I must say, though, that I can't imagine Luke doing anything (and certainly not anything with me) with the kind of patience it takes for a beginner, especially a child beginner, to get to where he can bat around a tennis ball. Watching him struggle mightily with some task, I've learned that offering help is not just not the right thing to do.
Want help setting up those train track, little guy?
No, daddy. Shut! You don't say something. I'm going to close you out (pulls shirt over his face so he can't see me, on the tried-and-true "ostrich" principle), Diesel'sgoing to scoop you up (Diesel being one of the villains in the Thomas the Tank Engine stories) and dump you! You don't tell me what to do. Leave me alone!
Geez, sorry I asked!
Don't even ask me where he got this "Shut!" business, but I think it's got to do with the fact that the more formal shut-up is a forbidden word that gets him on The Naughty Chair, no questions asked.
So anyway - how do parents do this tennis thing? I was impressed, going way back, with the story Todd Martin (see my recent post, The Michigander) told me years ago. He became interested in the game because his parents used to take him to the courts and set up his crib up next to the fence on the court where they played. Todd would then onto the rail, watching them. I think that even if Lisa and I had taken Luke to the park to watch us play tennis, his first reaction upon seeing us go into the court would have been to make a break for it. Freedom! Let's do something more in line with my agenda.
This topic has stayed with me today because I had an email from David Johnson, a philosophy professor turned newspaper reporter. David, whose father Franklin is the current president of the USTA, recently sent me this piece, which he wrote for a journalism school publication. It's the best and most informed thing I've read - by far - on the Menendez brothers, Erik and Lyle. They were top junior players, convicted of slaughtering their parents - both of whom were actively involved in the boys' tennis lives.
Okay, this probably is the most extreme and sensationalistic tennis story, ever (or, at any rate, before the Sharapova banana incident). And the Menendez brothers are no more representative of your "typical" tennis player than David Berkowitz was representative of your typical JFK security guard. But Johnson's piece gives a few choice, intimate glimpses into the kind of intensity and, ultimately, dysfunction that is so routine in junior tennis - ironically, only some of these glimpses are actually focused on the Menendez brothers.
It takes someone "special" (and not always in a good way) to become great at tennis. It sometimes takes a special kind of parent and a special kind of chemistry, combined with a measure of luck, to go from being an ATP or WTA lurker - a Billy Wright, or a Michael Joyce - to a Marat Safin, Roger Federer, or Marcos Baghdatis.
Think about it: If you're a parent, where do you even begin? Make your kid play, on the premise that he or she will buckle and accept the fate of being the clay out of which you mold your dreams? What if your kid likes the idea of the game, but hates being bad at it - do you force him to confront his frustration, or just let it go - abandon him to the Gameboy or undertow of slackerhood? Do some kids (almost all the wildly successful ones, if you ask them) actually love playing, from Day One - and the ones that don't, but appear to have a gift, what do you do, leave them to their own devices (you can always go to school and learn the art of dry cleaning!)? Or do you try to find a way to manipulate them or cajole them or even threaten them (withholding love: works very time with the young and even those who should know better) into accepting that they can be more than they ever dreamed (or wanted)?
Here's the funny thing, to me. Stefano, Yuri, Richard, Melanie, et al, they all achieve a certain notoriety simply as "tennis parents." Yet what you are looking at is undenibly the cream-of-the-crop. Their kids flat-out made it, and as much as you may despise the parents, any charges against them ring slightly hollow until the tennis player herself endorses them. Let's be honest for a moment here. You loathe Yuri. But Maria wins the U.S. Open, and says that more than anything else she loves her "daddy". Whose word should I take on Yuri's character, yours or Maria's. It's not a rhetorical question; it's a real and amazingly complex. In fact, it's a subject that makes "The roots of Federer's greatness" an eighth-grade essay question. Doesn't it make you want to reassess your assumptions when Vince Spadea writes about what a great guy Jim Pierce is?
For in the end,there's no way you're going to tell me that some guy or woman who invested an enormous in tennis, but whose kid never made it, somehow was a "better" tennis parent. This sport, like all of them, is about results - that's the glory and the gory of it. If you can't stand the heat, step out of that particular kitchen.
Oh, the ambitious parent whose kid never made it may be a better parent, maybe, but not a better tennis parent. For there exists a standard of judgment on that: it's called the game. Besides, who's to say what would have become of that kid if he or she had been Richard's, or Melanie's? What tennis parent out there is honest enough to pause and think, Gee, if only I were Stefano Capriati. . . And, of course, it's always possible that the kid came up short at his or her end of the bargain - punishment enough to last a lifetime, for most kids, and undoubtedly a huge source of their own fears and perhaps even many of their performance anxities: If only I were Jennifer Capriati. . .
It works both ways, you see. It always works both ways.
This subject is far complicated than we generally acknowledge. We all know what horrible times Andre Agassi had with his dad, Mike - terrible tennis father supreme! - and how much tennis damaged their relationships. But who really feels sorry for Agassi today? Who among all of those "nurturing" parents wouldn't want his kid to grow up to be Andre Agassi. Would Andre be better off if he had a great relationship with his dad, quit tennis at 13, and now works as an assistant marketing guy for Bellagio?
Or, put it this way: Can a "good" tennis parent be both an inspirational genius and a manipulative charlatan? Who does a parent have to please, anyway, to be deemed good: The media? The national association? The fans? The player? The International Tennis Hall of Fame? Because I'll tell you this: judging tennis parents is the easiest thing on earth; being able to support that judgment with cogent, fact-and-reason based arguments may be the most difficult. Imagine this whimical scenario: Yuri Sharapova is on trial for being a horrible tennis parent. Who would you rather be, the prosecutor, or the defense attorney?
I'll tell you who was a terrible tennis parent: Jose Menendez. Note that his kids never won jack. Isn't that really the domain of the terrible tennis parent? He or she puts his kid through hell; the kid ends up flipping burgers. Or blowing off his parents' heads.
Anyway, I've asked David Johnson to take a whack at writing a Tennis Life (that's a feature I edit for the mother ship, Tennis magazine) on this whole subject of junior players and their parents. He knows a lot about this; it will be an interesting read for sure.
