For Thanksgiving last year I wrote a post saluting my old tennis coach. This year I don't have anything tailored for the holiday, so I'm going to reprint a piece I wrote for the most recent issue of TENNIS Magazine about the difficulties that come with combining two lifelong loves of mine. It does end with a thank you of its own. Other than that, I'll just say that today I'm thankful to be able to write these kinds of articles for a living.
As for tennis in 2008, see what I'mnot* going to remember fondly in my turkey shoot post over at ESPN.com. What am I thankful for? Most of all, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer for making tennis the best that it's ever been. I don't need much more than those two guys.*
Have a good holiday.
*
When it comes to getting psyched up before they play, team-sports guys have it easy. They punch each other in the biceps, reach down for a low-five and up top for a knuckle bump, or, if all else fails, they gather around an inspirational wild man—think of the NFL’s Ray Lewis or the NBA’s Kevin Garnett—who works them into a collective bloodlust.
None of this is available to tennis players. We’re solitary souls who must get our competitive rage flowing by ourselves. What are our options? You might try to mimic Bob and Mike Bryan’s flying chest bump with your doubles partner, but that seems like a recipe for a career-ending injury rather than match-winning inspiration. A quick scan around the lounges at many pro tournaments reveals that the world’s best players opt for a safer method: They blast music through their ear phones.
I’ve played tennis since I was 8, with varying degrees of seriousness. I’ve been fanatical about music for almost as long. As a junior and college player in the 1980s and ’90s—in the age of the Sony Walkman and Maxell cassette tape—I tried dozens of songs, by everyone from Public Enemy to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers to the Sex Pistols, to help me get fired up for matches. It’s admittedly a lot to ask of a pop tune; after a few early mishits or a service break, it’s tough to keep any kind of inspirational sound going in your head. But if nothing else, these songs have formed a soundtrack to my tennis life. It begins with Top 40 hits from the ’80s, which I heard over fuzzy FM stations on the way to junior tournaments in central Pennsylvania. Each summer I’d take trips to small towns around the state with my friend and fellow player Jeff. On the way home after a day of matches, we’d doze off in the back seat of our moms’ cars as the radio buzzed in and out, keeping us half-awake with its static and the latest offerings from legendary artists of the moment like Cyndi Lauper and the Fixx.
What did we listen to on the way to a tournament, when we needed a jolt of confidence? Well, it was 1982 or ’83 and we had recently seen Rocky III. Yes, I’m afraid it was the dreaded “Eye of the Tiger,” by Survivor. One of us had a blank tape that contained only that song, recorded over and over—why waste time rewinding? We would put it in as we approached a tournament site. At one event near Lancaster, we turned up the volume and lowered the windows as we drove up the gravel road that led to the courts. Our message was clear to everyone within earshot—“It’s the eye of the tiger/ It’s the thrill of the fight”—but perhaps a little frightening to some parents—“The last known survivor stalks his prey in the night.” As we parked and a dozen heads turned our way, I wish I could say that Jeff and I didn’t step out of the car wearing matching Wayfarer-style sunglasses. But I think we did. Either way, the song didn’t do its job. I lost in the final.
My taste in music had developed a bit by the time I joined my high school tennis team in 9th grade. I was a Rolling Stones fan, and my favorite song of theirs was the infamous “Sympathy for the Devil,” with its sinister historical riddles and cheesy-but-kinda-scary “whoo-hoo” background vocals.
Near the end of our team’s season, I lent a Stones tape to my doubles partner, Mike. Whatever the song’s lyrical message, the two of us began to put “Sympathy” in our Walkmans and listen to it at the same time before matches. During the local district championships, we sat together in the team van and nodded our heads as viciously as we could to the song’s tribal beat. As the week went on and we kept winning, we began to hum that beat back and forth between points. It worked: Mike and I played to the same groove, and we ended up winning the tournament. Heading home in the van after the final, the two of us were revved up, joyous. We listened to “Sympathy” for the thousandth time and pounded the tops of the seats in front of us, to the extreme annoyance of our teammates.
My musical tastes expanded further in college. I spent an inordinate amount of my first semester at Swarthmore College near Philadelphia borrowing dormmates’ CDs and creating mix tapes out of them. In the spring, I made one to listen to during our tennis team’s annual spring break trip to California, where we would play our rivals for the No. 1 ranking in the NCAA’s Division III, UC-Santa Cruz, on their home courts.
This was our Super Bowl. In my four years on the team, we would play Santa Cruz for the Division III national title twice, winning once and losing once. On this day, they were ranked No. 1 and stocked with upperclassmen; we featured three freshmen, myself included.
My tape had begun as a hard-rock mix, then detoured into softer territory. It wasn’t designed as pump-up music. But as our team made the nervous walk to the courts to warm up, one of our seniors, Vivek, hit the play button on his boom box. The familiar, towering opening chords of the first song on the tape, Traffic’s “Dear Mr. Fantasy,” resounded.
Vivek put the box on a bench nearby and we started hitting. The early songs were appropriately hard-edged—Bob Dylan’s sarcastic “Positively 4th Street,” some early, punky U2. A few minutes later, the Santa Cruz team took over the remaining courts. One of their seniors plunked his own box down on the bench nearest them. He pressed play with what I thought was a hint of disdain. As the first notes thumped out, I knew we’d been routed in the psych-up contest. It was Led Zeppelin’s primal, unmistakable “Whole Lotta Love.” As the tape continued, it became clear we were going to get Led Zeppelin II in its entirety.
Part of me scorned the lack of imagination, but a more honest part had to hand it to them for staying focused on what was important: Zep’s grinding guitar and banshee vocals quite simply made you want to crush someone. The wisdom of this approach became clearer as my own tape, now barely audible, played on. It no longer seemed so inspiring, or even all that manly. The final straw came when I heard the opening lines of the Chiffons’ 1960s girl-group classic, “He’s So Fine”—“He’s so fine/Wish he were mine.” I closed my eyes in pain and whispered, “Oh, God, not this,” then jogged off the court as inconspicuously as I could to stop the tape. When I got back, one of my teammates asked, with a slight smile, “Tignor, what have you been listening to?” I had no good answer. We would have to use Santa Cruz’s music for motivation. We lost.
That was 20 years ago. In that time, the boom box has given way to the iPod, a device that has made zoning out before matches almost mandatory. I could psych myself up with the Chiffons in peace if I wanted to now, but I compete only sporadically these days. A year or so ago, I set up a match at a club on the other side of Manhattan from my office. It was a nice evening, so I set out across the city on foot. I scrolled through the songs on my iPod and finally settled on one of my favorites, one that I thought would brace me for the match: Dylan’s “Queen Jane Approximately.” Its stately rhythm suited my walking pace, and the soaring harmonica solo—on this evening, I could imagine that Dylan was bending notes against the sky—was a perfect soundtrack for the sunset that was lighting up Manhattan’s skyscrapers.
Then the song ended. I walked into the club in a daze. It was too much. I couldn’t focus—that harmonica was stuck in my head—and ended up losing. I wondered if an activity as cerebral and in the moment as tennis can be affected at all by music, the purpose of which is to take you out of yourself. If Bob Dylan couldn’t make a difference, who could?
A week or so later, that question was answered by a single booming, overamped drumbeat. I heard it while sitting in a New York bar, but it was powerful enough to transport me back to my teenage years in Pennsylvania.
In the mid-’80s, I had played in a weekend winter league in my hometown’s indoor club. Every Sunday I got in my parents’ Honda Accord and popped in a tape of Run-DMC’s “Rock Box.” I’d turn the volume up to ear-splitting levels and make the drive through the small, snow-covered town to the club. The streets were deserted, a far cry from the Queens neighborhoods where this music was born. But that’s what made its energy, its screaming guitar and laughably bombastic lyrics—“I’m drivin’ a Caddy/You’re fixin’ a Ford”—so galvanizing. These three guys from the boroughs had turned themselves into superheroes. And they understood a harsh fact of sports, and life: For victory to mean anything, someone else had to lose. Driving the Caddy isn’t half as sweet if the other guy isn’t fixing the Ford. It’s not a pretty thing to say, but winning a tennis match wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying without the knowledge that your opponent lost.
“Rock Box” always ended as I pulled up to the club. Every week I played a match with the words ringing in my head. Every week I won. So here’s a belated thank you and salute to Run, DMC, and their late DJ, Jam Master Jay, for—accidentally, no doubt—giving one tennis player the best inspiration he's ever had.