The Racquet of Life
“Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.”
This spring, after ten years of playing tennis, I decided I would buy a new racquet. I called Tennis Express and in no time at all had four brand new demo racquets to try out. Two days later, the local indoor tennis facility shut down due to COVID-19. The demo racquets that were on loan for one week sat in the box in our sunroom for nearly three months.
When the outdoor clay courts eventually were opened to the public, I was ready to get out there and experiment with the new sticks. But then a strange thing happened: the different racquets and how they “performed” shifted my attention in subtle ways. I grew distracted, preoccupied, and a little less present to everything else about the game. A poor shot was immediately accompanied by an internal (negative) assessment of the racquet; likewise, a winner led me to dream that this particular racquet was going to elevate my game to a whole other level.
Ahh, the mind, all tennis players must contend with it. There is a Zen-like question in tennis circles that goes something like this: what is the proper number of ideas in the player’s mind when approaching to hit the ball? Most people learn through experience that having competing ideas in their head about shot selection is highly undesirable, an obstacle to effective play. So the answer to the question seems obvious: approach the ball with only one idea in mind. Wrong. As one of my playing partners, Franz, told me, “the correct answer is zero”. Clear the mind, be in the flow, let the moment dictate the shot.
My four demo racquets compounded this koan: it was not only “what shot should I hit here” but much more diabolically, “which racquet should I hit it with?” This was no doubt a greased and slippery slope leading to a dangerous condition that in tennis parlance is technically referred to as “a head case.” In the throes of useless racquet deliberations, I was wondering if this whole idea had been a big mistake.
Then another strange thing happened. I heard a voice inside my head reminding me of the self that is beyond or independent of circumstances, a central theme in psychosynthesis. After all the angst, that call of self set me free; I found my way back to being present with my experience without any of the noise. In psychosynthesis terms, this was a moment of disidentification where everything got quiet, calm and spacious again. I was the tennis player independent of all racquets. From this point forward, I told myself, just play tennis with this racquet, the one in your hand, as if it were the last and only racquet on earth. I even started to refer to it in my mind, in between points, as “my magic stick.” What a shift!
This whole episode reminded me of a story that Zen master Bernie Glassman shared at a spiritual psychology retreat many years ago about how to make a sandwich. What I remember from his anecdote is that “you can’t make the sandwich with ingredients that you wish were in the refrigerator”, only with the ingredients you actually have in the fridge. Or as Arthur Ashe said, “start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.” Same difference, drop the story and work with what you’ve got.
My new racquet, the Wilson UltraL (version 3.0) is scheduled for delivery on Monday. But it doesn’t really matter anymore. I’ll be playing tennis, breathing in the fresh breezes of summer with friends on our magnificent red clay courts, opening myself once again to the pure joy of the game.