Writing about tennis
Photo: Maria Sharapova of Russia in the final at the Australian Open, where she lost to Victoria Azarenka of Belarus. The little we know of geography we learned from watching tennis.
For Glenn, tennis was a purely mental game, its problems solvable through a personal variation on psychoanalysis. He broke down my own palsied serve into three movements, suggesting that I mouth the words “I. DON’T. CARE!” in rhythm with them. He added that I should shout CARE! as I smacked the ball toward the earth. By getting me to renounce my emotional attachment, I guess he thought that I could free up mental energies to enjoy myself. There was something intoxicating about the idea that the mind could exert too much control over the body and that there could be freedom from the mind’s tyranny in the ability to let the body take the helm.
But I never thought it was actually possible.
Read Double Fault by A-J Aronstein in the Paris Review.
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