This weekend marks the start of the November installment of the Tennis Glow-Up series. Throughout 2026, we have been examining different aspects of our tennis lives and considering how deliberate attention to them might make the experience better. With only two months remaining, our themes are increasingly intertwined. November’s topic is perspective, something that influences nearly everything else we have discussed.
A couple of weeks ago, I played a league match that became a little chippy. It was a familiar sordid tale in recreational tennis. A disputed line call kicked off the festivities, and things went downhill from there. By the time we reached the handshake, some rather sharp words were said. Fun times.
One of my current side projects (that’s right, my side projects have side projects) is a model intended to characterize some of the different personalities we encounter on a tennis court. It is still a work in progress, and I am not ready to share the details. However, thinking about those differences proved useful in breaking down this particular match. It was apparent almost immediately that the players involved were approaching the situation from fundamentally different perspectives.
Players all harbor default assumptions when it comes to line calls. Some people generally believe their opponents are doing their best to be fair. Mistakes happen, particularly when a ball is traveling quickly or lands close to a line. Other players approach the same situation with a less charitable attitude. Their expectation is that their opponents will take every advantage when it comes to the match. That mindset can lead every close call to be interpreted as deliberate cheating.
Not surprisingly, those assumptions can produce very different reactions to exactly the same event. A player who believes an opponent made an honest mistake may be annoyed, but the incident is unlikely to become a major issue. Someone who believes a call was intentionally dishonest has a different problem to resolve. The dispute is no longer limited to whether a particular ball was in or out.
Additionally, I believe another difference in perspective was in play during this match. It happened during fall league non-advancing tennis. Consequently, from one point of view, the stakes are relatively low because the results do not matter. There is little reason to turn an afternoon of what is supposed to be fun tennis into an unpleasant experience for everyone on the court.
Unfortunately, some players strongly care about winning regardless of the circumstances. That may stem from concern over ratings, personal pride, or principles of fair competition. For some people, the absence of advancement opportunities doesn’t necessarily make a match less important.
Players who assume good intentions and consider the match relatively unimportant may see an escalating argument as completely disproportionate to the circumstances. Players who believe they are being cheated may consider the same argument entirely justified, regardless of whether the match leads anywhere. I think that all players on the court walked away with strong opinions about the others on the court that day, fueled by those diverse individual perspectives.
What made this experience interesting was that these differences were apparent to me while the dispute was unfolding. I could recognize that we were operating from different assumptions about what was happening and how much it mattered. Unfortunately, that insight did not provide an obvious solution. Understanding why a disagreement is escalating turns out to be considerably easier than figuring out how to stop it.
That experience illustrates something important about perspective. We often discuss it as though it were simply a matter of looking at the same situation from another angle. In practice, perspective also includes the assumptions we bring into an experience, the priorities we assign to competing objectives, and the meaning we attach to what happens.
As a side observation, there is a direct feedback loop relationship between perspective and goals. Our perspective influences what we consider important and therefore what we choose to pursue. Once we establish those goals, they influence what we notice and how we interpret our experiences.
Perspective deserves attention as part of an intentional approach to tennis. We make decisions based on our interpretation of what is happening, and those interpretations are shaped by assumptions we may not always examine. Sometimes those assumptions are well founded. Sometimes they are incomplete or simply wrong. Either way, they affect how we respond.
Understanding another person’s perspective can help explain behavior that initially seems irrational. It can also help us recognize when an argument is going nowhere. If the people involved are operating from fundamentally different assumptions or priorities, rehashing the same facts probably isn’t going to accomplish much.
Still, there is value in understanding what is happening. At a minimum, it gives us an opportunity to examine our own interpretations before allowing that to dictate our behavior. We may not be able to change another player’s perspective, but we can question whether our assumptions are justified and whether our response is consistent with what we actually want from the experience.
Tomorrow, we’ll move beyond the tennis court to consider how differences in perspective influence the larger tennis delivery system. The same disagreements about priorities and objectives that complicate an individual match can become considerably more consequential when they influence the policies and competition formats that govern how we play.
