We all know that you need to exercise, and that you can’t diet yourself to good health, so spare a thought for all those poor souls who don’t play a sport like tennis. Every day, thousands of them head off to the gym, motivated by self-loathing – and with facial expressions to match. They lift a few weights, bounce around, glance nervously in the omnipresent mirrors, then head home…body and wallet slightly lighter. Rarely a word spoken, years can go by without making friends… not that many people keep going through the gym ordeal for long. A few months into the new year, most of us are back to our usual routines. Gym attendance fades as predictably as a new diet, and we’re back to square one.
Contrast that rather sad image to your average tennis player – they can’t wait to hit the court, have a chat with old friends, bash a ball about and then head down the pub for a quick half before reluctantly heading home. Tennis is something that you play your whole life – it embraces everybody, from the absolute beginner to the college player and beyond…all bound together by something far more than just sending balls over a net. It’s a physical game, an emotional game and a social game – you’ll never quite master it, but we all try nevertheless.
You’ll make lifelong friends, and if you move to a new area, the local club will provide a shortcut to a social life. There are plenty of well worn cliche’s about how tennis is played by a certain sort of person, and there’s some truth to this: if you’re a sore loser, miserable old git or just unpleasant, your willing opponents will rapidly shrink to zero, so tennis clubs tend to be self regulating, in the most polite and subtle sort of way. For the record, squash and badminton clubs have much in common with tennis in this regard.
In this modern world, with its obsession with living life by watching it on TV, addictive phones following us 24/7 and soul-sucking social media, the need for tennis has never been greater. So many people claim to be sports fans, but when you dig a bit deeper, you find that they just watch it on TV, or dabble in sports betting. Watching TV doesn’t make you a sports person, any more than spending the night in a stable makes you a horse.
So next time you feel the urge to be active, social and get in shape, walk straight past the gym and head to your local tennis club. Sure, you’ll get your body moving, improve your coordination and reflexes, but those headline benefits are just the first step of a very long and wonderful journey.