After a weekend of Olympian tennis in these parts of the Earth, its human spectators have been back on terra firma—actually, terra cementa at my club. They’re attempting a nuclear Cilic forehand or a guillotine Santoro cut or yet another ideal.
Of course, none of these ideals are humanly achievable; but there’s just no stopping humans from dreaming—and actually trying; playing god is in their nature owing to the general religious orientation that they are descended from Olympus themselves. To be sure, they’re indulged by the heavens sometimes, as may have been the case with the editor of this section herself.
She was among the select mortals permitted to mix with one of the visitants who had descended on Manila to be worshipped in human form; he even assumed a human name— Andy Murray. He consented to feed balls to earthlings in a sideshow, daring them to hit back and show what they got.
Wrong mortal
But Andy Murray, a champion at the Olympia of tennis itself, Wimbledon, had picked on one wrong mortal—as Achilles does with Paris and ends up with a poison arrow planted in his heel, the only mortally vulnerable part of him. In Andy’s case, it was a return shot from our editor that caught him with his racket badly angled, sending his volley out. He does not perish like Achilles, but I hear he has been hard-pressed trying to repair his reputation on Olympus: He just wanted to make one terrestrial nut happy—to which his fellows, who themselves feel their own godhood diminished by association, reply that he should go back down and tell it to the Inquirer, in which it was all committed to irrevocable print.
It may all be a mere fluke of a feat indeed, but a feat all the same—and it’s in the books! Indeed, it’s the apotheosis of the one shot that makes an all-too-fallible human’s day—the shot that crackles off his racket, as he hits it on the run, and whizzes by the netter straight down the line. For our editor, of course, her shot may have well made her lifetime.
I’m a tennis fiend myself, but the toll of the years has taught me to keep my feet not only well planted on the ground, but also well braced. I myself used to watch the gods of tennis when I could, in deluded awe, thinking them imitable to a useful degree.
I was drawn to the likes of, yes, Santoro and Stepanek. No nuclear hitters like Cilic, they did it with wile, as they say, “constructing” their points. I found them instructively watchable; it would seem as if the game began to slow once the ball crossed over into their courts, such that every movement they made, every step they took, until they hit that ball back, was appreciable.
Santoro was in fact in the last visitation, but I didn’t watch. I could have hit some with Murray—indeed, our editor herself said she had had me in mind—but just as well. She can have her fluky feat. But me—I won’t be patronized, not by god, nor by man. I have worthier opponents—at the club.
I think I’ve seen enough Olympian tennis and learned enough for my practical purposes. Now I watch it to be refreshed and entertained, and in the most comfortable, not to mention cheapest, way—via television, from a couch.
Strategic focus
Transitioning into septuagenarian tennis in just over a year, I’ve shifted strategic focus: armor and armament. I’ve got myself a new racket; at 9 ounces unstrung, it’s even lighter than the one I retired (and to think I started with a ten-plus, even close to eleven), but it gives nothing away in pace—thanks to the magic of technology. It also has a bigger head, for surer hitting, and, for a swifter stroke, it swings without a drag.
A built-in dampener enlarges the sweet spot and gives a more solid hit, made even meaner by a hexagonal string —of course, the six corners aren’t visible to the naked eye, but I definitely hit far more balls in, and I swear I can feel that sharper spin.
For easier and surer footing, on the other hand, I fly with the lightest of sneakers—less than 8 ounces!
If all this proves short yet, more advanced technology— not the gods—will provide.
