By Tony Dunst
My best sport growing up was tennis, and I played often until I was 16. That fall I went to my first drinking party after Homecoming; which was fun until my mom showed up at 3:00 am and called everyone’s parents. At my high school, getting caught drinking incurred a penalty of being suspended for a quarter of your next sport season…so I waited out my suspension then quit in protest before playing a match that year.
After that, I played for fun now and then, but never trained again until May of 2020, when I was looking for a way to stay active in the pandemic.
Tennis is a game that rewards repetition, and nearly every professional was a child prodigy who received coaching early. It still blows my mind that Vince broke the mold and essentially learned tennis hitting around with his brothers in the park, and learned well enough to reach 26th in the world during the sports’ heyday. I messaged him back in May asking for coaching recommendations in Vegas, and he told me to look up “McNamara tennis.” Soon I was training with Jim McNamara twice a week, sweating under the Vegas sun and gasping for breath between games.
What interests me most about tennis is the skill gradient; that a player ranked or graded slightly higher is an enormous favorite over a player ranked just below. That’s been clear with the dominance of the big three in men’s tennis over the last decade but holds true at all levels. Beyond tour rankings, tennis skill is usually graded on a 0 to 7 scale, with each .5 increase being a considerable jump in skill and ability.
Most casual players fall in the 3.0 to 3.5 range, though plenty of seasoned regulars are 4.0. Reaching 4.5 is tough; you need all the shots, consistency, a good serve. And getting to 5.0 and beyond is only if you’re obsessed, or start young and still have the youth to sprint around the court.
I was rebuilding my game from that 3.0 to 3.5 level, aiming for 4.5 tennis in a couple of years. That’s the degree of difficulty in tennis, where moving up one level can take months or years, especially the higher you go. But I find the idea appealing in contrast to poker, where the worse player will win a huge percentage of the time and the outcome is only somewhat in your control. There’s a rock-paper-scissors element to tennis—where certain styles match up more favorable—but otherwise, the better player has a huge edge. The hard part is reaching a level where you can exert that edge, and learning to settle your mind so the body doesn’t freeze in big moments.
So that’s my journey now, gradually improving all the flaws and leaks in my game and trying to challenge an increasing level of competition. I’m practicing four days a week now, and scheduling a couple of matches when I can. Maybe in a few years, when my serve is sharp and my backhand evens out, I’ll get Vince on the court and see if he’s still got it.