tennis, life and a few things in between

After Gerald, in the 1990s, I took a lesson from a Chinese coach named David.

I found him on the Chinese newspaper. (Why did I do that was beyond me .. perhaps out of curiosity? and less expensive?) He said he was from Shanghai and arrived in New York not too long ago. He was not tall and not lean. An average middle age man.

It was a summer afternoon. As soon as we filled into the court, he picked the side with his back to the sun. I did not like the sun in my face too. But I said nothing. When we began our lesson, I found him wasn’t doing anything, except feeding me the ball, softly. After emptying the basket, he told me to pick up the balls while he retreat to the shadow to take his water. When I asked him if we could switch side, he replied that his eyes were sensitive to the bright sunlight, he couldn’t function. When I asked him to hit with me from the baseline, he replied, he couldn’t do that because it required a lot of energy from him and he needed to preserve his energy because he had two more lessons scheduled that day. That was it. I never called him again.

Thanks lord he did not insisted on a block of lessons (usually 5 to 10 in a package deal). I was curios when I saw the tennis lesson being placed on the Chinese newspaper. The way I knew China, this coach must be on the national team or at least the provincial because tennis was, almost unheard of sport in China. He looked and acted arrogant, which was not too surprise to me: they were spoiled in China and often exhibited that they were above everyone. Ha.

Welcome to America, the land of opportunity and equality.

What I found amusing was his attitude toward physical activity. I would think, for a professional athlete, getting tired and sweating are part of job.  Yet, he tried to avoid it.

Yuan Meng

Pete Sampras aced his first grand slam title in New York in 1990 when he was only 19 years old. His beautiful single hand back hand and agility at the net showcased his dazzling game. He is still the youngest US Open Champion and would slam dunked into thirteen more grand slam titles, and retired after winning his last tournament in New York in 2002; closed out a storied career in a perfect circle. European

It was the autumn 1991 (Oct 15-27). We were vacationing in Frankfurt. One afternoon I turned on TV and surprised to see Sampras was playing, against an unknown player. What was more delightful was the English commentating. I soon realized it was not up to ESPN or USA quality: the court coverage was poor; the lighting was poor and even the commentating was poor. The King of Swing was obvious having the control of the match but the lone male commentator with the British accented (or Australian) would only hail when the unknown won a point, which was rare, and silent whenever the King of Swing made a spectacular point, which was often.

I found that utterly unfair and exhibited poor sportsmanship. An American network would not have tolerated that kind of behavior. All the years I glued to the TV for countless tennis matches, the cheerful Yankee commentators are always courteous and fair, they dish out praises where and when it is due. No matter who the player is. This is style [大国风范], kindness [厚道] and decency. The intelligent commentating from the knowledgeable sportscasters showed they did their home work. I have come to enjoy and expect that high caliber. (This explained why was I taken aback at Mary Carillo’s brief obsession with Maria Sharapova’s mom being absent for two years. Carillo should have rose about that.)

I find Americans are just more charitable. Their generosity and decency are something worth brag about.

A few summers back, I planned a party, and the day turned out to be a stormy night and our areas’ electricity was gone – rarely happened in the past. So I began calling the invitees by joking ..
”Oppps, I’m so sorry since I forgot to pay bills, so our electricity got cut off ..”.
One of the invitees lectured me
“No, by law … they can’t do that .. the water/gas/electricity can’t be turned off due to lack of payment …” They are landlords, so I trust what she said.

The moral of the story here is it illustrated the drastic difference of older Europa and the younger USA, despite the unsymmetrical years in history. It seems to me US is just hou dao 厚道 – kinder and more honest than Europe, in many ways.

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The Paris experience ..

USTA Eastern section held a webinar this afternoon talking about the ratings.

In the past, mixed doubles result doesn’t count but everything counts now. As for medical appeal: last year the league had only granted 6-8 nation wide: very difficult to win. IF you played against someone who made to the Nationals .. how they do in the Nationals will affect your rating ..

More to come ..

Key to Type of Rating

A – Appeal
B – Benchmark – advanced to playoff or championship round
C – Computer
D – Dynamic
E – Early Start League dynamic
M – Mixed Exclusive Year-end Rating
S – Self-rate or Medical Appeal
T – Tournament Exclusive Year End Rating

We played our 6th match. Four opponents were bit late. When it was 8:15, time to start match, the lady didn’t want to claiming she had practiced served yet. So we let her served up few .. she wasn’t charmed. I felt that a player should watch the time and pace out her/his thing within allotted time. Oh well ..

The light accidentally went out at 9:20 when second and third doubles were already concluded but first doubles was in a battle for life: down a set but on serve in the second at 5:5. They had to move to another court to won two consecutive games to split the match. Reportedly they played an exciting match, facing the set point (hence the match pt) when the opponents had them running from left to right.

The door wasn’t working after the lighting accident either so we had to exit from the emergency door. Wow .. it was like extreme sport because we could hardly stand up due to hurricane force from bubble decompressing. ok .. think you were exiting the space craft and immediately sucked into dark orbit. Not good enough? The please come up with your own imagination. We almost got blown away into the darkness, foreign terrain where we’ve never been to that part of the club. That must be the highlight of the night -:).