Why does summer fly by so much more quickly than any other season? It’s July 4 before I know it, it’s August 1st before I know it, it’s—give me strength—time for the U.S. Open before I know it. This phenomenon is obviously tied up with our memories of summer vacations as kids, when three months of freedom weren’t squandered riding subways, holed up in offices, sweating on city streets. Summer doesn’t speed up for adults, it just doesn’t melt into one long block of time the way it once did.
For a tennis player, especially one whose courts remain tragically unlit, the passing of June 21st is the worst of all. Talk about coming early: How can the days start getting shorter, and my chances to play after work start to dwindle, before I’ve even found my slice serve? Yet it’s happening as we speak. Lights or no lights, though, this has been a productive season so far. I’ve discovered a new racquet, made by, of all companies, Yonex. I’ve hit a few topspin backhands into the court. I’ve run myself perilously close to dizziness on a couple of brutally humid afternoons. And I’ve had the satisfaction, on one occasion, of giving that aforementioned Yonex a good heave when I just couldn’t take it anymore.
Until last month, I thought that I was the only player at my courts who had ever thrown his racquet. Where I play is not a country club, but it isn’t a park, either—in other words, you don’t need to wear whites, but you do have to keep your shirt on. The crowd is mostly older, and the competition consists primarily of friendly pick-up doubles matches. This combination doesn’t lead to many full-blown meltdowns or hostile confrontations. But the other day my partner and I found ourselves delaying our match as a tall, gawky guy, who neither of us knew, ranted and raved through what seemed at first glance to be just another social doubles outing on the court next to ours. His screams resounded, his curses lingered in the air. Finally, the inevitable came: He lifted his racquet over his head and slammed it to the ground. My opponent and I watched all of this from our respective baselines before going ahead and playing a point. When we came to the net to collect the balls afterward, each of us had the same question: “Who’s the jerk?”
Unfortunately, another thought crossed my mind as I walked back to the baseline: “Is that what I look like when I throw my racquet?” The idea was embarrassing enough to make my face burn. How ugly and stupid it looked from the outside. I had no excuse, though; I’d been throwing my racquet—sporadically, not chronically—for years. These days I might do it two or three times a season. I’d like to say that I didn’t start out as a thrower, and actually I didn’t. I started out as a racquet kicker*. While my childhood hero was Bjorn Borg, I can remember seeing John McEnroe in his 1977 Wimbledon debut deliberately riling up the stunned fans at the All England Club by bouncing his racquet on the court and then kicking it along the grass. McEnroe has said that hearing their boos and hisses made him want to kick some more. In the summer of Johnny Rotten, another rebel Johnny had been born.
There were no boos in my case, but I can also remember spending a large part of at least one meaningless practice match in the early 80s kicking my racquet around a cracked court at my local park. Every few games brought another terrible error, which in turn brought my racquet to the ground, where I would then spin it, boot it, virtually torture it with my foot. At one point, nearly in tears, I sent it all the way from the net to the back fence, one small but enraged kick at a time. Afterward, one of the women who had been playing on the next court—and who knew my mom—walked over and told me she’d never seen anything like that, and that I’d ruined her weekly tennis game. Even my opponent, a friend, said, “You know, there’s something called restraint in this game.”
My losses of restraint were mostly reserved for the practice court. I wasn't the second coming of Superbrat; like I said, Borg remained my idol. Slowly, though, I began to add the occasional racquet toss to my repertoire. In high school, some of the lower-ranked players on the team—their parents had obviously made them join to keep them out of trouble in the afternoons—specialized in sailing their racquets into the playing fields below the courts. (The fact that the girls’ track team practiced down there may have had something to do with it.) But those guys were hacks compared to a college teammate of mine. An upperclassman, you would see him start to play on a far court. Then you would hear him start to lose. Then, after have an hour, you would look down to see his racquet twirling elegantly over the far fence. There was something cool, rather than angry or embarrassing, about the nonchalant way he launched it and then, without hurry, opened the gate to retrieve it. A good, cathartic heave looked like just another part of the game.
Every so often, I made it part of my game. As I’ve written here before, after losing a doubles match at a national championship, I smashed my Sampras Pro Staff until it broke, sent it into orbit, and watched in terror as it barely avoided the windshield of an oncoming car. I did something similar after an away loss in California; and it wouldn’t have been a serious team practice if a stick didn’t fly somewhere, at some point, from someone.
You might say this is bad form in a gentleman’s sport. You might also say that it’s dangerous. You wouldn’t be wrong on either count. But first I would answer that jettisoning an offending piece of equipment is not just a product of the bratty professional era. Ken Rosewall, of all people, bounced and kicked his frames all over the grass. Second, I would say that it depends on the throw. I was appalled to see Rainer Schuettler haul off and fire his racquet into a tarp at Key Biscayne a few years ago. It was all rage, no style. Marat Safin was the most famous stick-swatter of them all, and it was fun to see him take a defenseless frame by the throat and put his whole body into maiming it. But there was also something despairing and depressing about his approach. I liked the no-nonsense, no-expression finality of Roger Federer’s Key Biscayne crush job a few years ago—you get it all out and move on. I liked Vera Zvonareva’s three-act breakdown in Charleston this year, though having that happen every match wouldn’t be good for her or for us. I also like that the worst that Rafael Nadal can do after a bad miss is scrunch his eyebrows and give his racquet a swift, fed-up swish through the air. (Is there such thing as an “uncle’s boy?”) I’m sure I’m blanking on the other great and notorious racquet chuckers off all time, but I’ve always liked Andy Roddick’s style and timing. On most occasions, though not all, he does it when I think I might do it, he snaps the frame down with conviction but not ugly rage, and he gets it over with in a hurry. I’m left nodding in recognition, rather than shaking my head in disgust.
For my own part, I’ve decided that, as a moderately socialized adult, smashing my racquet on the court, and/or the tossing it over the fence, is too much. Never mind that you can’t open the fence at my club, so I would never be able to recover the thing anyway. Never mind that it would only make me ashamed rather than relaxed. The important thing is that bashing or chucking your racquet with that much energy, when you’re playing a match that doesn’t even count, makes everyone around you feel worse. You’ve broken the code that keeps friendly competition from turning into bloody murder.
Still, in my experience there are times, once a month or so, after a double fault or a lucky break for my opponent or an overhead that didn’t even reach the net, when the racquet must go. They say that if you play enough, your frame becomes an extension of yourself. For example: Doesn’t it feel inexplicably great to pick up your racquet and walk around with it in your house, even if it’s just to take a few shadow strokes? However, the reverse is also true. Your racquet is the easiest part of yourself to sacrifice. It’s not like you’re blaming it. You’re blaming yourself, but you’re also trying, in a literal way, to let go of your frustration.
A few weeks ago, I served for the match against a regular opponent of mine. At 40-30, he came to the net, head-faked me into hitting the ball right to him, and volleyed it away to make it deuce. I was quietly infuriated about being duped like that, and the fact that he does that kind of thing all the time just made it worse. I lost the next point and let out a yell of frustration. I knew what was coming, but I was powerless to stop it: I double-faulted to be broken. The fake-out, the double fault, the blown lead, it was too much. Even before my second serve landed long, my racquet was whirling, in a low line, toward my sideline chair. I didn’t throw it hard; it was a simple and, I thought at the time, discreet flick of the wrist, like skipping a stone across a creek. We were also playing on the last court, next to a fence, so there was no chance of it hitting anyone. The Yonex landed in the clay without a sound. But, as I found out later, it didn’t go unnoticed. A teenage girl playing next to me caught the whole act. “Ooh,” she asked her playing partner in surprise, “does he have a temper?” I’d obviously set a bad example. But after burying my head in my towel for a second, I came back to break serve for the match.
Did that heave help me? I don’t know. I don't plan to employ it as a strategy in the future. What I do know is that, for a second or two, I enjoyed watching my racquet sail. Where else in life do you get a chance to let your anger go, and then watch as it whirls in circles farther and farther away from you?
If only you didn't have to go pick it up.
*
Have a good weekend. See you Monday to talk about Stanford and L.A.