The joy of playing tennis—Why play tennis?

There are so many courts around us, but tennis courts are still quite rare. It is common to see table tennis, badminton, football and basketball enthusiasts among friends, so why do we still play tennis?

It is relatively difficult to learn tennis skills, and the learning time cost is high. Is it really worth spending one or two years and a lot of money to hire a coach?

I wrote this article to show the fun of tennis. Based on my own tennis experience, I hope to introduce this sport that I love to you in a more realistic and comprehensive way.

Personal tennis experience: I have been playing tennis for ten years, I am 30 years old this year, I have been self-taught, my level is NTRP 3.5+, I am still training and competing regularly, and my goal this year is to score 4.0. My level and experience are limited, the following content is my personal summary, and it is my truest opinion. Different opinions are welcome to discuss.

Purely original, please inform us in advance if you want to reprint.

1. General characteristics of tennis

l Tennis is a non-contact sport that combines the characteristics of competitive sports and physical fitness. Normal people from six to seventy years old can play it (I heard that the oldest enthusiast is 104 years old, from a foreign magazine). It is a lifelong sustainable sport.

PS: So it doesn’t matter if you learn slowly. Even if it takes you five years to learn, you can still play for more than 40 years without any problem. This is what I thought when I was learning, hahahaha.

l The most basic benefit of tennis is of course to strengthen the body. It is a combination of anaerobic exercise and aerobic exercise. I once read a book called “Exercise Changes the Brain”, which contains detailed scientific arguments (medicine and biology). Of course, all sports have this function.

2. Characteristics of competitive tennis

l Among non-contact ball sports, tennis should be considered as a more intense level.

When playing tennis, you run over a large area and exercise more muscle groups (a forehand shot uses more than 130 muscle groups. I saw this view online. Please forgive me for not having time to look up references). Due to the weight of the tennis ball and its general speed, a certain amount of force needs to be released to hit it (from an energy perspective, the highest linear speed of a tennis ball in amateur tennis is equivalent to throwing sandbags when you were a child. The speed of the ball varies from person to person. According to the law of momentum, returning the ball within a few tenths of a second does require a certain amount of force), so some coaches say that hitting the ball is like boxing.

l Requires a certain amount of endurance and perseverance

Whether learning tennis or playing a game, it is a training of willpower. One time I played an amateur game in the summer at noon, and the two games lasted nearly two and a half hours, and I almost got a heat stroke. If you have participated in a high-level advanced tennis class, you will definitely not want to walk one more step after the class!

l Fully test and exercise internal abilities: self-control, adjustment, concentration, tactical literacy…

Intrinsic ability is a very vague word, but as your tennis skills improve, you can feel your inner ability improving:

• The first thing you have to defeat on the court is yourself. After several consecutive mistakes, you may have cursed yourself in your heart. The terrible thing is that this negative psychological suggestion will continue to further affect your level on the court like hypnosis, so you have to learn to adjust.
• In basketball and football, it seems that it is very common for a player to lose concentration. If you make a mistake and lose the ball, you should defend well. You can even say “mine” loudly to cheer your teammates. On the tennis court, a few tenths of a second of loss of concentration means that you miss the best time to hit the ball, and the opponent will score directly with a high probability. Therefore, the fatigue of playing tennis is very “three-dimensional”. First, you feel tired in your brain and lack of concentration. Therefore, you have to learn to concentrate for a long time.
• Tactical literacy is very important in any competitive game, and the same is true for tennis. In amateur competitions, your opponent will often discover that your backhand is not good or your high pressure is unstable as soon as you warm up, and then you may face backhand shots or high balls throughout the game… Therefore, if your opponent understands tactics, you must also learn to respond tactically.
• When you don’t play well, you will become more and more impatient. When you win a big point of more than 20 shots, you will want to cheer, but you have to control yourself because you have to consider your opponent’s feelings. After all, what if he is unhappy and doesn’t want to play with you next time… (Just kidding, it should be because of the most basic court etiquette!) And if your emotions fluctuate too much, it means that it will be difficult for you to adjust your state calmly afterwards.

l Tennis is a lonely and stressful sport, just like much of life.

• Compared with team sports, tennis focuses on independent problem-solving skills. You look around on the court, and the coach or spectators can only cheer for you outside the court. The ATP even consciously prohibits players from communicating with the coaching team. This is a desert, and you have to walk alone. Therefore, when you walk out of the desert, you are the first to be moved. (This is not chicken soup, sometimes I really want to cry when I win a game with close strength) Although there is no bonus and no spectators, you have solved one problem after another in just over an hour of competition. Facing the impact again and again, those seemingly chance balls, you have to suppress your impulse to “go all out and take a shot”. When the real opportunity comes, you have to rush to the front court with courage and confidence, adjust your pace, look at the ball, and make a beautiful fatal shot!
• The scoring system of tennis is a big pit, isn’t it! You just saved your serve, and before you can catch your breath, the opponent’s powerful serve has already hit you: you run as fast as you can to save a break point after the tie, but you find that you can’t celebrate because it’s tied again. You need to calm down and serve well? Although players in amateur competitions are not under as much pressure as in professional competitions, and psychological factors have such a big impact, there are game points and match points every day, and you still need a big heart that allows you to remain calm in crises and opportunities.

3. Why play tennis?

After understanding the above characteristics, you may have the urge to play tennis. Let me share with you the reasons why I want to play tennis.

a) There is no high or low level of sports, there is always something suitable for you

It is not that tennis is superior to other sports. Each sport has its own unique charm. The brotherhood on the basketball court and the cooperation on the volleyball court can benefit people a lot. If you know a sport and feel interested in it, it is worth trying.

b) How well do you know yourself?

Going further in the tennis world will help you find the answer to this question. Are you able to sense your physical condition and learn to adjust slowly? Can you calm down when you need to focus? When you encounter a series of setbacks, do you still have the courage and willpower to change the situation? When your tactics don’t work and you fall behind by a large margin, will you doubt yourself and give up hope? Or will you actively think about countermeasures, make changes, and play every next ball well?

In this sport, you need to keep talking to yourself: understand yourself , from your body posture to your inner will; accept yourself , learn not to compete with yourself, accept your strengths and weaknesses, and make improvements; motivate yourself, give yourself strength when you see no hope; be kind to yourself , learn to develop reasonable training plans and technical optimization plans to make your movements more relaxed and smoother, make your mentality calmer and more relaxed, let yourself see progress and feel a sense of accomplishment.

c) Stay away from anxiety and experience flow

Do you have a lot of worries and anxieties in life? Have you ever had this experience, when you read a book or watch a movie, you suddenly immerse yourself in it and forget the worries in reality? If you play tennis for a long time, I believe you will have a similar experience in tennis, because in every point of the game, you have to concentrate on the ball and have no time to think about other things; after a fierce ball is over, you will still walk slowly to the serving point, take a breath, try to relax your body, and throw the ball upward steadily, and then you can burst out a powerful serve with your courage and confidence in this quiet accumulation of power.

d) Make friends through playing football and see the world

Tennis enthusiasts have some similar personality traits (you should have this feeling after reading the above), which may be conducive to establishing friendships with strangers.

Tennis culture contains many characteristics of Western culture. There are so many civilizations on the earth. To this day, I firmly believe that every civilization has its good aspects and aspects that need improvement. I like to learn the advantages of various cultures.

e) Appreciate tennis at a deeper level

Most of us are introduced to tennis through tennis matches and tennis stars, and a large number of fans only watch the game but do not play it. The unique aesthetic and rhythmic rhythm of top players, the gripping game plots, and the exciting and thrilling game broadcasts are all important components of tennis culture.

However, in the eyes of an amateur who has played tennis for a long time, tennis matches may be a little different. Now when watching a game, I will not cheer for only one side just because I support a certain person, because the game is too cruel. If you have read Nadal’s autobiography, you will understand how much pressure every ATP player faces in the game.

As strong as Nadal is, he also needs to suppress most of his normal feelings as a human being when facing Federer, and only retain the cold player attributes on the court. In the tiebreak, the two sides are like gladiators fighting in the ancient Roman arena. Both of them are covered with wounds, and they have to do their best to give the opponent a fatal blow. You discover the greatness of a game, the amount of training and hard work hidden behind it, and you will cheer for both players.

From the perspective of learning skills, tennis matches are different. Staring at the ball is the way most people watch the game. If you try to just stare at a certain player, the consistency of his footwork, the rhythm of his shots, the smoothness of his movements, these details are all very exciting! If you compare it with the video of your own playing, you will know how big the difference is.