Tennis Anyone?

Posted by Cynical Sarah on October 20, 2006

Until recently, it had been a few years since I’ve watched tennis on TV. During my younger years I was sucked into the sport of tennis because of cute players like Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras.

Pete was the dark handsome type, albeit a little on the hairy side, kind of like what you would expect tennis royalty to be. Andre was sort of the wild man with his long hair and hot pink outfits during what were supposed to be serious tournaments like Wimbledon and the French Open. I’ve never played a real game of tennis in my life, but when those two were playing on TV, I was a huge tennis fan.

As the years passed, I outgrew my fascination with the cute tennis players though I would catch a match now and then if one was on while I was flipping through channels and as long as either Pete or Andre was playing.

I was surprised to find out a couple years ago that Pete had retired. At the time I figured Andre would soon follow but he surprised us all by hanging in for a few years more, and not just hanging in, but excelling. He cleaned up his image a bit – mostly through the horror of hair loss since he opted to shave his head rather than give into male pattern baldness – did well and even won a few more tournaments and became a great ambassador for the sport.

When I heard that Andre was finally retiring too, I made a point to watch him play a couple weekends ago. He was going to retire at home by playing his final matches at the U.S. Open. It may have been his last tournament, but Andre wasn’t going to go gently into retirement.

By the time I finally caught a match on TV, he’d already survived through two matches of the tournament, two more than he was expected to win because of back issues. He was up against a much younger opponent, but also a much lower ranked player, and like the first two games, he had the crowd on his side.

That was really the magic of Andre. Even when he wasn’t facing retirement, he was always a crowd favorite. The wild hair and bright clothing were just decoys in Andre’s early years to distract people from realizing he’s a sweet, sensitive guy with a great love for the game. He played with heart and incredible emotion and the viewers couldn’t help but cheer for the guy.

So, I sat and watched him play his heart out one last time. It turned out the first two games had taken their toll on Andre. He was obviously not at his best, but he refused to give up. He could have taken it easy and saved himself from some extra pain, but instead he chose to go out with as much heart and as much passion as he’d put into every game during his career.

How many people in the regular world can say they even liked their careers all the way through it, much less end their careers with as much passion as when they began it? Most of us are content to just get by. If you’re lucky, you’re happy with what you do or the work you produce, but it’s very rare that people do more than the bare minimum they need to in order to collect a paycheck.

When I was younger, my brother and I had a chores list that we had to do every week. It was just one list, and we each had to do half, but it was up to us to pick what we would do and get it done. The challenge was always to get to the easiest things on the list before the other one did. That was the first stage of doing the bare minimum to earn our allowance.

The second step was finding ways to cut corners on each chore. The most dreaded chore was dusting the bookcase. We had a huge bookcase that covered an entire wall and was filled with books, photo albums, knick-knacks and more. The quickest version of dusting the bookcase was just to push the books all the way back to dust in front of them, and not worry about dusting behind them too.

It obviously wasn’t a huge secret, or even very clever, since on occasion we’d be given specific instructions to take the books off the shelf to dust. We could get away with it for a while, but sometimes we had to put in the full work.

If Andre had to do our chore list, my Mom would have had a sparkling house every week with everything done the right way. That’s the way I think about it. He put his all into what he was doing on the tennis court so much so that you know he probably puts that kind of effort into everything that he does.

It may sound silly, but for that reason alone, Andre Agassi will remain one of my favorite sports stars forever. I may never learn the game or ever play a real tennis match, but I will always remember that Andre was one of the greatest players of the game because even up until the end he loved his job and was a true inspiration on and off the court.

- Sarah L. Polson

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Tags: humor, tennis

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