Thank you same here man. Never at an organized level. I started too late. I fell in a love with the sport when I was around 16-17. I've played for last 20 years since with a small group of friends and family. I play a lot and maybe more pickelball too because more people play it. I'm sure you play and know playing with a beginner in Tennis is about as fun as shoveling the sidewalk. Playing pickelball with a beginner isn't half bad. I wish tennis had more followers like the fanatics in this thread
That’s awesome! You sound like me, as I didn’t start playing until I was 18. And being from a small 3A school in Iowa we didn’t have tennis, which really was unfortunate because I loved it the minute I tried it finally. Wish I would have done it years before that so I could have played at the closest 4A school to us.
I get asked to do pickelball all of the time, but I refuse simply because it is taking over the tennis world lol! In all seriousness though, what I liked about tennis is exactly what you said. Most sports you can start and at least have fun, but tennis is so hard to break through that it’s so mental to stick with it and keep working until you can hit well enough. I actually love hitting with new people so I can hopefully teach them a bit to get them to stay with it.
But yes, when all is said and done, I want to get out and hit with someone who can really play. And fortunately when I moved out to Connecticut here in 2010 I found that guy. He is a 6.0-6.5 player and basically just decided tennis as a career wasn’t going to be for him but he could have gone professional if he had wanted to.
To this day 13 years later I only hit with him because of two things: 1) He absolutely made and continues to make me better because you get to feel and see first hand what it’s like to hit with someone at that level AND 2) We never play matches. Ever. Hell we have never even played a single game. We go out for 2-3 hours and play ball after ball after ball just working on everything.
I now play at a 5.0 level simply from continuing to grind and play with this guy. And that’s the real joy of tennis. It never stops being something you work on. You don’t perfect it and are always breaking things down to build your game back up.