April 30
Andre Agassi once described tennis as a metaphor of life – you have two people battling it out within the white lines, trying to figure out each other and trying to outwit each other in a duel of wills and physicality. Sometimes, the ball is in your court. You get to serve it; you decide where to place the ball and how fast it should go. If and when the ball returns at your end, in a split second you have to decide whether to hit it back hard or to go for a drop shot. You read your opponent’s position: you can make a passing shot, an overhead, or even a body shot; you either hit flat or you go for a lob. Sometimes you hit with the forehand, sometimes with the backhand, or sometimes you run around the backhand to hit with the forehand; you either go for a topspin or you choose to slice. You volley when you have no time to lose; in really exhilarating moments, you might even get to smash. In the end, there are no deuces – you either win or lose.

I was watching an old tennis match last night and got fascinated once again by the colorful language of the commentators. Most of those “behind-the-curtain” voices are former pros and champions so their love for the game and their first-hand experiences make for an interesting analysis of what is going on inside that small rectangular space. My fascination with tennis possibly goes beyond its being a competition but more on its being an art. To borrow the lines of someone else who wrote about this very same idea,

the beauty of the game is seeing, then trying to remember, the way a ball travels around the court during a point…Strategy entails mapping out and resolving combinations of lines — patterns — just as an artist maps a drawing. The fan’s pleasure comes in redrawing the lines as a memory.

Within sameness there can be endless variety. Artists have proved this over centuries. It’s the art of tennis, too — or part of the art, because there is beauty to the sound of the game and to its passage through time. Call it the music of the sport. Which is to say nothing of its drama, offcourt and on, or of the ballet of Federer’s footwork …

-Michael Kimmelman, NYT 9/06

In tennis, you follow these simple rules – keep your eye on the ball; keep the ball on or inside the lines. This reminds me of an entry on mordsith‘s blog about following rules and brought me to the realization that I’m not really someone who colors outside the lines; mostly, I’d rather paint the lines.


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