Tuesday, September 14, 2010

My Last Tennis Post?

It could be.

I've been a sports fan for as long as I can remember. If you share my love of sports you know that part of the experience is the commentating and reading about your favorite athlete or team.

Baseball and tennis have been my great loves most of my life. I've adored my Detroit Tigers and my Björn Borg and Ivan Lendl. My whole family is sports nutty. I recall that when I moved to Florida at 19, my younger sister sent me newspaper clippings about the Detroit Tigers. Back then we were somewhat able to pick and choose what we read about our sports, and even had to search hard if we wanted to read about the Tigers while living in Florida, so those clippings were precious to me. I still have them!

I don't want to get too deep into the ugliness that has somewhat involuntarily seeped into my brain surrounding the tennis rivalry of my favorite player, Roger Federer, and the current world number one, Rafael Nadal. Suffice it to say that I know that I've allowed myself to read too many fan and sportswriter thoughts over the years. It's killed the joy of the sport for me. How sad, that my thirst for reading about this great sport has played such a big part in killing it for me.

Now, you can say that's my fault for reading it or reacting to it, and you'd be mostly right, I guess. I think I could make a case for a particularly ugly period amongst tennis fans and people who are paid to opine about the sport, but I won't. I think the people who follow tennis and pay attention to all of this will get me.

I think tennis is one of the most athletically challenging and beautiful sports to be found. I love to support it. So much so, that I'll bug people on the NY subways to talk tennis with me. I'm sure I've annoyed plenty who follow me on Twitter with all of my tennis tweets. I hope I will still try to promote the sport. The game itself deserves it.

I'm just tired. I'm giving up following my sport for a while. I'll still watch my favorite player's remaining matches (he's 29 - in this sport that's near retirement), but unfortunately with commentary muted, to my great disgust. And that's it. I'm done.

To the victor go the spoils.

11 comments:

Anthony said...

Aw, c'mon. Don't let some yay-hoos kill your enjoyment of the game. Instead, try a mature and reasoned response: blow a raspberry at them and concentrate on what makes you happy. :)

Anonymous said...

Oh, you'll be back watching tennis when the Australian Open begins. :)

chickelit said...

I heard on Twitter that Nadal likes to touch his butt and then sniff his fingers.

Is that really true?

Trooper York said...

Hey didn't I see you in that commercial where you stripped searched that tennis player who was going through airport security?

Trooper York said...

Chin up, it will get better.

Just think you could be a Mets fan. Hee.

Trooper York said...

Or a Barack Obama fan.

Double hee.

Jason (the commenter) said...

Oh, put on a happy face.

Jason (the commenter) said...

If you share my love of sports you know that part of the experience is the commentating and reading about your favorite athlete or team.

Post, but post about playing tennis yourself. Fandom is boring, participation is its own reward.

Anonymous said...

Borg was the greatest. Period.

Darcy said...

You guys are all the best, you know that?

Thanks for reading mah li'l ol' blog. :)

Darcy said...

And I'm not giving up tennis. This was a tantrum, obviously.

There's still a lot of tennis to watch for me. I'll just be more selective! Yeah, that's it.