Housekeeping, Part 1

Great responses to the last (but one) posts by Steggy and me. I was just telling her the other day that I'm always a little torn writing myself or my family into the posts; a part of me asks, Does anyone really care, at all, about this personal stuff. . . or. . . isn't this going to sound self-involved at best, crushingly boring at worst?

In fact, I almost always feel a touch of dread when I hit the "publish now" button (kind of like when you just can't resist sending that email to a certain guy, or girl. . .) and brace for the worst, which is indifference. But it's amazing how enthusiastically so many of you respond to such posts. I don't want to get into Sally Fields territory here, because I can't think of anything that would be more mortifying. But this does make me think that the greatest asset of TennisWorld' is the site's ability to create authentic, valued relationships, even in this severely limited context. Sometimes, I think that's the most signature of human traits, the yearning for relationship.

Uh-oh. Here's that touch of dread again. . .

On the PTP (Psycho Tennis Parent)  issue that we've been bandying about, I have two things to add: Melanie Molitor named her daughter Martina Hingis after a tennis player. One from her own native land; one of her contemporiaries. With that start, is it not a miracle that Martina survived to become a Hall-of-Fame-grade pro? That she did suggests that the  Molitor/Hingis pairing is one of a great examples of the willing seller/willing buyer principle in tennis. It just so happened that the willing seller was very shrewd and wise parent/coach.

Just think of how outlandish this all is: You name your kid after Martina Navratilova, clearly hoping she will become a great tennis player. Then she does it. Makes me think I should have named Luke after Abraham Lincoln or something. . .

But the thing to remember is that there were probably about 3,456 ways that Melanie could have really screwed up the program, even with the kind of hellcat she had in little Martina. But she didn't. Surely that counts for a lot.

The late Karolj Seles was another person in Molitor's league. Because he was omnipresent at Monica's matches and tournaments (along with Monica's mom, Esther, and her brother, Zoltan), everyone tended to lump him together with all the other PTPs. But it was Karolj who got me to question the conventional wisdom about PTPs, and in a way that I didn't really address in the last post. So here goes.

Karolj's English was poor, and the Seleses were ethnic Hungarians. So when they first showed up on the scene, I introduced myself to Karolj (I'm still fluent in my mother tongue, despite my parents having been ardent assimilationist's), who was glad to have someone who could answer some of the inevitable questions that a person might have in an alien culture (or on the pro tour, for that matter). In fact, when Monica first won the French Open, Eurosport asked Karolj to sit for an extensive interview. Panicked, he asked if I could accompany him, to translate. I did.

Anyway, while sitting with Karolj in the player lounge at the U.S. Open one year, I made some fairly innocuous comment about how proud he must be the extraordinary degree of success Monica had achieved, so quickly. He responded with an extraordinary confession of his basic ambivalence - bordering on antipathy - toward the pro tour. It's been a long time, so you'll have to settle for the paraphrase:

I don't know, this life is so crazy! I worry a lot, I worry that Monica is going to turn into a neurotic by the time she's 25 . . . that she'll drive herself too hard and have some kind of breakdown. . . that's she'll never settle down and lead a "normal" life. . . I don't know what to do. All these  years, I've been trying to get her to slow down, but she wants this - she's focused on this like crazy. All she wants to do is win at tennis. I'm just hanging on to her tail, going along for the ride. But what can I do? I am her father, if she needs me to be there with her, I must go. It isn't that easy for us, doing all this traveling, having no real home. It's very hard on my wife, too. But we have no real choice about this. I am Monica's coach and father, I need to be with her every step of the way because she needs me, and she tells me she needs me. It's not because I want to, or because I love being around tennis tournaments all my life.

I suppose it's possible that Karolj was making all this up, trying to play down the rumors - or, in many cases, assumption - that he was a Psycho Tennis Parent. But I don't think so. I trusted the guy. As Hank (Dunlop Maxply), Steggy, and others have suggested, you don't necessarily have to drag your kid, kicking and screaming, to tennis; in fact, it's possible that your kid(s) will drag you - kicking and screaming, and you end up on CBS, caught gnawing on your fingernails while your kid lays a whuppin' on Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer in Arthur Ashe Stadium.

That conversation - and doesn't its contents really confirm some of the things we're apt to overlook about the complexity and unpredictability of human nature? - made me re-think the entire PTP mythology. There are Psycho Tennis Kids (this time, we mean it in a good way!) out there too, and I imagine that they're a well-represented group on the pro tour.

Maybe all the top pros (and we're talking Top 100, men and women) weren't as stubborn, willful and independent as young Monica. But I believe very few - if any - were unwilling buyers of what their parents - or surrogate parents (as in national team coaches) - were selling. It's just too hard to imagine them having become so adept and successful without having a deep, abiding passion - no matter how coy they may want to be about it.  And that's also where things  sometimes get interesting.

There is a kind of vanity that some people with a gift possess, and it often leads them to repudiate or rebel against the gift. For when a tennis player - whether it's the young Andre Agassi, or Serena Williams - is busy screaming, Look at me, I am much more than a tennis player! he or she is often just throwing a little jealousy tantrum directed at his or her talent.

I am much more than my tennis, look at me, the essential me, not my stupid talent! There's a terrible sort of insecurity about that demand (I mean, isn't it tacitly agreed that we value - or ignore -people for who they are, not what they do?). There's an overpowering narcissism, too. How oblivious and egotistical do  you have to be to so blithely ignore or reject the gift of talent, especially when talent is just a gift. An outrageously unfair, undeserved, unearned, gift. And you thought it was unfair that some people got great looks?

Anyway, that's a bit of a digression meant to explain why so many players will not step up and admit how much or how deeply they actually love the game. They don't really want the game to upstage their selves; they would rather be seen as pretty than as having a pretty tennis game. It's only human nature. In the long run, though, I believe that very few - if any - players who don't, at some overt or disguised level, love to play ever make it in tennis.

More housekeeping issues (itty-bitty stuff) later.