For The Love of Balls
A short essay to my brother
Hey, little brother,
I know you’ve watched me play tennis.
I know you’ve seen me win, lose, trip, sprain my ankle, serve my racket into my shin, among all my other shenanigans on court.
You saw me make the accidental bad line calls, the times when I called the ball in when it was really out. I know I tend to be more generous with line calls.
You were there when I ran at full speed chasing that ball down and crashed into the fence. You probably didn’t notice that when I hit the fence, my head actually slammed pretty hard into that support bar.
The adrenaline was coursing pretty hard and I really didn’t feel the impact. Whatever, I returned that ball. I won that point too.
But oh man, on the next point, when I was about to serve, I almost blacked out. I’m sure you couldn’t tell. The right side of my head was pounding. As I got into my service position, I briefly touched my temple and it had balled up almost as big as the ball in my other hand.
I know you didn’t see that. I hope my opponents didn’t see that. But, I actually was afraid of going full bore on that serve with my temple throbbing like that. So I served underhanded, like that crazy Aussie boy does. You know, Nick Kyrgios.
