He then set off home, and more - and probably around - this fanatical passion Andre Agassi, a fiery love for tennis professional generally and the beginning of tennis with a shoestring, and first with a friend he also volunteered to play with me on the one hand, and the means at the other (and perhaps we did one and one each game). The means at hand were: snowshoe that had been home, hanging in a closet and background who years before had been purchased for a small fee in supermarkets, were the bullets that had been in itself, gathering dust in a corner of the cellar or garage, for example between a bicycle child became too small and a large bag of charcoal for BBQ, it was a corner of land that can accommodate a space not too tiny, giving the appearance of flatness and for stretching somewhere through it, plus at least the middle of its length and using poles , columns, legs or other umbrella chairs, with a string-net function. In short, we play a lot on stony ground, compacted sand, on gravel, rarely on ground cons rectangle. I then had only one partner, well better than me as an autodidact than I was, and my athletic inferiority walked into me, along probably complete the series of defeats, indistinct from narcissistic injury in deaf mental pain: I was not looking in the tennis as a hobby or a fun, but a way of defending myself against the existence and to justify mine. I did not know it then, but I already felt. I knew even less smoky and the furious fool's bargain I was looking to contract and would have given in full in the contract staggering: become good at tennis and the world outside of you will agree with yourself, and neither life, nor the others who compose it, not crush you. In any case these hopes, these two desires, n'entretiennent any possible relationship between them, but I did not then that it was a hello I was looking for, just as I did not know that is not immune to risk - which I already felt very much that there is no doubt, for him - that life grinds you. And anyway, tennis, at the time, and there was at this stage than that, I was so bad, including a boy of my age. Therefore no opportunity to see so early that it would meet no salvation along this path that I had not traveled.
Waiting and hoping for better about my services on the courts, for the first time in my life, perhaps, but ultimately, as always, my strategy was clearing the accumulation of knowledge: at least person would know from my surroundings more than me on the professional league. It might have been wondering who had been won by the tournaments in Auckland, Gstaad, Key Biscayne, or what we want, what year and what cons finalists, and I responded in the desired order, because I pulled pages "sport" of newspapers and my subscription to Tennis Magazine all results available to see the hand in a book of 24 x 32 cm with small squares and green cover, laminated memorandum and completed again and again, all the time, and therefore we could go, I was ready to take questions, I could say that Auckland in 1991, Jean-Philippe Fleurian had been beaten in the final by Karel Novacek, before that in 1992 either Jaime Yzaga (a player who could be pointed out, without any need for it to see it at work, two peculiarities: it was the only player among the first hundred world to be, first, Peruvian, and secondly, provided with a surname starting with the letter Y, but nevermind), which in turn takes the title of New Zealand, while in 1991 and 1993 Novacek lost twice in final in Estoril, I also knew, the first against Sergi Bruguera and cons Andrei Medvedev, the second, I could say to ease, as I was perfectly aware elsewhere in Cincinnati, like , yes, in Cincinnati, why not? is that it was pretty darn interesting, what was happening over there, in August That therefore Cinicinnatti, where in 1991, Guy Forget, the middle of the best season of his career in the final beat Pete Sampras ( and we remember well, even today, how much more maddening repetition of this match we will play in Lyon in the fall in the final of Davis Cup France-USA, but let ), Pete Sampras that he and yet not world No. 1, beat, Cincinnati still in the Ohio always next year and in three sets, the old and very durable race leader, the aging, somewhat sinister and just became a U.S. citizen Ivan Lendl (when we know it winning the tournament in Cincinnati in 1990, against Brad Gilbert final, Stefan Edberg became No. 1 in the world, taking the top of the table following, I guessed, Ivan Lendl precisely, there , is not it? that the case definitely does not lack of salt ... (Oh no, but ... Really! But anyway! But what else?!, Dammit!, What else but the professional tennis league to provide us with scenarios similar to earth? "Sometimes we wonders though ... (And let us not tell after that, my word, there would be no more things in heaven and on earth in the entire philosophy!, as they say in Shakespeare (Shakespeare, even though citizen emblem of the country that gave rise to tennis, adapting to open air and the grass practice tennis court came France (but nevermind), Shakespeare has not seen or played a damn tennis match of his life ... We can not even imagine, the sacred name of a dog!, he might well have well write more if the damn damn! he had known this game! But let .)))) .
Yes, I could say all this and many other things, I knew it all. Except of course, nobody ever ask me such things, and no one would grant to the fact that I know the same moral and metaphysical reach me. And for good reason, moral and metaphysical issues that I was placing were quite irrational, deceptive, and solipsistic fools. But the accumulation of knowledge was not my only manipulation of these levers to existential rackets, nets, polo shirts and sheets of the baseline, since, while I was learning this unnecessary, although altogether pleasing, I crossed the age of about twelve and a half a step (only in my biography, but nevermind) on In terms of sport, giving me a license officially issued by the French Tennis Federation and becoming a member of Tennis Club Laugh Ocean, a venerable club in the Vendée seaside resort where I stayed with my family the twelve months of the year, when Jean-Pierre Piveteau, friendly qualified instructor and State player scored the remarkable amateur second series, and also conducting a large-displacement Japanese motorcycles, which would conduct the training I would participate now every Wednesday morning with the group of zero, then on Saturday morning, with the group of, say, means. I do not hang long with the group of zero, my determination to run to the ball and knocking it to not return, my appetite hungry for the success of my shots and exchanges, the countless hours spent watching television coverage of tournaments, and now several years of near-meditation on the game made me quickly outperform some softies who eked out an existence there bumbling without ambition or desire to escape, to finally settle into a group whose level reflected the mine and where the temperature did not suit me cause thermal shock, that of mid-skilled and poorly endowed but more proud of and there was nothing else to wait for the stagnation at the level that would be forever theirs, performed with the aid of the neutralization of these opposing forces of dissipation lazy and bursts with pride.
For hundreds of hours of watching games on television were added hundreds of hours playing tennis, especially during training and during friendly matches, at least unofficial and almost always played against friends ( often the same elsewhere, but other than that against which I had begun by himself and with the means at hand, but nevermind), on actual land now covered with short ground red synthetic materials themselves surrounded green and framed screens if they were outside and green nets and tarps for both, which were my favorites, contained in the clubroom, all their orthogonal lines and painted in white on the ground as very accurate measures approved. I played a lot, my movements were no longer those of a self-taught, but my attitude and the level of my game remained basically the same. I can still feel perfectly capturing the difference between the existential pain that were incurred during almost all the games I played and my inability to hold up insurmountable in practice a discipline through which I could have m improve. I could not keep more than a few minutes the instructions that the coach had told and retold a few moments earlier, a few days at most, because I failed to fight against an obscure and irrepressible will, and that led me to exactly the opposite of the desired destination, but by the only way I was willing to agree to borrow: I wanted to be easy be insolent ease kneaded and talented , royal, masterful, astounding and outstanding, without ever having to make the effort in terms which individuals have to some extent, all these could be compared, and are working, discipline, patience and selflessness. I do not want to be compared, but instead be incomparable, gifted, have infused tennis as others would, it seems, innate knowledge, otherwise it was for me not even bother because then I would not be saved, and I would not have stuck with me as dirty here as I'd stuffed myself elsewhere and I wanted to die in escape sludge, regardless of where it fault confront it. We did not leave the mental principles that directed everything to me from the start and had immediately all told, but I had no ear to hear, nor any to hear that I should change ears to hear better the echo sent back to face me closer and closer against the wall which was denied by the impasse in which I was engaged, like other walls so often referred to me balls with which I played alone, the best games, the most successful and most exciting for the public imagination, all those I had done. I just wanted to be the recipient of an incredible talent that I issued - under the eyes amazed, astonished and incredulous of those whom the chances of life have thrown there, at the same time and in the same places as me, and that should have pinch to convince themselves that what they saw with their eyes was very real - the miraculous events, and get on the court, as came out of nowhere and as snapping your fingers, just to get in all simplicity and relaxation in mind-blowing hit shots that would have fallen along unpredictable paths and inspired a few centimeters at most before the limits of the court, exactly where it should, in the maddening if speedometers in the modest poor little club room there had been. I wanted to be a genius and a genius working there? I behaved well for years, mired in mental pain and anger against the self of one who sees, in the appalling conduct of its services, the most striking evidence of the existence of misfires and the indignity of his person, glued to the walls of mediocrity except perhaps the lucky days and seeing well at almost every point, but trying every time, tirelessly and against all common sense, impossible shots, which in my mind were necessary because evidence in the search which I had felt called here, and thus those of my election as a hero could elevate a sport at a historic event taught history, could have delivered myself otherwise.
They were not. And I did not ever play this game differently, that is to say that having tried to win what was not there, having refused to receive him by the fruit of a promise that no one or nothing I had never done, I did not ultimately never play at all, otherwise than by pantomime matamoresque, and wearing wacky vaguely looks like a sport that was my way.
Later, rock'n'roll and practice the guitar has taken its place as vehicles and flesh of my foolish calls to salvation, and the rates charged by the Tennis Club Laugh Ocean to remain a member after the age of seventeen years it was involved, I stopped playing tennis, and played it there soon only very rarely.
Was to be removed from the duty to live without dying than I thought I could play there, driven mad by the idea that it was here in the rectangle labeled soil, 23.77 x 8.23 meters Rather, it would have been good times for all possible to settle the case, but only by a relentless magical operation, if ever it were possible to hit amazing shots, we would reach higher levels of existence and it would be saved, as if a deputy lives would you expect out of the room resonance, walls of steel-framed roof and steep for make you a miraculous sign Papelard on the lid of the briefcase from which he allegedly shot by which you have been served it was good for you it was settled, the few forehands cross, and blazing beaten flat by the end of the race, by which you took your foot against the opponent, and that the trajectories of your beautiful and exhilarating setbacks along the line that had cut short the attack yet very incisive on the other face you put away forever, allowed you, and with honors and unanimous admiration, never to anything have to fuck your glorious life and never want for anything yet or feel no more pain.
Believing can be released by the courts, by playing for that, basically, for this forlorn hope defeated, it was finally equal to itself the terrible responsibility of living that was found. Not only do we play tennis not release off the court, but we pitted it up with trade and during the games. Because he had to move, that damn ball, he had send it across the net, be aggressive with it, not just get rid wait for whatever the other side who do it with the job that had failed to do it yourself and rely on him, but rather make him give him, and win it with a bit of honor, a little space and few have anything to lose later. He still had to fight, we did not get out.
© Anthony Poiraudeau - 2010
Images: Tennis Magazine Cover No. 150, September 1988 / capture screen of the video game Super Tennis (developer: Studio Tokyo Sosheki, Publisher: Nintendo, 1992)
This text first been published on Running Newbie a blog Lamireau Clara, on the occasion of waterbed December 2010.
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