The Art of Beauty (and Life) through Tennis

Growing up very athletic I spent a lot of my youth in sports, both organized ones like baseball, basketball, football and unorganized ones like running, ping-pong, and tennis. I always loved playing tennis since you really had to rely on yourself, no teammates between you and victory (or no one to blame except yourself in defeat). I grew up playing it from an early age and remember pretending to be Arthur Ashe or Bjorn Borg or John McEnroe (not usually Jimmy Connors, although I used to have an old Wilson aluminum racket like he had) and watching matches on T.V. I also loved watching women's tennis as well and the epic battles between Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova were always a favorite. But one of my favorite players (male or female) was always Steffi Graf. Not only was she a great player and athlete but she always was so focused, cool and not showy, just what I'd imagine I'd be like if I was a professional tennis player (although in reality I was probably more of a McEnroe/Connors ultra-competitive 'hothead'). So I loved reading this recent Daily Mail article about her turning 40! It reminded me all over again why I like her. Reading about how in retirement she is still focused just not about tennis and how she knows the important things in life (hint: it isn't the 22 Grand Slam titles) was very inspiring (also loved the anecdote about her being such a good athlete that she ran practice 800 metre laps with the West Germany team at the 1988 Seoul Olympics).

The article also reminded me of a couple of tennis blog entries I read and had saved from the New York Times in 2006 about Roger Federer and Amélie Mauresmo (read from the Coda section about Mauresmo). Both help to illustrate that beauty and the strive to perfection can come from many different sources and places and that the arts aren't the exclusive domain of aesthetics.

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 10:20 PM

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