Practice Being a Good Sport

Practice makes perfect. Nothing good comes easy.
If you want something bad enough, you have to be willing to work for it. Nobody gives you anything in this world.

These clichés apply to life AND they apply to tennis. If you know the first thing about competitive tennis, you know that it involves hours and hours (and HOURS) of tennis practice. Many players get up early to practice at 6AM, go to school, and then go back to practice. Most players practice 5-6 days a week. What a huge commitment of time and energy (not to mention money---but we’ll have much more on that later)!

“If you don’t practice, you don’t deserve to win.”
Andre Agassi

Why do these tennis players do it? Because they want to compete at a high level and they realize that level of commitment is required.

That leaves little time for other activities, which can be a good thing. One mother told me she’d agreed to buy her son a car if he played tennis until he graduated from high school and never smoked or drank. She spoke very openly and honestly and she admitted that she was effectively bribing her son…and she was o.k. with that. One father told me he was glad his pretty daughters played tennis because as long as they were on the tennis court, they weren’t out having sex! Such a direct comment took me by surprise for a second but then I thought about it and I understood how he felt and why he’d said it.

It’s easy to see why good parents will do almost anything they can and make whatever sacrifices are necessary to keep their kids involved in tennis (or any other sport or hobby that takes up a significant amount of their time). Of course there is no guarantee that the kid will remain interested in tennis – especially when the peer pressure sets in – and of course every kid is different and must experience life on his or her own terms, even if these terms prove to be harmful.

Consider the recent report concerning local 8th and 9th grade girls who were involved in gang activity. WOW. Girls… Gangs???
I don’t even know what else to say about that!Clearly, setting a goal and then working hard to achieve that goal is a very good thing to do at any age – particularly for young kids. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop! I can speak from personal experience about this point but suffice it to say there is a reason I chose not to have children! The karma train would run me over and I just can’t imagine what I would do if my teenage daughter put me through even a fraction of the stuff my mother had to put up with from me. I was baaad.

“If you want a kid to dream about something, you have to show them something to dream about.”

Wayne Bryan

Before we leave the subject of practice, let’s think about Wayne Bryan, father of Bob and Mike Bryan. This famous father began taking his sons to college and pro tennis events when they were very young. At 12 years of age, the boys decided they were going to become the best doubles team in the world…and they have now been ranked #1 in the world for at least the last four years. Sooo impressive!

GOOD SPORTSMANSHIP

“Long after your match is over,
no one will remember who won

but everyone will remember how you behaved.”

Unknown

Since I’m not now, have never been, and never will be an athlete, I can unequivocally say that I’ve never given a moment’s thought to what it means to be a good sport. After being surrounded by tennis for AT LEAST 24 hours each day for the past five years, I now see that it’s crucial to the sport of tennis because at its highest level (such as in a National Open with a 64-draw), 64 of the best players in the nation are selected and only ONE player wins…That doesn’t mean that 63 players lose. It just means that 63 players DON’T win.

Clearly, there’s more to tennis than just being the player who reaches the highest score first. Our cameras have shown us that there’s no such thing as a loser in a tennis match. It is simply a situation where one player wins and the other player just doesn’t win.

And we’ve certainly seen that any player can win any tennis match on any given day. For my money, winning a match doesn’t matter nearly as much as how the player handles losing a match. The bottom line here is that we’ll all have many opportunities to experience both winning and losing in life. Learning to win with class and humility and to lose with grace are very important life skills.

Follow The Golden Rule

So what is good sportsmanship all about? Well, it’s certainly about more than a hand shake, though our cameras have seen the players who shake hands in a sincere manner (and the ones who don’t) at the net when the match is over. One dictionary defined it as playing fair, following the rules of the game, respecting the judgment of referees and officials, and treating all opponents with respect. Some people define sportsmanship as the “golden rule” of sports – in other words, treating the people you play with and against as you’d like to be treated yourself. You demonstrate good sportsmanship when you show respect for yourself, your opponent, and all referees and officials.

As if there weren’t enough reason to demonstrate good sportsmanship, it’s not only important to behave well on the court, it’s also good strategy. We watch the top players and they always react in the same way, whether they win or lose the point, the game, the set, or the match. Smart players know better than to let their opponent see their reactions. A big part of good sportsmanship is having a good reputation. So why not strive for the reputation of a gracious player who is always pleasant and always fair. Our cameras have seen this player and he is admired by fans and opponents alike.

 

Most Prestigious Award

Winning the Sportsmanship Award at a junior tennis tournament seems so much more important in the long run than winning the tournament itself. We think the good person has so much more to offer the world than the good tennis player. If it were up to us (which, of course, it’s not), we’d like to see the Sportsmanship Award included at each and every tournament. Furthermore, we were encouraged when we recently read about a league that requires players to rate their opponent’s sportsmanship after each match. What a novel concept! We believe so strongly that the Sportsmanship Award is the most valuable award in tennis that we encourage every player prior to the beginning of the tournament to do their best to win it. This generates some very interesting responses: “I’ll try my best,” or “That’ll never happen!”

Obviously, our opinion is just that – our opinion – and others have a very different take on this. Consider the player who responded with this comment: “Why would I want to waste my time on that? I’m going to win the tournament.” And don’t get me started on Andre Agassi’s father smashing and destroying Andre’s Sportsmanship Trophy…Talk about destroying his spirit.

We want to remind you that we care about junior tennis and we want to do whatever we can to improve it. We’re sharing our observations for no other reason than to help you, the tennis parent, to be prepared. Please know that the very last thing we want to do is cause any controversy whatsoever. We can’t possibly solve every issue that occurs at every tournament, but what we can do is reflect on what we see and hopefully shine a light of awareness on this subject. Sometimes things need to be said so that positive change can occur…or at least that’s our hope.

This article focused on the positive side of sportsmanship. In the next article, we’ll share some observations regarding BAD SPORTSMANSHIP.
In conclusion, it goes without saying but we’ll say it anyway:

Tennis is a classy sport and that’s one of the reasons we all love it so much. Let’s all do everything we can to improve the junior tennis tournament experience!

Junior tennis is a journey, not a destination…
You might as well enjoy it!