I Tried Tennis for a Year With Zero Talent

I have zero hand-eye coordination, I have terrible spatial awareness, I’m bad at ball sports, blah blah blah. Those are labels I’ve always put on myself. But in the last year, I took on the greatest sporting challenge of my life: picking up what is arguably the most difficult sport to learn, at an age where most athletes would have retired.

I have no grand ambitions for my tennis “career”. I just thought it’d be nice to share a hobby with my husband, Glo, and be one of those cool couples rallying from the baseline with each other.

Such simple goals, but still, I might have bitten off more than I can chew.

I actually tried tennis once more than 10 years ago, but I quickly gave up after realizing just how bad I was. Now that I’m older though, surely, I’m wiser, more resilient, and just generally a better version of myself.

Unfortunately, all I felt was older. My body was moving even worse than before, and my brain was struggling to keep up with what I was supposed to do. The first few sessions gave me flashbacks, reminding me why I quit back then. Simply making contact with the ball was proving to be difficult enough at times.

My spatial awareness has always been a liability. I struggle to register how fast or how slow, how near or how far an incoming ball is, and when my attention is on the ball, I would lose all awareness of where my body and the racquet are in space.

So we tried to dumb things down. Very slow balls, multiple bounces, and at times, we did away with the racquet, and just tried catching balls with my hands. I was expecting to see rapid beginner gains, and looking back at the footage, sure, I was improving bit by bit, but progress felt slow, and the next few months were more of the same.

Forget about hitting from the baseline, we were not even past the service line. We were doing tippy taps inside the service box, trying to wake up whatever flickers of mind-body connection I had in me.

I actually lost the motivation to film many of these sessions, because it felt like we were recording the same pointless fails over and over again. And honestly at this point, because my abilities were so limited, I didn’t find tennis that fun at all.

After months of looking and feeling like a toddler with undeveloped motor skills, I was now making contact with the ball at least somewhat consistently. Feeling more confident, I wanted to get a taste of hitting from the baseline.

And for a moment, it seemed like I was hanging on. I was getting a few balls back into play, but then, reality sets in. Sometimes, I would literally trip over myself trying to get to a ball.

Now, obviously, my technique wasn’t great, but when you have no ability to judge where the ball is and where you should be positioned, all that technique goes out the window anyway. Clearly, I wasn’t ready to be hitting from the baseline, so back to short court it was. But things felt different. My brain and my body felt slightly more adaptable and responsive, and my progress started gaining momentum.

I was thrilled when I was deemed ready to move on to a big girl, modern forehand grip, with a fuller, more proper swing. and we even experimented with backhands. (Wow, how bold, I know.)

Okay, maybe there’s something fun about tennis after all.

Then September completely transformed my relationship with tennis.

After some initial progress, I had high expectations that momentum would keep picking up, but I hit a hard plateau and even regressed for a couple of weeks.

Since day one, Glo had been telling me: “Don’t think about HOW you’re swinging for now, just relax and focus on WHEN you’re swinging and hitting the ball.”

Of course, like a good wife, I chose not to listen to my husband. How would my body know what to do if I wasn’t thinking? What he wanted me to do was focus on the ball, position myself correctly, and find the right timing to take a swing.

But I thought, surely I was hitting airballs because I wasn’t swinging the racquet correctly (it wasn’t). So my attention wasn’t on the ball, it was on the hundred different technique cues I thought I had to remember. How could I relax when I had so much on my mind?

Frustrated at my lack of progress and his constant nagging to “Don’t think! Don’t think!”, I went into my next session with zero expectations. I thought I would prove to him once and for all that “not thinking” was nonsense advice and wouldn’t work for someone like me, who wouldn’t naturally know what to do with my body.

So I just fixated on the ball.

My mind was blank. I didn’t think. And somehow, I entered what felt like the closest thing to a flow state for the first time in my tennis journey. I was moving to a silent rhythm.

Bounce. Hit.

Bounce. Hit.

Without much thought on how I was swinging…

Bounce. hit.

It’s weird because if not for the footage we captured, my memory of this event was pretty fuzzy. I was just moving subconsciously, and that freed up my mind which made me more relaxed as I swung my racquet in sync with the next beat.

Unfortunately though, this flow state was short lived. It wasn’t just physically exhausting, it was also mentally draining. Who knew “not thinking” required that much effort. My stamina quickly ran out, and the overthinking returned.

The flow state came to an abrupt stop, but let’s just say, this was the moment I got hooked on tennis.

If only this was a fairy tale story: I unlocked my true potential for the game, and went on to become a tennis champion, happily ever after.

Sadly, the reality is, I’ve been constantly chasing that flow state since that session, but that feeling never really came back. And of course, the more I think about it, the more it escapes me. However, progress is progress.

The most important shift of all for me was mental. Before, I didn’t have the belief that a sport like tennis would be for me. I was ready to quit before I had given it a proper shot. Now, I actually believe I can do this; I just know it’s going to take a lot of time and effort.

The labels I put on myself weren’t wrong. I am bad at ball sports, I do have poor hand-eye coordination and spatial awareness. But now I know, just because I was those things, doesn’t mean I can’t change them and become something else.

Now, I’m constantly looking forward to my next tennis session. I may be well into my 30s, but I’m ready to become the most athletic version of myself, and blossom into the fine tennis player I’m destined to be.