This story originally printed in the Spring 2024 (Carnation) Issue of the Portland Tennis Courterly
Losing Pretty
By Aspiring Tennis Professional Coach Logan Corcoran
Ok, I’ll admit it: I don't win tennis matches that often.
See, dear reader, when I take to the court, I'm strictly focused on trying to hit the ball with the grace of a swan. Or a tennis pro. Or both. Why? Because there's no greater feeling than a clean ball strike. The sensation. The sound. The movement of the ball. The dopamine it releases is so potent I should have to pay. It makes me feel like doing a thumbs-up just thinking about it. Yup, just did one. But, because I obsessively hound for this one feeling, the other stuff falls to the wayside. The other stuff is "winning."
I don’t play tennis just so I have a chance to win at something. To me, tennis is an attempt to brush up against an art form I can hardly begin to comprehend; a skillset I'll never acquire, no matter how "aspiring" I may be. Don’t you want a small nibble of that revelation, too?
C’mon, allow me to wax poetic for a bit. What other sport utilizes slow-motion replay to such an extent? Watching on TV, they cue it after almost every point. We humans will go to great lengths to examine the heights of athleticism, vaulting these feats into a realm akin to beauty and art. It’s only natural to hold the gaze of something mesmerizing for as long as we can in the vain hope that intangibles are revealed and find purchase in our muscle memory. That's not how it works but, wow, isn’t tennis nice to look at?
So here's my question: As an adult with an adult job and adult responsibilities and adult struggles, why would you play tennis simply for the sake of winning? What exactly will you win? At the end of the day, are you not still an adult stricken with the aforementioned plagues of adulthood? Maybe I just lack the competitiveness needed to be "a winner," and this quasi-spiritual grasping at the lovely intricacies of the game is my roundabout way of dealing with it. It's something I used to worry about. But now? Eh, life is hard enough without losing yourself in the dark art of winning > all else, so who gives a flip? ;)
I recently played a doubles match against an old timer (I lost) who told me afterward that I had a "youthful" game. While I may have been a youth to him, to an actual youth, I'm not, so I think what he meant is that I made a shit-ton of unforced errors trying to hit the ball loud as opposed to his method of trying to hit the ball in. Hey, man, you wouldn't tell a painter how to paint, would you?
I'd rather die, or in this case, lose, than sully my practice of this beautiful game. It's my life's WIP masterpiece, even though instead of oil paints, my abilities only allow me to work in crayon.
And therein lies the rub. I'll admit it, Mr. Brad Gilbert, winning is indeed more fun. But in the pursuit of the W, when does tennis cease to be Tennis and become nothing more than a war of ball-pushing attrition? Don't you know in war there are no winners?
That's why, dear readers, it all comes down to this: I guess if I can't bring myself to win ugly, I can still, at the very least, attempt to lose pretty.