Tennis, Anyone? Sweatin’ with the Oldies

“Out!” Sonny yells, hoisting up a finger.

He knows the ball wasn’t out, and he knows that I know the ball wasn’t out either, that it was clearly on the line. Without winking, he winks, snuffing out the freshly streaked felt pubes on the court with his brand-new Wilson tennis shoes.

The other players await my call. I am the deciding vote on this very important ball. The pressure. As Sonny’s teammate, I’m supposed to agree with him. To side with the enemy would be to jeopardize our rank in the tournament happening in Sonny’s head. He thinks the only way we can get a win against Kathy and Joe is by telling a couple of porkies. Looking to me for assurance, my noncommittal response makes him look like a schmuck. Sonny submits to the truth.

I am often in the unenviable position of being Sonny’s doubles partner. For having both knees replaced, he miraculously returns most balls you lob his way, getting there in a running style best described as Forrest Gump before the braces come off. With Wilson shoes, Penn balls, and a Head racket, I find it hard to determine his official sponsorship. But compared to my ratty New Balance and Target swim trunks, Sonny looks like a 63-year-old Filipino John McEnroe. He’s got a powerful swing and a temper that can singe carpet if he doesn’t win.

I have old friends and I have old friends. Sonny is in the latter category, though the term friend is pushing it. I was called an old soul as a kid, which basically meant that I’d find out what’s cool way later. I’m nearing thirty now and I can’t say I’m ready to tell a child they’re an old soul yet.

I met Sonny at the Oak Harbor Racket Club. The word “club” in this case is misleading because it implies a secret handshake or a sign-in sheet, of which there is neither. My girlfriend, Rachel, was writing a feature on the “club” and needed photos to wrap it up: proof that not much happens around here. She interviewed the de facto president who encouraged players of all ages to attend. When I hear that all ages are welcome to anything, I assume that the wrinkle ratio is heavily skewed in favor of the elderly.

Three weeks into living on an island in Puget Sound, I hadn’t so much as left the apartment. Any excuse to stay inside was nullified the moment we drove over Deception Pass: the most photographed bridge in Washington, apparently. If I couldn’t be bothered to swim in the ocean or survey snow-capped mountains, the least I could do was swing a racket at some balls.

Tennis is a sport I was mildly good at in high school. I’ll be the first to tell you that I floated varsity freshman year. But aside from the occasional rally, I hadn’t played in earnest for nearly a decade. Knowing I’d be lousy, I tagged along with Rachel anyway. I had nothing to lose aside from a little rust. I brought my racket and cool headband in case a pretty photographer decided to put my mug in a bi-weekly island newspaper.

When we showed up, the average age plunged to 72. I figured we’d be outnumbered, but never did I imagine it going down like this. Oak Harbor is home to a Naval Air Station, contributing to the overwhelming amount of military retirees. Most of them have been here for so long that they refuse to call the island, the island; they call it the rock. I hope I don’t live here long enough to do that.

Chuck was the first member of the Oak Harbor Racket Club to take me under his wing. He had me run through my tennis history, which he used to craft a personalized lesson plan to get me back into — I can’t believe I’m saying this — the swing of things. Lobs, serves, and slices; it was like riding a bike, the electric one Chuck rode in on. I had finally come to after a ten-year-long tennis coma and Chuck was my wise, gum-chewing physical therapist. Despite my inability to hit a forehand, Chuck was quick to praise me on my hustle. What I lack in form, I make up for with speed. “Those young legs of yours!” he said. “I just love those young legs!” Chuck has a pacemaker, so I accepted the peculiar compliment with grace.

Once I kicked the dust off at Chuck’s School of Tennis, I landed a job playing doubles for the rest of the day. This is where I met Kathy, a woman whose skin resembles that of a post-grilled hot dog that sat out for several weeks. Kathy is a bully. She’s always making people play one more set as if their lives or dinner plans had no bearing on her schedule. I learned to deal with Kathy’s insistence by walking away because she actually does not have the energy to stop me.

After all this Kathy-bashing, I should say something nice about her. A few Thursdays back, she went out of her way to pick me up from my apartment to drive me to the courts. When I opened up the passenger side of her burnt orange Subaru Outback, she was in the middle of brushing off an entire box of Minute Rice from the seat to the floor. “Don’t mind the mess,” she said as grains plunked onto the pavement. I got in, despite the rice.

When I shut the door behind me, a wave of claustrophobia hit. It was as if I had rented an apartment in New York the size of a dumbwaiter. The seat adjuster was stuck, completely ravaged by Minute Rice. My nostrils were mere inches from the airbag, my entire life at the mercy of Kathy’s driving. The smell inside her compact car was not Shetland Sheepdog or mulch or cigarette, but a combination. I needed a shower the moment my shorts touched down. Without traffic, the courts were minutes away; we were stuck behind a school bus making stops. I took maybe ten breaths the whole trip there and that was out of total necessity for survival. Although the radio was silenced, the rice sticking to the back of my calves kept me company. Thanks for the ride, Kathy.

Another standout was Joe: Bill Hader’s doppelgänger, down to the dental idiosyncrasies. The bright yellow Dri-FIT he wears makes him look more like a sun-faded traffic cone than a tennis player. When his partner serves, Joe two-hands his racket with a Wes Anderson-like symmetry while squatting down so far that his ass nearly touches asphalt, popping up like a Whac-A-Mole once the service is in. Aesthetically interesting yet wholly impractical, I assume this stance is to give the server clear margins to hit. It’s more distracting than anything. Joe asked if I was going to play more, but I told him that I had my sun for the day. He said, “oh, how old’s your son?” Homonyms.

Chuck gave me the inside scoop on Penn Titaniums: tennis balls that last forever. In the game of tennis, forever is about ten sets — which is forever. Chuck hushedly spoke about these balls like an illusionist revealing how he did that trick with the french fry. Titaniums have solid, fortified cores as opposed to the sealed air inside of your typical balls, so their bounce life significantly outlasts the competition. Like Penn Titaniums, the racketeers of the Oak Harbor Racket Club are going to outlast us all. Tennis is a young man’s game, which is why everyone playing is still alive.

I met a lot of people that day — all twenty to sixty years older — and only two gave me any flack for being younger. The OHRC should change their description from All ages welcome to All ages welcome, but you might get asked if you’ve ever owned a watch or where you were on 9/11.

Being an old soul I never understood that. No one chose to be — or when to be — here; we just are. You can be into the wheel at any age. The benefit of arriving later is you can be into the wheel and the iPad.

To them, age is as much a competition as tennis. They play as if their lives depend on it. There is truth to that.

There’s a psychological phenomenon that occurs specifically while serving. For context, the servers get two chances on every point to put their balls in the right box. The first serve is sort of a throwaway, meaning that you can give it your all without consequence. If you flub it, fine; you have a second ball which means a second chance. You will hit this ball gingerly because if you screw up here, the other team automatically gets the point without lifting a finger. This is bad because your opponents will high-five each other or say something condescending like “thank you” or administer any number of annoying celebratory mannerisms they have in their arsenal.

A player worth their salt knows that having three balls in a pocket at once breeds disaster. Even if you know you’re on your second serve, the feeling of that third ball in your pants can lead you to think that you’re actually on your first. Leave the third to your partner.

You cannot prevent a double fault or stop a conniving player from telling a porky. All you can do is be hyper-aware of nuances in the game and never carry more than two. And if you haven’t, do yourself a favor and inhale the air inside a freshly opened can of balls. It’s an incomparable ritual. It is a drug with no high. It is an intoxicant with no hangover. It’s merely the musk of a pre-tennis tennis ball.

We are down five-to-two, Kathy’s service. Match point. Sonny’s got his eyes peeled for any opportunity to call a shot out. The best-case scenario is that we head into deuce once Kathy double faults, but that rarely happens. She primarily hits spot-on drop shots. These are dubious, deceptively lifeless balls that come from slicing them like a katana. Most of Kathy’s serves hit the absolute middle of the service box, so Sonny finds it difficult to cheat.

From Sonny’s perspective, we lost the moment I told the truth in game three. You can often use those long, iffy balls to your advantage if you’re playing against those with questionable eyesight. Rarely, though, do I enact this handicap because of its karmic influence on subsequent points: if you call an in-ball out, you will more than likely lose the next. I’ve tested this theory in every game I’ve played. Morals aren’t essential.

Effectively admitting defeat, Sonny decides to play like a garbage disposal for the rest of the match. His serves become sloppy and his lethargy forces my young legs to run a half marathon. Cosmic balancing, I suppose. We lose as expected. Kathy wants a rematch, but Joe has dinner reservations. We walk away because she doesn’t have the energy to stop us.

Winning is a double-edged sword. If I win a match, they’re old. If I lose, they’re no longer old; they’re experienced. There is no scenario in which I win.

But as much as the others pine for it, I don’t care for winning anymore. Smacking around a rubber ball for a few hours is the most pointed catharsis I have. I make the old feel young, and they do the same for me. I’m in high school all over again, except my hair is a little thinner and I’m getting closer and closer to dying.

Sonny sometimes texts me to play one-on-one. When it’s the two of us, it’s less about competing and more about improving. I like him this way. He’s relaxed, unlike the tense Filipino John McEnroe I often see on Sundays. With a basket of fifty-odd balls of varying states of deflation, we hit certain strokes for a set period of time, dictated by the watch that he has and I don’t. Sonny calls these drills. I don’t care what they’re called; I’m just happy to be mildly good at tennis again.