The moment when a lad half my age sent his second consecutive ace flying past my racket was probably the moment when I wondered if it had been a mistake to rekindle my tennis career for the first time in a decade.
Before anyone starts wondering whether you’re reading words written by the Guardian’s answer to Goran Ivanisevic, I should make it very clear that, despite being a keen player as a child, I was never particularly good in the first place. Admittedly, I worked as a coach to help pay my way through university but I rarely taught anything more technical than showing beginners how to hold a racket. Not unlike Tottenham’s men’s football team, 2008 was the last time I had lifted any kind of “trophy”. A weak backhand, lazy footwork and an enthusiasm for food were all among my downfalls. But it’s the taking part that counts, right? And so it was in that spirit that, earlier this year, I joined our nearest club, High Legh Tennis Club in Cheshire, near where the M6 meets the M56, and quickly fell back in love with all the quirks of club-level tennis.
I was immediately thrust into the men’s doubles team by our captain, who seemed delighted merely to learn a new member had signed up before even seeing whether I could play well. Our friendly team were a mixture of big-serving A-level students who were far too strong for everyone else on the court, and retired gentlemen wearing elbow supports who stopped running some time ago but still love the game, and then there was me, in the middle of them all, 33 years old, occasionally getting that look from people as if to say, in Des Lynam’s voice, “shouldn’t you be at work?”.
Our doubles matches in the impressively well-organised Warrington and District Lawn Tennis League were either dogged by torrential rain or blessed with the kind of beautiful summer evening weather that made me wonder why I’d ever stopped playing. We met a great mixture of folk: from great sports who would offer to “play a let” even if they knew your shot had missed the court by two feet, to that one bloke taking it overly seriously, stood furiously at the net debating the score. Oh, how I’d missed all this. Then, when the league season ended in July, having caught the bug, I made an even stranger decision – I entered a men’s singles tournament. After all, Wimbledon had not long been on our televisions and a Scottish chap had even won some points with a metal hip. How hard could it be?
Realising there was a hole in my trainers, I purchased some new glistening-white tennis shoes from a well-known budget sports apparel store and logged on to the Lawn Tennis Association’s website to find my nearest Grade 5 open men’s singles tournament, a one-day event where players play quick sets (first to four games in each set, with a match tie-break in the third). It sounded perfect for me, an unfit sports writer. Shortly before the big day, I logged on to see the draw, and noticed to my amusement that I had been seeded. It later transpired that, because I had forgotten to update my home address on my player profile page, the organiser thought I was travelling up from the Avon area to Stockport and therefore, to be willing to drive so far, I must be good. He seemed a tad disappointed when I explained I lived nearby, and even more so when he saw me warming up.
But then something unexpected happened. In the first round, I won. In straight sets, no less. What joy. Was it too late to make a late burst to qualify for the US Open later in the summer? Probably. I promptly lost in the next round. But the buzz was real. Within minutes of getting home I was booking myself in to another such singles tournament, in Knutsford in September. This time, my wife and dog came to watch. They were pleasantly surprised when I won again, in the first round. Straight sets, again. The dream was alive.
Our dog was attracting plenty of attention and one young chap, while friendly stroking him, made some small talk and dropped into the conversation that he had recently played at Wimbledon in the national finals. “Well done you,” I thought. And then the penny dropped, that this was my next opponent. Oh. He dispatched with me easily, 4-1, 4-2, and my summer singles campaign came to an end with a somewhat respectable record of played four, won two, lost two. And then came the most surprising moment of the lot: all this silliness had in fact earned me a British tennis ranking, inside the top 6,000 men’s singles players in the country.
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At the time of writing this, my two singles match victories have earned me sufficient points to sit as the British number 5,936, out of some 22,000 players listed, with my precious 240 ranking points. I was officially on the ladder, and only lagging a mere 470,460 points behind the British No 1, Jack Draper. With a bit more practice, closing that gap will be easy, right?
As the autumn leaves now start to fall, the air turns cold and fair-weather players like me pop their rackets back into the shed, a part of me fears it’s a poor reflection on the health of British tennis that there are fewer than 6,000 players ranked higher than me. The game needs more participants, surely. But what I am very pleased to report, is that for those who just want to give it a go, for those who want to keep fit, for those who just love playing tennis, no matter how cranky their knees, there is a great army of local volunteers still keeping the local tennis scene thriving, giving up countless hours of their time to organise amateur sport up and down the land.
