When I was around 7-8, I received my first set of tennis racquets. During that time my family weren’t as well off as we are now, in fact my parents keep harping on about how I currently make more money a week then they did combined when they first came to Australia. However one of the core values my parents held was that lack of funds should never restrict one’s ability to enjoy the perks in life; holidays, music, sport, toys etc. Therefore most of the stuff I had as a kid from electronic keyboard, sneakers, toys and the fore mentioned tennis racquets were 2nd hand, acquired by my parents at weekend garage sales. They didn’t have much money but they made sure that I had everything I needed to be a kid, to be able to learn, discover and explore the world around me. Even though the equipment wasn’t new or flash or perhaps even very good, I am still grateful for their efforts.
I used a wooden racquet (very old school) to practise hitting a tennis ball against the living room wall and drive the old man downstairs absolutely mad. We rented in an old block of flats with fibro walls and wooden floorboards in North Sydney. Before the property and office booms of the mid-late 1990s, it was a quiet suburb populated by churches and nursing homes.
The windows of the flat opened to a grey depressing concrete wall which partitioned the block from the car park of the office building next door. I guess for most Aussie kids, living in apartments in the early 1990s might have been slightly depressing. But I didn’t know any better, I came from greyer and much smaller apartment in Shanghai, I thought it was absolute luxury just to be able to hit tennis balls in the living room, the idea of having a backyard was completely foreign. Although the flats did have a backyard with a couple of hills hoists to swing on. Beyond its wild bushes lay the constant rumble of the train station, the back of which became a frequent hangout for me and my comrades, where we would build our tree houses and reenact scenes from films we saw.
At school on Thursday afternoons I used to watch with great envy as kids, shouldering their Prince Junior racquets, hopped onto the bus headed to River Road Tennis Centre. It was a program run in conjunction with the school. The mini bus would pick you up after school, you’d have a 40min tennis lesson, hop back on the bus and be dropped back at school. I begged my parents to let me join and, I guess boyed by my prodigious talent on show at home, they relented.
Of course I couldn’t take my daggy wooden racquet. Pity as I hadn’t heard of John McEnroe back then. My idol was Michael Chang and I hated Pete Sampras with a passion because he used to be one of the unmovable obstacles between Michael and Grand Slam wins. Luckily the wooden racquet came with an old school Wilson Graphite racquet. I think one of the first series of graphite/ non wood racquets to come out, it was deathly heavy for an 8 year old to weld but at least it was cooler than the wooden racquet.
I wasn’t prolific at lessons, I progressed adequately. As a kid I made constant faux pas with coarse language learnt from some of my Dad’s favourite action films. Seemingly unable to keep my mouth shut, perhaps this was a habit of having to learn a 2nd language at a young age when you’re still figuring out the semantics of language itself. As punishment for doing anything wrong at River Road (e.g. calling your Tennis Coach an “Arsehole”) you were made to run around the entire centre (10-15 courts or so) until you get to a random letterbox on the other side near the golf course, through the bushes and obscene amounts of spiders webs. You touched the letterbox and then had to run back. I was always a shit runner, hence I started to learn to keep my mouth shut.
Lessons continued for about a year. I can’t remember why I stopped, perhaps it was the feeling that I wasn’t getting anywhere. I wanted to play competition tennis, instead of playing Skittles and Tennis Handball every week. But I knew my parents couldn’t make that commitment to Saturday morning competitions, so I gave it up. The Wilson racquet was getting undeniably more tiring to use as everyone went on to lighter and newer racquets. Other than a few odd rallies in later primary, an abysmal inter-school round robin in year 6 and a couple of terms of tennis for High School Sport, I didn’t really think about tennis again, Basketball and soccer took over. The wooden racquet has since long disappeared and I don’t even know what happened to my Wilson racquet (I think my brother broke it in his Tennis Stage, yes he had one too, perhaps all Aussie kids go through their “tennis” faze.)
I quit tennis before I found a topspin forehand and I still can’t serve to save my life and after the Becker/Chang years I never did find another player to really support. Pat Rafter was a serial disappointment, Mark Philippoussis went AWOL so much and don’t even get me started on Lleyton Hewitt…
So I guess this is where I talk about Federer right? The saviour of my interest in tennis? The cause of my very strange and overwrought emotional attachment to his game the last few years.
I’ll keep it short. I hated Federer the first time I saw him play. A spotty 19 year old with a fugly pony tail. I didn’t bat an eyelid at tennis when the world was talking about how awesome and GOAT he was after 2004. I didn’t see him play again until the Australian Open 2006.
I finally understood what the deal was.
I’ve understood ever since.
Wimbledon starts tomorrow night Australian time. I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the next 2 weeks but I’m sure I’ll work it out. My health and vitality may suffer. However come spring, when the awful damp weather ends I’ll be taking up tennis again. I’m finally going to learn how to serve, I’m going to finish what I started 15 years ago and hopefully I’ll play some competitions in the future.
LJK sport childhood, family, reflection, remininscence, roger federer, sport, tennis
