This story originally printed in the Fall 2025 (Brown) Issue of the Portland Tennis Courterly
Slouching Towards 1.5
by Amy Lam
Sung to the tune of The Go-Go’s “We Got the Beat” chorus:
I got the pop
I got the pop
I got the pop
Yeah, I got the pop!
After months and months of playing with an off-the-rack aluminum stick with sad strings, I finally got a proper racquet so I could thwack red balls the size of grapefruits and hear a fat thump that’s somewhere in between the proper sweet-spot pop and the soft thud of a wool ball tumbling in a dryer. Green dots followed. Now, by the miracle of YouTube tutorials, I can sporadically hit a forehand with just enough whip and velocity to crack a clean pop from a regular Penn 4 or whatever. This may not seem a big deal for all of you rec players born with sweatbands on your wrists, but I’m the non-active type who took a walking class to earn required credits in my community college days forever ago.
It’s been more than a year since I stepped onto the cracked asphalt at the Essex Park courts for the first time—not one athletic bone in my flat-footed body—and I’ve since spent tens of hours flailing around our beautiful city’s public courts. I’ve hit in the shade of the towering firs at Mt. Scott; next to the porta potty at Woodstock Park; at the pristine Alex Rovello Memorial court; in the dark at Clinton City Park; at the Sellwood Park courts that had once been illegally converted to pickleball courts. I’ve taken lessons at Mt. Tabor, both west and east courts; admired the lush weeds sprouting from the base of the nets at Kenilworth Park; heard the roar of the Pickle’s crowd at Walker Stadium in Lents Park. Once, I tried to play at Colonel Sumner, but I was in a bad mood and there were three people waiting ahead of me so I stomped off like a cranky tennis Karen. Between classes, drills, and sweating like a maniac swatting at a ball machine by myself, I’ve spent the most time at PTC hitting out of bounds or into the net.
What have I got to show for all this time spent acquiring a repetitive stress injury sending me to the physical therapist? Let’s put it this way: Can I rally for more than a minute if my life depended on it? I prefer to be cremated. How’s my serve? Ha! What about tennis-induced negative self talk? Excellent. No coaching needed for this. I am a writer, after all, so I’ve been living with mental anguish like it’s a chronic condition without a salve.
And, yet, I persist, one split step at a time. Driven by some inexplicable desire to imperceptibly improve at something that doesn’t really matter, I keep buying shorts with big pockets. Maybe, just maybe, another year from now I’ll have a serve and you can hear me singing, to the tune of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”: First serve of mine, bum bum bum, good times never seemed so good.