Saturday, June 28, 2008

My Brush with Greatness today.

Great morning in Kalamazoo, and perfect for playing tennis or getting a tennis lesson from one of the best. Les my neighbor has been a tennis player all his life, at 72 with both knees replaced, the mileage he has had on the courts show through clearly.

So it came to be that we set off in his Prius down Oakland Ave, to the K college campus where 50 odd years ago he had a part time job as the night watchman for these wonderful tennis courts and learned to play the game and kept playing all his life.



We first took a tour of the campus and then settled down to the far courts. Les walked me through the warm up routine, where you touch the intersection of all the white lines, running forward and backward along all the lines. We then settled down to holding the racket. I learned how to hold the racket for the forehand and backhand strokes and about the two types of follow through for the serve.

These courts have seen most of the great players, as you can see from the list of winners here . So needless to say, after two hours I came away with a feeling of having brushed with greatness.

Les my neighbor by the way played Rod Laver and beat him in an exhibition match back in the 50's. So I was one degree removed from greatness today


1 comment:

Terry Fernandez said...

I like this post. More importantly I want to see if my friendfeed widget works

TAGS