There's a lot to learn from everyone

Today was an odd day in tennis.  Since coming to Andover, I haven’t had private lessons with a coach, and I’m beginning to feel the effect of having no guidance in training sessions.   

There’s one kid at Rec Tennis who consistently bothers me.  Over this past month at Rec Tennis, he’s been desperate to prove that he is “better at tennis than me”.  And he gets aggressive about it as well.  He makes fun of me when I mess up a shot or do something stupid on the courts.  I’ve worked to counter his negativity and pessimism by ignoring him. When he says he’s better than me, I tell myself that we’re equal.  And I honestly, from the bottom of my heart believed that; I thought that if we played a tie breaker, it would be fairly equal in scoring.

Until today, when I tried to break the ice.  I decided to hit with him after practice.  The culture of our game started out pretty similarly; he would laugh at me every time I messed up and I would get really hyped every time I hit a winner short cross court.  But after about 20 minutes of ineffective hitting, I decided we needed to change our attitudes towards the rallies if either of us wanted to improve.  

In the previous shot, I had messed up a flimsy overhead, that should have been an easy shot.  Overheads have long been a struggle of mine to time correctly and execute swiftly.  When he started laughing at my poor shot, instead of trying to roast him back, I changed my attitude and asked, “I’ve struggled with overheads.  In fact, I never had it down correctly.  Could you teach me how to hit one?”  That changed our rally: it became more cooperative.  

Turns out he had some really good tips on mastering the overhead.  He truly did and I say this from the bottom of my heart because after only a couple more mess ups, I had some more successful executions.  After, he starting giving me advice on my overall movement on the court.  I need to use my body more and move my feet…always.  More agile feet will produce more agile shots.  Soon, advice became informal coaching.  And this coaching coming from someone who always badgered me, someone whom I thought was really annoying and mean.  

And this came to me after we hit: I have something to learn from everyone, everyone.  So even when I meet someone who I really dislike, I have to remember that I still have something to learn from them.