ENTRY NO. 1: I’M BAD

I’m bad. I’m really bad. I stink, I suck, I hate this stupid sport. I’d be better off without it. I should quit. I tried once. I had six years of freedom once my senior season in high school ended and I went to college at William & Mary. There, perhaps uncharacteristically for a student of the Tribe, I filled much of my very limited free time doing the normal activities expected of a college kid in their late teens and early twenties. I drank, I did recreational drugs, I started thinking I had good music taste. I do not have good music taste. But I was distracted! I did not think twice about tennis… except for on “move-in” days. At the beginning of each academic year, I would have to transport my goods from Richmond to Williamsburg and had to make tough choices about what was worth bringing and what I could leave behind. Accordingly, I always found myself considering if it would be worth saving enough space in my mom’s already overcrowded minivan for my tennis rackets. And every time I brought them along for the journey at the expense of something that would have ultimately proved to be much more useful.

So why did I bring them and why am I going through the effort of writing a personal tennis journal? I don’t know, maybe I’m delusional.

The truth is, I really care about tennis. I have played since I was 8 years old. My parents rented a house that was just a short stroll through the woods away from the neighborhood tennis courts and they would often take me and my brother to go play. I remember they would bounce a ball right in front of me and I would swing with my whole body trying to get that stupid fuzzy ball over the net. I would usually miss the ball entirely and start crying, sobbing even. Even then it was hard to imagine failing so consistently at something so simple. I was bad. I was really bad. Always have been. But I always cared too. I really wanted to see the ball go over the net. I wanted to play like the people I saw on my parent’s Vizio TV... Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Serena Williams, Andy Roddick. My heroes! I wanted to be just like them, hitting the ball with all kinds of spin, bending shots around the net, serving 125 miles per hour. So almost every day, my Dad would walk with me through the woods to those tennis courts and help me practice hitting the ball over the net. Something to overcome. I eventually got good at getting the ball over the net. I then started taking lessons at the local club, working to get the ball over the net and past other newcomers to the sport. Something to overcome. All of a sudden, I was playing in tournaments on the weekend and starting for my high school’s varsity team, competing against other experienced players from high schools nearby. Something to overcome. We won our region year after year but our true goal was to win the state title, something that always eluded our school. Something to overcome. In my senior season, we went undefeated during the regular season and we won our regional tournament with ease. We qualified for the state championship again and knew this was our best chance to win a ring. We had been working towards this moment for years. In fact, I had been working towards this since I cried so bad as a child that my dad took time out of his busy day as a doctor to help me figure out how to do something as simple as hitting the ball over the net. With that sentiment in the back of my mind, our team lost the state championship by one. My chance to get that ring was up. We failed and all of a sudden there was nothing left to compete for. Nothing to overcome. No more balls to hit over the net. Not sure what I would do next other than go to college, I hung the rackets up. That break lasted six years. I didn’t think I would miss it.

Now, I am 26 years old sitting in my one bedroom apartment, right in front of that same Vizio TV (that my mom gave me as a hand-me-down), watching Adrian Mannarino vs. Mackie McDonald playing in the Quimper challenger. Two pros who are far from household names playing in a city that is also far from a household name. While typing this, Mannarino hit a forehand on the run into the bottom of the net and a backhand about 20 feet long. McDonald hit an overhead into the net but it dribbled over. I guess they are playing the same sport my childhood heroes played. Amazingly, these two are some of the best players in the world. They’re good! They’re really good. They would beat the guys that kick my ass without losing many points. Did I mention how bad I am? I’m bad. I’m really bad.

As of writing this, I am a 4.0/4.5 player on the USTA scale. That puts me in the top 10% of rated players on the planet… and thousands upon thousands of spots away from the level that I was initially trying to achieve. I have practiced my whole life to overcome any tennis obstacles in my way and I am still so many obstacles away from playing at the level of the players I was initially trying to emulate. My childhood heroes have families and are all retired. Meanwhile, I have a doubles match in about 3 hours at one of the local clubs I competed in when I was younger. Never quite made it to Wimbledon… or really anywhere outside of Richmond’s tennis scene. I’m bad! I suck, I stink, I hate this stupid sport. No, I despise this sport.

You might be wondering why I picked my rackets back up after six years off if I apparently hate this sport. I wonder that too. Maybe I was bored without it. Maybe I missed being good at something. Well, that can’t be true because I’m bad. Realistically, I am good. I am really good. But I am so bad compared to where I wanted to be. I probably will never be where I wanted to be when I started. Ultimately, and I hate to admit this, I started playing again because I think I really missed the sport. I really missed the practices, the drenched shirts in the summer, the high fives with my coaches as I gasped desperately for air. I think I kept my rackets around all this time because I have always enjoyed putting in the work and needed a reminder of it… I am who I am because I have always enjoyed getting better step by step. I enjoyed working with purpose. I enjoyed having something to overcome, even if I don’t overcome it. I already lost the most important match and the trophy I had wanted the most when we lost that last state championship in high school and sure, it did make me quit. While those six years after quitting were certainly a blast, they lacked structure because I had very little to improve towards and they lacked personal growth. Believe me, I wouldn’t give up my college experience for the world. I learned a lot about myself and supposedly about what I got my degree in. Most notably though, I learned that I lacked aspiration. I was going through the motions but not really getting better at anything. I would go out on Friday and Saturday nights because what else was I supposed to do? Everything felt meaningless. Empty. Anxious. Tired. I wondered about if I had enough self-restraint to not hurt myself while chopping vegetables. I wondered if it was on purpose or an accident when I inevitably would cut myself. You can ask my college friends (you probably are one of my college friends) because they would tell you that despite all the fun I was having outside, I had an underlying unhappiness inside for the better part of those six years. As I got older and there were more and more responsibilities to take care of, there were more mundane things filling my free time. I spent years either worrying about my profession, partying, or feeling like shit in the midst of a hangover. I needed something fun beyond fun’s sake. I needed something to overcome. I needed local tennis when I was a child and I now realize that I need it as an adult too.

I am the same child who cried at the neighborhood courts about not being able to hit the ball over the net… I’m just a bit uglier now. Even though I’m bad, and I’m really bad, proximity to local courts, proximity to local tennis, has always been a good thing for me. It has offered me the opportunity to get better! I see kids at my local club nearly everyday who are on a similar journey. Some of them are probably going to be better than me, some of them are better than I was at their age and it’s awesome to see. In fact, I am now (perhaps concerningly) the head coach of the varsity girls tennis team at a local high school as of last spring. In this one season together, we achieved a lot. From the year prior where the team went 7-7, we improved to achieve an undefeated record in the regular season, finalists in the regional tournament, and qualification for the state championship for the first time in many years. Most importantly though, we had a lot of fun. The girls on the team showed so much growth both as tennis players and as young women who are maturing and becoming thoughtful leaders. They showed an impressive level of teamwork, collaboration, and maturity (although they are certainly goofballs at heart). I learned a lot from them. I think I saw myself in them. More than anything, I am so proud of them. More proud of them as tennis players than I am in myself. I think that might be why coaching has been an important part of my rekindled relationship with tennis. A sport that I begrudgingly love, though I maintain that it is a stupid sport that I hate. Both things can be true, you understand.

So as I start this online journal and document my journey, I hope to keep on learning and I hope to recover the ambition that I once had. The ambition that those girls have. As I add more entries to the journal, expect me to document what I have learned as a tennis player and through my experiences as a coach. I am both the mentor and the mentee. Yet in both personas I have much room to grow. As I said… I’m bad. I’m really bad. Maybe one day I’ll be good. I’m just excited for every step along the way.

Fahim Rahman, 1/22/2025, 2:42 P.M.