The Fans

In the interests of maintaining our precious tennis court, Theresa and Rose decided to join the Club committee. This allows them to put forward suggestions for the club budget, like flood lights for the court so we can play at night and the erection of a grand stand for our legions of fans, these being Theresa’s two dogs, Brownie and Jedi Ginger. They never missed a match. They are another reason Theresa joined the committee: Dogs aren’t allowed at the club and she feels this is discriminatory as she needs their moral support. Rose objected to Theresa having an unfair advantage by having her supporters on the court, to which Theresa retorted, “Bring your own dogs.” The problem with this is that I don't have a dog so we considered borrowing my mother’s dog, Daisy. Unfortunately Daisy is so fluffy, fat and round she looks like a sheep with its legs cut off. I don't believe that being represented by a sheep is not going to do my image much good and could even be detrimental to my mind-set given that sheep are not known for their vast brain power, not to mention their lack of ability to show loyalty to sports stars. This could all have been resolved very amicably if we could just have taught Brownie and Jedi to be ball-fetchers, but they seemed to be more inclined to just loll around on the court in the sun without showing even a passing interest in rolling tennis balls.

Sadly Brownie and Jedi are no longer with us. They have been replaced by two new dogs, T-Rex and Fendy. While sharing their predecessors lack of ball fetching skills, these two are also completely lacking in tennis decorum. T-Rex thinks nothing of strolling casually across the court in mid-rally while Fendy bounds up to Theresa, leaping up and down in front of her in an attempt to reach her sun visor while she is trying to serve. No mean feat given that Fendy is a Jack Russell, often characterised by their lack of stature.

Being as focused as we are on tennis, we try to ignore these distractions, a remarkable achievement since at any given time a passing stranger might be forgiven for thinking they were walking past the local circus. Performing dogs and children on bicycles and skateboards abound, whizzing around the perimeter of the court narrowly escaping being hit by flying tennis balls. On one occasion, Theresa unintentionally hit a stray soccer ball over the net. I got such a fright seeing what I thought was a grossly enlarged tennis ball coming at me that I lost my nerve and Theresa won the point. This was disputed of course, but I had no back up from my partner at the time because Rose had wandered off the court mid-point to answer her cell phone. Twenty minutes and a leisurely chat later, Rose returned to take up her position to find Theresa trying to bribe the children and dogs off the court with food and I had fallen asleep in the tram-lines tanning my legs.

Tram-Line Talk: The Necessary Equipment

When we first started playing we were very ill-equipped. We also lost a lot of tennis balls. The court is surrounded by residential houses on three sides, so after losing yet another brand new Head tennis ball to the neighbour’s garden (and dog) we decided to yell for our balls to be thrown back. The lack of response from the neighbour might have had something to do with Theresa referring to him as “the garden boy” until she realised that that was so 70’s and he could very likely be the owner. They have subsequently put up a big sign at the back of the court forbidding players to yell to the neighbours for lost balls, “If its gone, its gone, please be considerate of the neighbours privacy” and even worse, we can’t swear on the court according to the sign. Ever tried playing a game of tennis without letting even one expletive loose? Impossible. Except for my gran maybe, but that's because no-one ever swore in front of her so she didn’t know how to swear, having never heard the actual words out loud. Otherwise she might have, because she took her tennis very seriously and played until she was 85. The only reason she quit was because they wouldn’t let her onto the court with her walking stick as it was considered performance enhancing equipment. They took tennis seriously in those days.

Which is why after 6 months of playing, Theresa and I decided to buy Rose a new racquet for her birthday. Up until then she was playing with her old wooden Dunlop Maxply she used at High school. The crunch came when some kid walking past the court asked her why she was playing tennis with a squash racquet. This was not good for our “serious tennis players” image, hence the upgrade. We have since come to regret this though because it added another 100 mph onto her serve. So they put a wall up around the court to put an end to all the flame-seared holes in the fence. Now her serves bounce off the wall and if you’re not quick enough, hit you on your bent over butt, at 50 mph.

The upgrades didn’t stop at Roses’s racquet though. Rose and I bought Theresa a proper tennis skirt for her birthday. She has since got the hang of it, but it took her awhile to figure out how the velcroe ball holder under the skirt worked, so for a while we thought she was scratching around under there in a very unbecoming manner to retrieve her hidden ball supply. No-one was prepared to accept balls from her hand to hand, we insisted she pass them either under the net or bounce them over. No direct contact with those balls, nuh-uh.

My upgrade came in the form of new tackies. I had been playing in my 10 year old Powers, a testament to how they don’t make ‘em like they used to. They were still in one piece but missing quite a bit of tread. Patty's nerves couldn’t handle much more of me going after shots, and going into a long tyre squealing skid right across the court only managing to stop myself on the fence and bounce back onto the court ready for the return shot. This had to come to end when they replaced the fence with a wall, there was no ricochet from the wall, just a face flattening sudden halt. The injuries were starting to affect my game, so my husband bought me new tackies for my birthday. Nice new Nikes with lots of tread. I still run into the wall every now and then, but the tyre-squealing sound effects have been minimised.

So no more excuses. We are all kitted out and ready to take on Wimbledon!

Tram-Line Pics

Tram-Line Talk

Four of us get together every Sunday morning for three sets of tennis and, just as important, if not more important is the regular sanity maintenance session which follows the game. Forget any images of frilly broekies, pompom socks and tea and cake. We have replaced this with g-strings, tank tops and the tea has been replaced with champagne.

The self-titled Tennis Tarts are made up of me and my sister Theresa, fondly known as the Williams Sisters. This is no reflection on the standard of our tennis, but rather on our competitiveness. We have been known to enquire, on hearing that Patty goes for a regular morning jog, whether she won or not. We are also more inclined to choose beer drinking and rugby watching over an all expenses paid afternoon spent at a luxury spa and consider anyone who might not put watching the Springboks thump the All Blacks as priority, with great suspicion.

Then there is Patty, who on the other hand, has been known to fly all the way to Paris for a Fois gras and Moet on the day of the rugby world cup final. She openly admits to not letting tap water pass her lips and will rather die of heat stroke than swim in a public swimming pool. We humour these little idiosyncracies of hers however, because she has a marvellously consistent serve and she brings the champagne, always chilled.

What makes this group work are the diverse characters thrown into a fenced court. Enter Rose, who is convinced that she was a gypsy in her former life, so she dresses the part. Her tennis attire consists of lots of extremely colourful flowing garments of indeterminate function with socks to match and Nike tackies. We drew the line at all the tinkling bells though, because they become very distracting when Rose is serving a 100 mph fence-shredding tennis ball right at you. She also believes in meditation and mediation as a personal development tool, as opposed to me, who finds that a well aimed round house kick at anyone who is interfering with my equilibrium (usually my husband), is far more therapeutic and satisfying. Its much quicker too.

And so The Tennis Tarts and my Sunday pocket of social sanity was born .......