There are two obvious problems with this: 1. I am not Asian, and 2. I have never played tennis. Both were equally obvious at the tournament yet, once again, my public humiliation was utilized for the greater good.
Upon arrival at the Pacific Tennis Club I knew I was in trouble. Not only did everyone have their own rackets, they all had cute little tennis outfits on. I had a borrowed racket and was dressed for a run, complete with a "drinking club with a running problem" t-shirt. That always impresses the folks at the racket, or should I say 'racquet', club. To make matters worse there was a superhot tennis pro overseeing our tournament. I immediately confessed that the closest thing to tennis I'd ever done was swat flies in the trailer park for a penny each as a kid. No kidding, my dad would sit on his throne - a lawn chair - Buweiser in hand, and pay each of us kids a penny apiece for dead flies, which we would gleefully swat and collect for payment. Being the youngest of four, I didn't make much money hence my limited skills with racket-like equipment.
The pro asked about my skill level so he could put me with a partner. I told him on a scale of 1 to 10 it was a -42. He promptly set me up on another court with T, the son of a lawyer. T had never played tennis before either. So there we were, supposedly warming up by hitting balls at eachother, then chasing them because we kept missing. Meanwhile, on the court next to us the "real" players were warming up by hitting 90 mph serves and grunting every time they hit the ball. I wanted to grunt too but never seemed to make contact with the ball and didn't think it was appropriate to just be running around chasing balls and grunting.
Finally the tournament started. It was to be "round robin" doubles. There were 16 players on four courts. I was on court #10 - the highest court - paired up with my boss. We played against T and his boss. The losing team would move up a court, the winning down, and each team would split and take opposite sides of the court. This way, presumably, you would never have the same partner twice and you would move around the courts. If you were on court #10, there was no court to move up to so you just stayed there if you lost. I stayed on court #10 for two hours.
Most of the folks were very good-natured and trying to help me learn a few skills. And who knew standing on green concrete swatting little balls over a net could have so many rules and so much shuffling? I was instructed to move here, or there, then switch sides of hte court, then switch back, and move up, no move back, no it's your turn to serve, yes, we won a point, no, it's not over, it's 15 love. It was all very confusing but I did finally figure out how to serve the ball in an underhanded, bounce and lob fashion that I got pretty good at. As for returning the balls, it just wasn't my forte. So I lost round after round with various partners until finally I got the super competitive partner, D. This guy was there to win. He was running and scrambling and slamming that ball every which way. He knew the rules and would loudly assert them. He yelled for me to move so he could play two-on-one against the other team. I moved and marvelled how he could run around with such focus when his pockets were bulging with balls. I just took on the role of the person who runs across the court collecting the balls between serves as he played the French Open in his own mind. Somehow, through no effort by me, I was informed that I finally won and was being moved down to court #9.
The thing was, at court #9 I was pitted against D and his Wimbledon ways. Not only was I against D, I was paired with P, a man who plays tennis once a year and was slightly better than me. But he was pudgy and it was hot and he wouldn't move. It was kind of like being paired with Jabba the Hut - only P wasn't that big. His lack of movement posed a problem because the ball generally wasn't hit directly at him. D chose to pair up with a player even better than him. While it would have been fair to have D with P and me with the other player, W, a woman in a skort with a special ball holster and graphite racquet. That would have been more sportsmanlike but when I mentioned it D refused emphatically saying he needed to catch up in points after having fallen behind when I was his partner. So P and I, basically sat through four games of tennis-dodgeball where we tried to avoid the pummelling of D and W's over-handed, high speed serves. Funny thing was, D and W were trying so hard they kept missing their serves - hitting the net or out of bounds. And W had a great deal of antics involved with her playing. Before she served, she would raise her racket above her head, then point it at me, then hit as if she were trying to kill the ball. She had a grunt too. This resulted in her missing the square more often than not. Then, when it was my turn to serve to her, she took a stance as if I were one of the Williams sisters. She danced and jittered, bouncing on her toes, gripping hte racquet iwth both hands as my sloth-like serve barely cleared the net, with hardly enough energy to even bounce, then she swung with all her might and missed. This happened a few times. It was like I was playing at 33 rpm and she at 45 rpm and she just couldn't fathom that I was hitting so slowly. P and I actually ended up winning two games with our slow-motion meets not-budging tactics.
After playing against D and W the tournament was over and we all gathered for the awards. W's husband won, W came in second, and my boss actually came in third. I came in a respectable 16th and even won a prize. Yes, you guessed it, one free private tennis lesson. I just looked online to see what sort of lesson I won. Here is the photo associated with the pro I'm with:
I'm guesing they put me with the kids' coach for a reason...
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