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Watching Tennis
NMB, Florida September 4, 2001 A.H. Schectman
THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on Issues, Ideas and Reflections on the Times. Published Now and
Then. Opinions Pro or Con Are Welcome.
ENJOYING TENNIS
I remember my father taking me to a baseball game when I was quite small.
I got sunburned and in trouble because I couldn't see what was going on and
I quickly got restless. Years later I still don't understand the mystique
of averages and histories of the players.
When I was a student at Rutgers the classic enmity of two contesting
football teams had continued but with Princeton as the clear winner over the
decades. One of my colleagues at Monmouth was the captain of the 1949
Rutgers football team that beat Princeton at the endgame for that year. I
went to the affair and remember only the traffic jam. We had good seats but
as is the case with me, I couldn't see fast enough to keep up with the
action. It was cold and I wasn't excited enough to be warm and just huddled
down in my seat as other "fans" jumped about excitedly.
Now, I played stickball and handball and such but team sports were not what
I was all about. I played tennis a bit and had an old wooden racquet that I
only recently discarded. You can't really watch tennis from the sidelines
and going up to the top of a stadium where the court looks like a postage
stamp doesn't make it any better. I like television tennis.
I can watch tennis for a while. Reclining on a soft chair or in bed make
for very comfortable watching. You can see a whole lot better than any of
the fans present at the games can see. You can follow the immediate
television replay of the action where the watchers in the stands cannot.
Seeing close-ups of the sweat and the constant mopping up with towels makes
you feel closer to the action. The ball boys and girls who scuttle in to
pick up the dead balls are sometimes of more interest to follow than the
back and forth in much of the battle between players.
What I like the most is the outrageous contortions that a player goes
through to make an impossible save. I also like how they go over it and
over it from different angles so that you can enjoy from your comfortable
perch what others have to endure in the hot sun on hard wooden or plastic
seats. Despite some long battles tennis moves quite fast. Television tennis
is for me. What could be improved is cutting out the asinine commentary.
Carol's Evaluation: 10 out of 10
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