Small Courts and Big Dreams

I stopped by a park and young man holding a Wilson racket caught my eye. He couldn’t have been older than high school age. He wore a gray, Addias shirt drenched in sweat. His blue shorts matched his shoes like a college tennis uniform, except it wasn’t. His choice of Wilson racket was undoubtedly the same as his tennis idol’s, Roger Federer.

I watched him hit the ball. Slow slices, high over the net, to the middle of the court. Even though the type of shot would be trivial for a mid-level player to make, every time the ball successfully went over the net and landed in the court, it was a major triumph for this young man.

With each shot, you could feel the young man’s heart pounding out of his chest. After the 6th shot, the nervous young man framed the ball and it landed in the bottom of the net.

He walked back to the service line expressionless. Just like a pro. Everything about this player from the way he walked, his racket, his clothes looked like someone trying so hard to emulate the pro tennis players he watched on TV.

I couldn’t look away, but not because of the quality of tennis I was watching. The most captivating games of tennis happen in the imagination of the player holding the racket. In his mind, this young man was in the finals of Wimbledon, in front of thousands of cheering fans.

We’ve all been there.

To be young is priceless. A world full of possibility stretches as far the eye can see. With the help of your imagination anything, even the Wimbledon trophy is within reach. That young man will never know it, but Roger wishes he could feel like that again.