Parting Shot: Racquets do the talking

This was my last match with Samar.

We’d been playing once a week for a year while he was on sabbatical from his teaching job in Canada. A few days earlier, he had told me his time in New York was up; he and his family loved the city, but their life was elsewhere. After our final hitting session, we stood by our cars and wished each other luck. Driving out of the parking lot, I gave him a last wave, knowing I probably wouldn’t see him again.

That’s the way of the tennis friendship, isn’t it? People pass in and out of our playing lives all the time. Some you become close with; maybe a doubles partner or a league teammate. And when you throw a party, it has been my experience that your tennis buddies will be among the first to ring your doorbell. But most relationships that are forged on the court stay on the court.

Which, I’ve come to think, is what makes them so valuable to our adult lives. If you have a family, a mortgage and a job, you don’t have time or room for many more serious friendships.

[Tennis] connects us with people we might not meet otherwise, and gives us a place—the court—where the worries of daily life, of work and kids and money, are strictly excluded.

That’s where tennis comes in. It connects us with people we might not meet otherwise, and gives us a place—the court—where the worries of daily life, of work and kids and money, are strictly excluded.

Reality, however, isn’t. Your tennis friendships can offer a more-nuanced, less-cartoonishly “polarized” version of American life than the one we see on cable TV and social media.

Over the years, I’ve received a lot of inside info from my opponents and partners: About the stresses and satisfactions of New York public-school teaching; that not all hedge funds mint money; how farcical, and fun, the art world can be; the stories that a dating coach hears; the frenzied commitment it takes to be a public defender. You might even find that someone with different politics from you can be your doubles partner or your teammate, rather than your enemy.

Even if your tennis friend isn’t the chatty type, the sport offers another, wordless way of interacting. For the year that Samar and I played, we didn’t talk much. We nodded, said hello, complained about our most recent injuries, and started our warm-up.

It was in the rallies that the dialogue began.

He was a risk-taking shotmaker who, if you gave him any time at all, would punish you with a cold winner; he went to the same spots all the time, but I still wasn’t ready. That meant I had to find a way to pre-empt him, to get the first strike in, to take an early chance I wouldn’t normally take. I looked forward to the unique challenge my matches with Samar offered, and the way I needed to leave my baseline comfort zone and think more proactively. Our bond was in our points, how we learned each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and how we reacted to them.

Every new tennis friend brings out a new side of us, and for every one who walks off our court, there’s one who walks on. I’m looking forward to seeing who I meet there next.