The Fleeting Expanse of Time...TraditionsGreeting from the Wilderness. Society has gone through a great transformation. How good has it actually been? While some stress the wonders of technology...I wonder. In fact...I question. But any rate I wrote this message to the forum in November of 2015. I know the forum has gone through a deep change as well but it doesn't hurt to think of the past here. What a neighbourhood it was. The characters...the writers. Well it's all changed now. Read on...read on. Don't forget the article at the bottom. This was only a random post as it appeared somehow after I logged in. But I thought it was interesting. Revealing. I am not embarrassed. These were my thoughts on a given day.
#3,000and countingfor Frankie and Dylan and my Love for the Game
A milestone. A tiny one in the big picture. In the general scope of things. It's only me thinking…out loud.
But I think that I have managed to paint a picture. I could call it…"The Year in Tennis"…2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and now 2015. I could call it…"The Three Little Dots"…connecting the past with the present and into the future. Out of it I came up with a paradigm to teach by…you know the one.
Bill Tilden is the book. Richard Gonzales is the model with the J. Donald Budge backhand. Harry Hopman is the coach. Roger Federer is the living proof.
Make of it what you will…or don't if it doesn't suit you. That is the point afterall…every coach must come up with a paradigm. A paradigm that is rigid enough to adhere to certain fundamentals yet flexible enough to connect the past with the present. Flexible enough to understand that every single student is unique. I was at a trainer's seminar here recently in Sweden and a question was asked of the speaker…what is it that is most important that a trainer should bring to the court?
I will tell you what that is…every coach should endeavor to be a student of the game. No small feat these days with the propaganda and the hype. It's hard to separate the nonsense from the real thing. Modern tennis…and modern times. Tennis metaphorically morphing into life.
What a great pleasure it is to participate in this little neighbourhood of ours. I guess that I have made it my personal playground. I know that I have. For me…it's therapy. It's therapy against the reality of things. The truth is that life isn't all that great. Not for a lot of people. But we tennis coaches and players and students…we are lucky to have such a game to play. Somehow it found us and we become a part of it. It's a living thing…made up of you and I and everyone that has ever found the love of the game through the racquet meeting the ball in sweet spot of the strings. That's love…I can tell you.
Love is a tricky thing. It's a two way street. You get what you give…sometimes you get more than you bargained for. When I first started playing the game I never imagined this. For God's sake…I was privileged to spend two whole summers with J. Donald Budge himself. How did that happened? I was a poor kid from a broken home. I guess the game was finding me. For some reason I was privileged to meet Aaron Krickstein and his family and this gave me another wonderful insight into the game. How did that happen? I'm lucky I guess.
Along the way I took my tennis racquet with me wherever I went. Today it is paying my bills and putting food on the table. The game has been a gift to me. So I got a lot of love out of it…so I feel that I have to give it back. Maybe that seems strange…a strange thought to some of you. But you understand just how much I love the game. I love it enough to defend it as if it was a she and she was the love of my life. I live in a world of make believe…where I am the hero. Like don_quixote falling in love with a whore or defending the world from gigantic windmills.
Love is a tricky thing. I already said that didn't I. We don't deserve it. Therefore it is impossible to find. But I have found it…in a couple of places. Women? It seems that they come and go and so does our love for them. Not always…I suppose true love exists. I love where the fire never goes out. But the love that I found is the love of a dog. Not to mention the love of God. But the love of my dog has been a little heaven on earth. I lost Frankie the American Chocolate Labrador Retriever three days before Christmas last year and then my beloved Wolf Boy went down the day before my birthday in March and he was dead in five days. I lost. I lost big time. A loser of the biggest magnitude.
I was asking myself…where's the bottom? I was falling…at a speed that I was unfamiliar with. The truth is there is no bottom. That's what I found out. The truth is it is a hole…a bottomless hole. Sometimes whether you like it or not…you just keep falling. But you have to stop yourself…nobody else can.
The day the wolf went down was a day that being a student of the game of tennis helped me to understand. If not understand…it helped me to process. In March I was still numb from the loss of Frankie. I couldn't speak for a week…but I wrote here. On that day in March I went to work as normal…it was a Thursday. When I came home the light was on in the stable…which isn't normal. The hair on my neck prickled just a bit. I went in the stable and there was my wife with one of the horses who was having a bout of colic…which can actually be fatal. I went in the house to change clothes and I found Dylan, the wolf, more or less debilitated. I couldn't reach him. I went back to the stable and told my wife and she was very surprised. Dylan seemed to be ok all day.
We were waiting for the veterinarian to arrive and when she finally did it was a couple of hours of torture. For us and the horse. A four foot hose down the nose of the horse to fill her stomach full of water so she wouldn't dehydrate. Along with some solvent to move her bowels. We had to walk her all night long on the hour. I say we…but it was more or less my wife. But Dylan was not responding.
The next morning I took him to the vet. It Friday the 13th. They gave him some antibiotics for a possible infection and after a couple of hours we were headed home. Later on he seemed to revive. The next day he was trying his best to act as if everything was ok. It was a courageous act. He was to die three days later. I lay on the floor holding him…sobbing.
The irony of everything is that on that Thursday we went to look at a Chocolate Lab puppy. A litter of nine. I picked him out immediately…or did he pick me. I guess that we picked each other. Love at first sight. I named him on the spot…Puntzie. He was nine months old on Monday. He's sleeping at my feet right now.
You live to play another day. You keep your head in the game. It ain't over until match point is in the bag. I am not the same man that I was a year ago. The sun was passing us right about here as I remember. I'm a year older now. A year wiser. Happiness? What is that? Is that the name of the game? Or is it survival.
Love…it's a tricky thing. I quit tennis when I turned forty. I took my first golf lesson on my birthday. I never touched a racquet for some 13 or 14 years. I gave myself to golf. But I move to Sweden almost eleven years ago. I wasn't working for the first three years or so. Then one day…out of the bue. I somehow found myself giving a tennis lesson to a pretty French girl on an old and pretty much dilapidated court at the golf club. A couple of guys came walking by after finishing their round. One of them was my neighbour. Another was a man on the board of a local tennis club…they were looking for a tennis trainer. I got the call. The game came to me…again. That was about eight years ago. I began my career as a tennis teacher.
I found tennisplayer.net doing a search for a video of the J. Donald Budge backhand. One of my earliest students also turned out to be my best. Gustaf was switching from two hands to one. I never knew that there was a forum for the first year or so. When I first found it…I marvelled at bottle's writing. I even asked him about writing. He told me that you must know your audience.
When I first started writing here on the forum I mentioned Bill Tilden in one of my posts. Wouldn't you know it that GeoffWilliams was banging on me like I couldn't believe. In my world Tilden has always been discussed openly…without the distraction of his unfortunate personal life. I erased all of my posts that I had written to that point and called it quits. But then I thought it over. Nobody is chasing me away. Nobody. I will leave when it is time. My time is coming…it's coming sooner than later. But it's been fun. In a way you guys are some of the best friends that I ever had.
I dedicate my 3,000th post that I wrote to my beloved friends Frankie and Dylan. Puntzie too…can't forget the living. I dedicate it to my love for the game. To life. From the bottom of my heart. All of it. All 3,004. I did it for my students and you guys too…of course.
A milestone. A tiny one in the big picture. In the general scope of things. It's only me thinking…out loud.
But I think that I have managed to paint a picture. I could call it…"The Year in Tennis"…2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and now 2015. I could call it…"The Three Little Dots"…connecting the past with the present and into the future. Out of it I came up with a paradigm to teach by…you know the one.
Bill Tilden is the book. Richard Gonzales is the model with the J. Donald Budge backhand. Harry Hopman is the coach. Roger Federer is the living proof.
Make of it what you will…or don't if it doesn't suit you. That is the point afterall…every coach must come up with a paradigm. A paradigm that is rigid enough to adhere to certain fundamentals yet flexible enough to connect the past with the present. Flexible enough to understand that every single student is unique. I was at a trainer's seminar here recently in Sweden and a question was asked of the speaker…what is it that is most important that a trainer should bring to the court?
I will tell you what that is…every coach should endeavor to be a student of the game. No small feat these days with the propaganda and the hype. It's hard to separate the nonsense from the real thing. Modern tennis…and modern times. Tennis metaphorically morphing into life.
What a great pleasure it is to participate in this little neighbourhood of ours. I guess that I have made it my personal playground. I know that I have. For me…it's therapy. It's therapy against the reality of things. The truth is that life isn't all that great. Not for a lot of people. But we tennis coaches and players and students…we are lucky to have such a game to play. Somehow it found us and we become a part of it. It's a living thing…made up of you and I and everyone that has ever found the love of the game through the racquet meeting the ball in sweet spot of the strings. That's love…I can tell you.
Love is a tricky thing. It's a two way street. You get what you give…sometimes you get more than you bargained for. When I first started playing the game I never imagined this. For God's sake…I was privileged to spend two whole summers with J. Donald Budge himself. How did that happened? I was a poor kid from a broken home. I guess the game was finding me. For some reason I was privileged to meet Aaron Krickstein and his family and this gave me another wonderful insight into the game. How did that happen? I'm lucky I guess.
Along the way I took my tennis racquet with me wherever I went. Today it is paying my bills and putting food on the table. The game has been a gift to me. So I got a lot of love out of it…so I feel that I have to give it back. Maybe that seems strange…a strange thought to some of you. But you understand just how much I love the game. I love it enough to defend it as if it was a she and she was the love of my life. I live in a world of make believe…where I am the hero. Like don_quixote falling in love with a whore or defending the world from gigantic windmills.
Love is a tricky thing. I already said that didn't I. We don't deserve it. Therefore it is impossible to find. But I have found it…in a couple of places. Women? It seems that they come and go and so does our love for them. Not always…I suppose true love exists. I love where the fire never goes out. But the love that I found is the love of a dog. Not to mention the love of God. But the love of my dog has been a little heaven on earth. I lost Frankie the American Chocolate Labrador Retriever three days before Christmas last year and then my beloved Wolf Boy went down the day before my birthday in March and he was dead in five days. I lost. I lost big time. A loser of the biggest magnitude.
I was asking myself…where's the bottom? I was falling…at a speed that I was unfamiliar with. The truth is there is no bottom. That's what I found out. The truth is it is a hole…a bottomless hole. Sometimes whether you like it or not…you just keep falling. But you have to stop yourself…nobody else can.
The day the wolf went down was a day that being a student of the game of tennis helped me to understand. If not understand…it helped me to process. In March I was still numb from the loss of Frankie. I couldn't speak for a week…but I wrote here. On that day in March I went to work as normal…it was a Thursday. When I came home the light was on in the stable…which isn't normal. The hair on my neck prickled just a bit. I went in the stable and there was my wife with one of the horses who was having a bout of colic…which can actually be fatal. I went in the house to change clothes and I found Dylan, the wolf, more or less debilitated. I couldn't reach him. I went back to the stable and told my wife and she was very surprised. Dylan seemed to be ok all day.
We were waiting for the veterinarian to arrive and when she finally did it was a couple of hours of torture. For us and the horse. A four foot hose down the nose of the horse to fill her stomach full of water so she wouldn't dehydrate. Along with some solvent to move her bowels. We had to walk her all night long on the hour. I say we…but it was more or less my wife. But Dylan was not responding.
The next morning I took him to the vet. It Friday the 13th. They gave him some antibiotics for a possible infection and after a couple of hours we were headed home. Later on he seemed to revive. The next day he was trying his best to act as if everything was ok. It was a courageous act. He was to die three days later. I lay on the floor holding him…sobbing.
The irony of everything is that on that Thursday we went to look at a Chocolate Lab puppy. A litter of nine. I picked him out immediately…or did he pick me. I guess that we picked each other. Love at first sight. I named him on the spot…Puntzie. He was nine months old on Monday. He's sleeping at my feet right now.
You live to play another day. You keep your head in the game. It ain't over until match point is in the bag. I am not the same man that I was a year ago. The sun was passing us right about here as I remember. I'm a year older now. A year wiser. Happiness? What is that? Is that the name of the game? Or is it survival.
Love…it's a tricky thing. I quit tennis when I turned forty. I took my first golf lesson on my birthday. I never touched a racquet for some 13 or 14 years. I gave myself to golf. But I move to Sweden almost eleven years ago. I wasn't working for the first three years or so. Then one day…out of the bue. I somehow found myself giving a tennis lesson to a pretty French girl on an old and pretty much dilapidated court at the golf club. A couple of guys came walking by after finishing their round. One of them was my neighbour. Another was a man on the board of a local tennis club…they were looking for a tennis trainer. I got the call. The game came to me…again. That was about eight years ago. I began my career as a tennis teacher.
I found tennisplayer.net doing a search for a video of the J. Donald Budge backhand. One of my earliest students also turned out to be my best. Gustaf was switching from two hands to one. I never knew that there was a forum for the first year or so. When I first found it…I marvelled at bottle's writing. I even asked him about writing. He told me that you must know your audience.
When I first started writing here on the forum I mentioned Bill Tilden in one of my posts. Wouldn't you know it that GeoffWilliams was banging on me like I couldn't believe. In my world Tilden has always been discussed openly…without the distraction of his unfortunate personal life. I erased all of my posts that I had written to that point and called it quits. But then I thought it over. Nobody is chasing me away. Nobody. I will leave when it is time. My time is coming…it's coming sooner than later. But it's been fun. In a way you guys are some of the best friends that I ever had.
I dedicate my 3,000th post that I wrote to my beloved friends Frankie and Dylan. Puntzie too…can't forget the living. I dedicate it to my love for the game. To life. From the bottom of my heart. All of it. All 3,004. I did it for my students and you guys too…of course.

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