Off-Message

https://www.cnn.com/videos/sports/2023/11/06/billie-jean-king-cup-career-highlights-spt-intl.cnn

Before I took up bicycling, my first sports love was tennis. My dad taught me to play when I was a kid, back in the days of wood racquets. He admired the Aussie players Rod Laver, Stan Smith and John Newcombe, and also the stoic, cool Swede, Bjorn Borg. I was trained on Col. Nick Powel's original Code of Conduct of Tennis, and fantasized about playing like Billie Jean King, Chrissie Evert, Steffi Graf and Mary Jo Fernandez.

I played on my high school team, but I was awful. I was horribly shy and self-conscious, to the point that I couldn't focus on the ball and react to my opponent's shots, or concentrate on placing my returns. And I was always shocked by opponents who violated The Code with questionable line calls, temper tantrums and arguments about scores or calls. I played off and on after graduation, until finally in my mid-30s I developed enough confidence and mental focus to begin winning some matches, and truly enjoy playing. For several years, tennis was the center of my social life and the consuming interest that kept me happy even while working low-paying drudge jobs to pay the bills and support my tennis habit.

After moving to Bellingham I struggled to find a new tennis crowd. The tennis social scene was dominated by a local private tennis club; I was very, very broke in my first few years here and never fit in very well in clubby situations. One year I attended a conference put on by the US Tennis Association, where they announced a new marketing strategy promoting the pitch that "tennis is not just a sport for rich white snobs." I'm not sure the Bellingham club really got behind that message.

Still, I kept trying to make new tennis friends and compete in USTA or local public park tournaments, until I began to have pretty bad chronic back pain, and then blew out my knee. But I stubbornly kept limping around the court, hoping it would be fun again. In the summer of 2005 my car broke down, and I resorted to a Goodwill bicycle for transportation. I rode my bike to play matches at public courts, and found the bike rides were much more enjoyable than the tennis matches. Besides, the bike began to cure my knee and straighten out and strengthen my back. At the end of the summer I junked my car and gave up tennis forever.

This morning I saw a news item that just might revive my interest in tennis, although I'm not sure I want to play again myself. The Billie Jean King Cup is the newest incarnation of World Team Tennis and the Federation Cup. It is kind of the women's version of Davis Cup, which started as a competition between Ivy League American university teams and British Oxbridge teams, back in the days when women weren't admitted to universities, never mind competing in international sports tournaments. Now the Billie Jean King Cup gives women from all over the world the chance to train and compete at top levels in a beautiful game.