Re: tuba and tennis


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Posted by Rick Denney on August 02, 2001 at 09:10:03:

In Reply to: tuba and tennis posted by Joe S. on August 01, 2001 at 23:27:19:

Not for me. My experiences with racquet sports has been so psychologically damaging that I stay away from them now.

Story #1:

While at Texas A&M as a freshman, I was forced to take the handball PE class because the good ones (bowling, riflery) were already taken. The first half of the semester was spent playing doubles. If you won your game, your team moved up a court, and if you lost, you moved down a court. I was seeded in the middle (already too high), but managed to get a series of brilliant partners who could beat the opposing teams single-handedly. My instructions were, "Stay out of the way!"

At mid-term time, we switched to singles, seeded according to where we finished in doubles. I was in Court 2, seeded with the geniuses, despite my pleadings with the instructor. By the end of the semester, I was in Court 15 (of 15), behind the "women and kids." Humiliations, galore.

In tennis, I learned how to serve a really fast, top-spin serve that would just skim the fault line and then never get more than four inches off the surface after that. I aced a lot. But if the other guy EVER returned the ball, he would inevitable get the serve and keep it for the rest of the (short) game. Can you say "slow?"

On the other hand, I can get on a bicycle, and lay waste any tennis player I know, in distance riding, in sprints, in whatever. And tennis players can run fast--much faster than me--but they tend to fade after 10 or 15 miles when I'm just getting warmed up.

Rick "whose hand-eye coordination is only slightly better than his tongue-eye coordination" Denney




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