How Watching Tennis Made Me a Better Writer
Federer, My Hero
I fell in love with tennis when I first watched the Federer-Djokovic final in Wimbledon. My then boyfriend told me he liked Federer and we started to watch from the 3rd set onwards. Federer’s grace drew me in instantly and soon enough I was trying to understand what on earth a tiebreak was. I felt for Federer when he lost, almost like when you identify with a protagonist in a book and suffer with them at each turn, wanting them to succeed in their endavours desperately because of the verbal link between you two, delicately woven in letters. Perhaps if he hadn’t lost, that would be the only match I’d have watched, but I really wanted to see him beat Djokovic, so I tuned in for their next match. And the next. And then the next.
Plot Twist
This piece however, is not about Federer, even though you could find several Federer t-shirts with the RF logo on them in my wardrobe and I’d actually lost my voice rooting for him at a tournament. This piece is about Kyrgios. Now if you are not a tennis fan, you may not have heard of him. Kyrgios is the ‘bad boy’ of tennis, an Australian racket with unbelievable raw talent and horrid manners.
He yells at umpires, breaks rackets, and throws off games. Once at a game, he yelled, “I don’t want to be here!” Another incident that made me deeply dislike him was his debacle with Wawrinka, again one of my favourite players. (I might have a thing for the Swiss.) He muttered to himself that his friend had slept with Wawrinka’s girlfriend, which was something unheard of in tennis matches. At one tournament called the Laver Cup where I was a spectator, he claimed he lost because a hot girl amongst the crowd distracted him. (Hey, maybe it was me.)
A Sudden Insight
While chatting with other tennis fans at this events, I heard an offhand comment that would stay with me and impact me later. We were all talking about how exceptionally talented Kyrgios was and how he was wasting it. There were moments when he shone brilliantly, but then he gave up on games, acted horribly, or just stopped trying. “Right now when he doesn’t succeed he can hide behind not really trying,” a new friend I’d made at the Laver Cup said. “If he really tries and loses, he won’t have anything to hide behind. He is a coward.”
He is a coward. I remembered this insight just a few weeks ago during a time I felt stuck in my life. I’d always wanted to be a writer, and I’d tried publishing a few times, even got my novel published, but then got some rejections and stopped writing altogether. I’d start novels, stories, then leave them on the cold hills of I Will Finish You One Day. That turned into not writing at all. I’d write them one day. One day… When that tennis fan’s comment came to my mind, I had an epiphany. Obviously I can’t know what goes on in Kyrgios’ head, but if this guess was true, then I was just like Kyrgios. I wasn’t writing because as long as I didn’t pour my soul into words, everything I planned on writing could stay brilliant. They would never get rejected, never be sub-par. Always perfect in my little idea world, never being shown to the public.
This revelation made me wake up from this dream world of procrastination. I don’t want to be a coward. I wanted to be someone that tried my best and decided to improve if that best wasn’t good enough. I wanted to be less like Kyrgios and more like Federer, if you will. I guess actually writing this piece was my first step. Now, how about you? Are you Kyrgiosing anything? What in your life can you stop procrastinating on?
Hey, if you don’t succeed, you can always blame a hot chick.