deuce because I can’t let go of losing the point that made it 40-30, especially if I double-fault. All the lead balloons in my life sometimes channel themselves through Craig and John when I miss an “easy” shot.
“Craig, can you believe Westy put that shot long?”
“Oof, John. He really looked lost out there.”
“What do you think? Stress from the- you know, that thing he screwed up 20 years ago?”
“You have to believe that enters into it. His mother was telling us the other day that-”
“Enough, guys. I have to serve. What’s the score, again?”
For the most part, I can pull myself out of these dark thought-spirals with soothing perspectives on my game. Like, that “that double-fault at Ad-Out to lose a set wasn’t ‘how I played today.’ To even get to that point required your making a brilliant passing shot at 30-40 to get to deuce…”
Ultimately (hopefully), tennis teaches even the most seasoned pro that your game is not defined by your worst moments on the court. Taking this lesson off the court, your life is not defined by your worst moments, either. For the perfectionist, these are difficult perspectives to achieve, especially in our mediated social universe that revels in cringe and cut-down.
After an error, focusing on the result, as opposed to the decision-making, is a death knell.
“Right church, wrong pew!” Coach Winston will shout from the sidelines after seeing you hit a shot in the correct direction, but with all the wrong pace, spin, arc, etc… Many many times in the course of play, I have at least to give my mind props for being in the right place, lest I spiral into insecurity.
Most of the time, the risk in even the most dangerous pursuit is not in the pursuit itself, but in the belief in yourself to see it through. Tennis isn’t dangerous, per se, like, say, brain surgery, because you can afford to make mistakes. Having faith in yourself and in your game is the core risk when you step onto the court.
If you don’t take risks, you’ll have a wasted soul.
- Drew Barrymore -