An Undiscovered Talent, 50 Years Late

Today we take a needed and welcome break from the recent theme of this blog, which has been to detail my home country’s current state of mind-blowing insanity. Instead, we’ll bore you with stuff about me me me. So widdout further ado…..

Forty Love

A life filled with regrets is a sad one indeed, so I’m thankful that my regrets are few, too few to mention, as Sinatra once sang.

Well, okay – there is one regret that I’ll probably carry to my grave. It’s the only real regret I have. It’s nothing major. Certainly nothing life changing. More like a prolonged sigh than an actual regret. It has to do with tennis.

Many decades ago, around age 11, I developed a passion for tennis that manifested itself into wanting to play just about every day. We had a tennis/swim club in my neighborhood that I could walk to, so naturally our family spent a lot of time there. My parents bought me a wooden Jack Kramer tennis racket (google it), paid for a couple tennis lessons, and away I went.

I won’t bore you with all the details. Suffice it to say that in short order I became a pretty decent tennis player. I eventually competed in some junior events and did well enough to win a couple of trophies. I had a natural gift for the sport that I didn’t have for other sports. I developed keen racket skills, and a good head for strategy.

I always always always felt confident on the tennis court, and never doubted my ability to compete at a high level. It’s the kind of thing that when you know it you know it, whether it’s tennis or math or sculpture or farming.

But….

This was during an era when kids played a bunch of different sports rather than specialize in one. Like most kids, I also played baseball, football (American), and basketball. I swam for the swim club team (though not necessarily well). I took up racquetball. I played golf (terribly).

Of all the sports, baseball was probably my second-best behind tennis. It certainly was the one my father favored over all the others. He thought I might have been good enough to play baseball in college, but I think he overrated my abilities, as Dads will do. I was a decent baseball player, but there were always a few teammates who were better. I was a good contact hitter but had little power. I could field well enough but I had a weak throwing arm.

Even so: I focused on baseball in high school instead of tennis. Since both sports were played during the same season (spring), I had to pick one or the other. Baseball it was.

This is what I regret – choosing baseball over tennis in high school. Tennis was my best sport. It’s the one I had the most instinct for, and the most talent. With the right coaching and focus, I believe I could have played at the collegiate level. I wasn’t good enough to take it beyond that, but I could have built a career around it. Maybe I would have become a tennis writer, which I think I would have enjoyed – sitting courtside and covering McEnroe, Evert, Federer, Venus, Nadal.

Well, it didn’t happen. I chose baseball. My baseball career ended after high school, and I’m not sure I’ve played an organized game since then. Softball, yes. Baseball, no.

But tennis? I have played regularly, in some way, shape or form, just about every week of my life in the years since graduating high school. Certainly at least a couple times a month – decade after decade after decade (after decade). I’ve played hundreds of matches since then, if only recreationally.

I no longer play competitively, mainly because of bursitis and tendonitis in my shoulder that makes it hard to serve anymore. But I do hit against a net in the backyard that is specifically designed for tennis balls. I’m out there every day (weather permitting). I hit about 600 balls a day. Forehands and backhands. Every day. Still grinding away at the sport I love.

Which leads to the main point of all this tennis talk….

Lefty? Really?

I’m a natural right-hander, and so have played tennis right-handed forever. But lately I’ve started hitting more ground strokes left-handed, just for the change of pace and to give my right arm a rest. This left-handed thing is not necessarily surprising. For whatever reason, I shoot pool left-handed (not bad), shoot archery left-handed (not often), and play guitar left-handed (which I have tried, and I suck at it worse than you suck at anything).

And you know what I’ve discovered? I’m a better tennis ball striker left-handed than right-handed. Much better.

I unearthed a killer two-handed backhand hitting left-handed. My left-handed forehand is 100 times better than my right-handed forehand – no exaggeration. It’s sharper, crisper, more natural, more easily repeatable, more controlled and yet more powerful.

Anyone who has competed in sports knows about getting into the “zone,” when you are locked in and can seem to do no wrong. It can happen in any sport, from soccer and basketball to archery and diving.

What this usually means is that your focus and confidence are so high that time slows down and you don’t allow any other thoughts to get in the way of you and the task at hand. You simply do it, with absolute belief – and absolute precision. It’s a beautiful thing. I’ve been there, and maybe you have, too.

Hitting a left-handed forehand, I’m always in the zone. I have the same stroke and same grip and same freedom every time. It never feels awkward. It always feels natural. I could hit 40,000 straight balls without feeling awkward.

In contrast, my right-handed forward is a work in progress – even after 50-odd years. I always have to think about it. I am never free to just swing away. I constantly have to tweak grips, swings, angles, thoughts. My right-handed backhand is very free and natural, but never my right-handed forehand.

Discovering my talent for hitting a tennis ball left-handed, this late in life, 50-plus years after I picked up the sport, is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it’s nice to find a new talent at my age. On the other hand…

I wish to Christ I would have started playing tennis left-handed when I was a youth. I would have been a superstar. A prodigy. A genius. There would have been no doubt about me choosing tennis over baseball – because I WOULD HAVE PLAYED WIMBLEDON BEFORE I EVEN WAS OLD ENOUGH TO DRIVE.

Sigh.

Regrets, I’ve had a few…..

Speaking Of Being In The Zone…..

Being in the zone doesn’t only apply to sports. It applies to nearly any endeavor. No matter what you do, there are times when you do it with an almost magical ease, with total concentration, absolute focus and confidence, flawlessly.

Anyone who writes for a living, or even pursues writing as a hobby or avocation, knows what I’m talking about. You might spend 90% of your time struggling and suffering over the next paragraph, the next sentence, the next word, until you want to bang your head against a wall made of rusty metal spikes.

But the other 10% of the time? That’s what keeps you coming back for more – because your words and thoughts flow with the greatest of ease, and you can’t get them out fast enough, and you are one thousand percent sure that you’re the greatest writer in the world, even if you’re not even the greatest writer in the room.

I have felt this sensation. So too have you, my fellow writers. I know you have, otherwise you wouldn’t still be writing. There have been times when the words and stories and stanzas flowed out of you effortlessly, and you just wanted it to last forever.

I experience this less than I like. But I do experience it. I experienced it while writing my novel, Voodoo Hideaway (buy it here!), published in 2021. I had made many earlier attempts to write a novel, but they usually ended with a thud about halfway through, because I had no GD idea what I was writing or where I was going.

Voodoo Hideaway was the one exception — and thank God for that. It poured out of me. The characters emerged from the ether. I have no idea where they came from. The story wrote itself. I was just a vessel with fingers and a laptop. I wrote and wrote and wrote, feverishly, confidently, without even having to think much about it.

This is how it’s supposed to work. You are supposed to just pour the first draft out and then kill your soul rewriting and editing – which I did. But I ended up with a finished novel, one that I’m happy about. That’s the gold behind the rainbow, mes amis.

Well, I don’t have that feeling much anymore. At least with fiction. In fact, I don’t have it at all. I had all but given up on writing fiction. But I finally told myself to get over it, and take another shot. So I did. I recently wrote a couple of short stories that I submitted for publication and/or prizes, but neither got either. But I tried. Maybe I’ll try again. You never know when the zone will make an appearance….

Speaking Of Books….

Way back in September, when the world seemed a much different place, I blogged about my intention to read a couple of very long novels to carry me through the cold months: Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind, and Stephen King’s The Stand. Together, they clocked in at about 1,500 pages – in small type, since I read older copies.

Well, I did it. I finished GWTW in late December, and finished The Stand a couple of weeks ago. It was my first foray into Gone With The Wind, and my third time reading The Stand. It took me four months to read both, which adds up to around 380 pages a month – the equivalent of reading a normal sized novel a month.

But keep in mind: I also juggle non-fiction books with fiction books. So let’s call it six books in four months. Not bad – but not enough to get me to my stated goal of reading 50 books in 2025.

So far, I’ve completed exactly two books in 2025. So I have some serious catching up to do to reach my goal.

But what a fun thing to shoot for, yes?

Note: The photo is a selfie I took today of my shadow and my racket beside my tennis net, on a warm sunny morning that we here in NJ have been fantasizing about for months. I have to say: The photo came out better than I expected. But then, when it comes to my own photographic skills, my expectations are very, very low…..