The Tennis PT
Finding your Tennis Doubles Partner
My 41st birthday present came in the form of a 75 year-old doubles partner
I’ve been on this tennis improvement journey for 7 years now, slowly making my way up from being a 1.0 practicing once a week and now culminating into a 3.0 struggling to schedule a rest day from tennis once a week.
To be really honest, I’ve only started playing in match competitions in 2022, when the world started to open up after the pandemic. Covid restrictions were still somewhat enforced then, with players unable to switch sides on odd games for fear of contracting the virus while walking past each other. (Please.) Before then, it was rallying against my husband, a 4.0, because that was the only acceptable form of socializing sans mask in Oregon. In January 2022 I was freshly upgraded (albeit a little prematurely, in hindsight!) to NTRP 3.0 by a tennis instructor and so I launched myself into league play.
What I quickly found in the last year, was how difficult it was to play in a real match against real people whose ball-hitting differed from the decades-finessed tennis forms that my husband played with. I couldn’t read anybody, I couldn’t tell where their shots were going. I looked like one of those money-crazed game show contestants in a cash grab shute, just grabbing randomly at objects in the air. When I did make a putaway point, it felt like my tennis racket performed accidental magic and hoped no one on the court noticed that the volley came off my frame. Let’s just say I was lucky my league accepted me in, perhaps I marketed myself well.
My first doubles partner in my first match was (and still is) a friend of mine. I was placed in a D4 match, and I had the worst cottonmouth I’ve ever had in my life. I’ve done public speaking before, sang acapella in French in front of hundreds of people with an echoing mic, improvised and pretended to know foreign politics in Model UN - nothing came close to how nervous I felt that first match. I finished my entire water bottle by the third game. My partner kept telling me to smile. Why in the world would I smile when I can’t even seem to swallow my own spit?! We came away with a W, and I really had no idea how or why we did. That was how amateur I was.
As I improved in tennis I went on to join other informal leagues and competitions. I tried mixed doubles, where I had a rotating partner each week. I’m sure everyone has a list of bad bedmates, but I have a list of bad partners. For sake of privacy, I’ve obscured their gender and renamed them, but here they are:
Mr One: We had socialized off the court several times. He was a health practitioner, and me being in the health field we hit it off great. We lamented about the pressure of our education, complained about non compliant patients, sighed collectively about how overworked we were. On the court, though, we were psychologically so different. Instead of keeping it together after a mishit or unforced error, he would berate himself so badly and loudly. He would apologize profusely in between points and tell me how useless he felt he was. In between points, I simply didn’t know what to say to him to have him change his mindset. Reassuring him that he did not suck could be misconstrued as gaslighting; conversely validating his mistakes could be misconstrued as being contemptuous and put more pressure on him. The whole match was a headache and a blunder.
Ms Two: I love her so much and we’ve become such great friends. Our conversation flows so effortlessly off the court, and we end up finishing each other’s sentences with the same look on our face after jokes. However my ability to decipher her heavily-accented English tragically fell by the wayside during tennis matches. It wasn’t her, it was me: tennis was hard enough for me at the time and my brain simply could not compute. It was communication breakdown-ville.
Mr Three: The first time I met him he had just finished playing a set and lost tragically. His head hung lower than the donkey in Winnie the Pooh. Learning from my experience with Mr One, I went into cheerleader mode before the warmup even began. I transformed into the most disgusting peppiest girl in the world, singing his praises and telling him how great he was at volleying. It had worked - we won a strong W for the match, but I came away feeling like I inappropriately oversung accolades to a man who was not my husband. I bumped into the same opponents later on in the year and they complimented me on the chemistry me and my ‘husband’ had on court. Yikes.
Apart from psychological and personality mismatches, I was also paired with partners who were technically mismatched with my style of play. Some weren’t able to close a point, some couldn’t stand my shuffling and moving around the court (I could be a distraction), some just couldn’t make my level of aggressiveness (too high or too low). Doubles tennis was starting to feel like a dating game … when would I ever find my person??
It came one day when E and I were in league practice. Her doubles partner had recently defected to “greener pastures” - leagues that were rated higher than ours were. I was returning on the ad side and my shot went straight to the net. “You need more topspin.” she said. She was right. Next time I returned, I did just that and the ball landed 1 foot inside the baseline by the server’s feet. Our point.
E later tried to finish a volley, but waited too long. The ball sank below her waist, she tried to to volley it and it hit the tape and dribbled back on our court. “Close in on the net while the ball is still high and finish it.” She looked at me and said, “you’re right I need to move up”. She did just that to the ball coming back from the returner and ended the point for us.
What followed after that interaction were several practices where we realized we both were looking to improve our technique and gameplay. Our comments to each other were never misconstrued as offensive or egotistical. Corrections were made to make us better, and I fully respected that. Criticisms made during practice were seen like an investment, it was the only way to grow together.
The real test was our First USTA match - we made no technical criticisms, only observations and encouragement to build or maintain our psyche. We waved off “sorry’s” made to each other after unforced errors, and clacked rackets when we did great. We went to a close tie break on our first, and won the second and won the third USTA matches this way.
E is 75 years old. I realize she can’t run or react as fast as I do, but she makes up for it in experience, technical wit and psychological wisdom. Whenever I go out there on the court, I hardly get nervous anymore. I feel the freedom to make mistakes, I feel the freedom to take risks and go for gold, and I feel completely confident that we can figure out our way through tennis puzzles. If not, I know we’ll turn each loss into an investment for better game play. I turned 41 last week and I frankly couldn’t ask for a better birthday present.
Do you have a partner (or partners) who you loathe or love to play with? Share your trials and tribulations below and let me know what did and didn’t work for you.