Perspectives from Craig Cignarelli

Written by: Staff on 28th June 2013

Perspectives from Craig Cignarelli |

“Coach, I have a favor to ask.”

“ Yes?”

Dawn caresses the Pacific horizon. An orange light ascends into a cerulean sky. Above the sands, faint sounds of waking seagulls repeat. I am standing mid-tennis court, 350-count ball basket situated off my left hip, its rusted metal legs suffering beneath the morning mist, its wobbly wheels fighting for supremacy. As I have done for twenty years, I clasp a triad of yellow Penn 3’s, my calloused hands now numb to their tightly woven felt, and gently release one into the air. I feel my racket move upward, connecting easily, sending the ball into the morning
mist.

Twenty paces distant, a face materializes. It is severe, mangled into a deformed combination of grunt and grace. A masculine body – lithe, athletic – emerges beneath the face, its shape reminiscent of some 18th century Florentine sculpture. From its right hand, a tennis racket dangles. Inside this oddly-lined rectangle, I’ve witnessed every strata of athletic prowess: the four year-old prodigy whose DNA included absurd Jedi-like hand-eye coordination, the NTRP 3.0-rated ladies team whose swings suggest an epileptic marching band unfolding lawn chairs, the normally-reserved CEO whose on-court expectations and inability to accept less than perfection send him into post-unforced-error chimpanzee-ish tirades of epic proportion, the reticent high-school female with the parents who thought having a sport on their daughter’s resume would help her get into college but whose on-court intensity is more mouse then pterodactyl, and in my case, the seventy-eight year old terminally ill cancer patient with the sole objective of hitting a forehand beyond the service line before he died (two days after he achieved it, he passed away – the tears have yet to dry). Thus forms the tennis coach’s clientele.

The struck ball crosses above the horizontal white tape whose black fishnets are at once alluring and threatening. Many players have succumbed to defeat on her account. The raging body is moving, coiling unto itself like a frightened pill bug, unconsciously loading energy into its kinetic chain. With bad intentions, the fierce-face tracks the incoming ball. I shout brief couplets – load and explode, grip it and rip it, crush and rush, the seductively rhymed phrases I’ve developed over the decades to appease the younger generation’s proclivity for wordplay – of encouragement and watch the human helix uncoil into the ball, the linear and angular racket acceleration, the extension and rotation of the lower arm simultaneously conducted with the athlete’s levitation-like lift, and culminating with a primitive bellow and lassoing finale.

When the boy arrived, he was nine years old, curly brown hair, glowing teeth, voice high enough to communicate with dolphins. Trailing his father and toting a tennis bag twice his size, the boy stayed quiet for the first five minutes. His father interrogated me quickly, intent. With a nine year-old’s innocence, the child said, “Iwant to play Wimpleton.” Talent stands out. Collisions are stringbed-central, bulls-eyes into the racket’s sweet spot, every time. Talent creates shots, capitalizes on errors, and doesn’t lose balance. It wields equipment like a limb-extension, as though the manufacturer scraped off a few stem cells in order to prepare the player’s racket. Talent is for tennis players. Everyone else just plays tennis.

The boys shots impact like an axe on wood, rhythmically placed into the twisted jaw, raised-eyebrow, mid-scream athletic orgasm accompanying the forehand strike. On a twenty-five degree vector, a meteoric mass now hurtles toward my head approaching (the mass) 98mph. The ball appears to have a will. Its parabolic path arcs above the net, passes my skull with a bee’s buzz, and lands twelve inches inside the baseline, imprinting its soul upon the brick-red clay recently flattened and swept by some court-maintenance man whose passion for tennis is fueled more by a minimum wage paycheck than any love for the game. Over the years, we developed his game – the aggressive base-lining style, which would define 21st century tennis -replete with an infrequent serve-volley tactic and a gifted sense of movement. I’d pick him up from his middle school and he’d giggle as he stuck french fries into my heating vents on the way to practice. We’d pound stroke after stroke, refining technique, strategy, the post-match fist pump and accompanying smile. Shortly thereafter, I started losing points. He’d take to the towel after extended rallies and shout encouragement to me when his shots passed me as if I was an unattractive hitchhiker.

When he reached top national junior status, he headed off to college, taking summers to travel the world in search of professional competition. Memories: Shenzen, China – the recently-trained (this morning) lines people who didn’t understand doubles rules, not to mention the constantly changing draw sheet, which in an unbelievably fortunate turn of events – if you live in Shenzen – pitted every local player against another local player, ensuring at least one local club player would reach the final. Mazatlan, Mexico – Equatorial temperatures, a three-hour battle, the IV from a Guatemalan trained medical technician, (read: almost a doctor) followed by the mid-shower full-body cramp, ending with the dramatic thud and yelps for help Anywhere U.S.A. – high school courts in un-renowned towns where stale bagels, peanut butter substances and rusting water fountains provide pre-game fare, where local families offer hard floors and lovingly-cooked meals to professional athletes and coaches willing to hit with their children for an hour a day during the tournament, and whose nonpareil ability to “hook-up” a tennis player with the attractive tennis fan goes neither unnoticed nor unappreciated. In the early years, the joy of professional tennis is uncontaminated by the pollution of experience. At the professional level, crowds watch the ball. Coaches watch the players. We recognize the un-accelerated stroke as fear. We see the relief-seeking, inappropriately timed drop shot. The double fault at 4-all in the third set stems from a deep-rooted psychological setback acquired in a sectional junior tournament six years prior. If the stars align, we are privy to witness development, the player’s shifting perspective: from seeing challenges as difficult to seeing difficulties as challenging. We can distinguish the fish-hooked upper lip curl when that down the line forehand finally misses the tape and finds the court on a pressure point.

By age 25, he reached the top 200, an echelon misunderstood by your average tennis-viewing fan. These players can flat out play. 130 mph serves, Chuck Yeager-worthy forehands, and an athletic grace one might find in Cirque de Soleil auditions. Players earn $75 k per year – assuming they toss in a few Open level tournament victories and secure a roster spot on a professional tennis team –and dish out $50 k in expenses. This assumes doubling up in hotel rooms, sharing rental cars, selling cans of soda and pizza slices stolen from the ATP players lounge for a buck-a-pop, and sporting tattered tennis shoes until blistering becomes unavoidable. Here, unless sponsored by a national federation, or backed by a millionaire interested in having a horse in the race (what every young player is searching for and about as rare as an attractive bathroom attendant) players can’t afford traveling coaches, so he is out there alone while I stand basket-adjacent, racket pulsing, anxiously awaiting victory-declaring text messages from across the globe.

It’s been eighteen years now, watching the young child mature. His insecurities worked out between bad backhands, the sense of independence nurtured in the foreign hotels of non-English speaking cities, the enhanced discipline required of persons seeking excellence through repetition. I’ve seen a young man twist failure into an asset; turn adversity into challenge and then into success. Heart-wrenching defeats would crush the child, but now, they strengthen a man’s spirit. More balls arc and flatten. He finishes practice. Time passes. Other lessons arrive and swing and grunt and leave. The clay is a Monet painting, an angry blend of burgundy, ruby, and crimson, as though the earth is bleeding from the constant barrage. With a throaty voice atop weary legs, my day ends. I wheel my basket back into the ball shed and place my rackets into the racket bag, then hoist it upon my shoulder. Its canvas edges dig into my skin with the weight of twenty years. The sun is setting over the Pacific. A shadow emerges, followed by a suntanned face beneath curly brown hair.

“Coach I have a favor to ask.”

“Yes?”

“My final tournament is coming up and I’d like you to be there.”

“Of course. Where is it?”

“Wimbledon.”

Topics: Craig Cignarelli