Tennis Hits the Books
If the amazon Kindle reader “progress” bar is to be believed, I have read approximately 15% of Levels of the Game by John McPhee. That is precisely 15% further in than I was this time yesterday. At least I finally started in on it. I have a lot of pressing demands on my time right now.
Levels of the Game is a detailed account of the 1968 semi-final match between by Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner play at Forest Hills. The match is the foreground of for a much deeper cultural and societal examination. The backgrounds and attitudes which shaped each player are interwoven with the match play.
McPhee clearly lays out that theme early on in the book, as evidenced by the following excerpt.
A person’s tennis game begins with his nature and background and comes out through his motor mechanisms into shot patterns and characteristics of play.
Excerpt from Levels of the Game by John McPhee
In some ways, this book is perfect for capping off 2020. A major subplot to the COVID-19 pandemic was the Black Lives Matter movement. McPhee asserts that Arthur Ashe believed that Graebner’s tennis game was a reflection of his middle class upbringing. That is very close to what would now be termed “white privilege.” On the other hand, McPhee proposes that Grabner believed that Ashe played his style of tennis because he is black.
Temporarily setting the racial division aside, the idea that a tennis player’s game style is a reflection of who they are as a person brought me to a full stop. I don’t think it’s true and I can think of a lot of exceptions. It is a theme that I will be undoubtedly exploring with other players in the near future. Most likely it will be over beer.
I see refutation in my own game, I was an extraordinarily patient player as a junior. As an adult, I no longer have the tolerance to play excessively long points. Perhaps that is a nod to my near geriatric physical limitations, but there is a marked difference in my style of play over my lifetime. I have become more aggressive over time.
Shifting over to my professional life, the people who knew me in a work context before I had kids universally agree that motherhood mellowed me out. A lot. My friends who only know my maternal version of myself usually shudder at that revelation. It’s kind of frightening, actually.
For me, as it is with everybody, my background is immutable. You simply cannot go back and change history. Additionally, there are aspects in our backgrounds that are beyond individual control. I was very fortunate by birth. Not everyone is as lucky.
At the same time, my nature and personality have been evolutionary. Perhaps that is because I continue to accumulate background as life marches on. In any case my nature and tennis playing style have evolved in opposite directions. I think. It is clear that much more beer will be needed on this topic.
The majority of Levels of the Game is still to before me. Even if the “nature and background” theme isn’t a universal truth, as a literary mechanism, it is clearly effective. I am officially hooked and have no doubt that I will be writing a much more informed reflection in the coming weeks.
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