“This taught me a lesson, but I'm not quite sure what it is.”
- John McEnroe
I played competitive tennis from the age of eight to eighteen. I was good, not great, but good. I traveled all over the east coast training and playing tournaments. It taught me a lot and laid the groundwork for who I am today. There's a lot of levels to this game and every time you start thinking you're good, you get your ass handed to you by somebody better. You quickly find out that the four hours a day you're playing isn't enough because the winner is playing twelve hours a day, living at an academy and not going to school. In other words he's sacrificing more than you are, and believe it or not, someone's sacrificing more than him. It's a ruthless sport, tennis, where only the best of the best succeed.
These vintage posters had nothing to do with the tennis I knew and was playing as a youth except that you'd find a variation of them in every club and academy in the tri-state area. The tennis I knew was excruciating, painful, hard, nerve-wracking, brutish, relentless, and unforgiving. Quite the contrary to these images. I now have a strong affinity for them as they remind me that in life, no matter how hard you're trying to succeed in something, it's important to enjoy it. Maybe I should have had more fun on the court. Maybe we should all have more fun on the court. I think you know what I mean...
