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My Way Back Into Tennis

1974, Paris, I wonder through cobble stone streets trying to make sense of the place. I am 9 years old, we just got there due to my parents new work assignment. No French, I am looking with blank eyes to people that are trying to talk to me, in my own way I am telling them I have no clue why I am there, and I don't want to be there, I want to be back home with my friends. That ain't happening of course.

Quite reserved I am, scared and mute. I hate the place, and I do mean hate. After few months of unapproachable attitude, while my parents do their best to help me acclimate into the environment by trying to entertain me with various activities, they take me to a tennis complex. The place is full of red dirt, crowded, I have some silly hard and uncomfortable shoes on that hurt my feet with each step. People are playing tennis, which I don't quite understand the attractiveness, but I admit to myself that they are pretty cool looking people; white shirts, white short shorts, nice looking white and reddish sneakers and those rackets. Oh boy... those rackets are really something, varying colors, letters on the strings, long leather wrapped brown handles... they must be expensive I thought to myself.

We stand next to one of those courts and watch one of the matches. I don't get it... "why is it 15 to zero, he only won once?" My mother does not know either, she's never been to a match before. We keep watching, but its gets boring and ask my mom if we can go back to the other courts where they were not counting the points, "it was more fun mom." I keep watching those players again, and they are having a lot more fun for sure and it is more enjoyable to watch those players. They are sliding from one end of the court to another, dust flies off and with the fast swing of the rackets there comes this amazing sound that has been imprinted into my brain since, plock! Here comes another one... the swoosh of the racket, plock! and the flying ball across the net, just amazing, I cannot take my eyes and ears off the spectacle.

There was this young boy that I particularly could not take my eyes off. Majority of the crowd was behind his position watching him practice. He had long blonde hair with a headband on, broadest shoulders I have seen, and he looks just so smooth hitting those fuzzy white balls; it seems easy enough. Strangely more of the girls seems ready jump off the roof for him than any other player. Girls! that must be the icing on the cake.

Several years later I learn that the courts we visited that day was Roland Garros and I apparently had the chance to watch Nastasse, Stan Smith, Jimmy Connors and Arthur Ashe. But the only image left in my mind from that day at Roland Garros as the long blonde guy... Bjorn Borg.



By this time I still hadn't figured the French language quite well, but enough to get by, introverted not talking to many. The next day at school everyone were talking about the blonde guy, amazingly more so than Nastasse, a hero of mine at the time and many others. I got into the conversation explaining how I saw him in person and mesmerized I was suddenly part of the in-crowd that day. From that day forward my French became my first language.

My mother must have observed my interest, she signed me up for tennis classes at a local club, although I always consider Roland Garros as the place I started with tennis. At the club they gave a racket that looked nothing like the rackets of the players at Roland Garros. The sound was still in my mind, plock! I was going to hit the ball and generate that sound now... My turn came, instructor threw the ball at me and I swung... missed. Another one... missed again. Third one... yes contact, I did hit the ball and I got a pluk, a messily pluk. I spent the next nine years chasing the perfect and repeatable plock!

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