{"id":31751,"date":"2024-06-12T08:10:11","date_gmt":"2024-06-12T12:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=31751"},"modified":"2024-08-07T09:48:46","modified_gmt":"2024-08-07T13:48:46","slug":"its-not-about-the-racket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2024\/06\/12\/its-not-about-the-racket\/","title":{"rendered":"IT’S NOT ABOUT THE RACKET"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nFrom today’s Cleveland Plain Dealer . . .
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s not about the racket<\/p>\n

by Bert Stratton<\/p>\n

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS,<\/strong><\/span> Ohio — When I trounced my friend Jimmy in tennis, he blamed it on his racket. His racket — his good racket — was in the shop for restringing. Jimmy said he was hitting the ball longer than usual with his back-up racket, and he didn\u2019t have his usual deft touch on drop shots. I was surprised by the kvetching; Jimmy is usually stoical about his game and has never been an equipment freak.<\/p>\n

Lance Armstrong said it best: \u201cIt\u2019s not about the bike.\u201d Or, it\u2019s not about the racket. For example, I have a childhood friend who is a tennis pro in Israel, and he occasionally comes back to Cleveland to visit relatives and beat me in tennis. My friend, Shelly Gordon, doesn\u2019t even bring a racket with him from Israel; he borrows one of mine. Shelly and I grew up playing tennis on the public courts at Bexley Park in South Euclid. The dress code then, in the 1960s, was Bermuda shorts, Jack Purcell tennis shoes and T-shirt (optional). Shelly never took private tennis lessons; nevertheless, he made the Ohio State University tennis team.<\/p>\n

I took about 10 private lessons at the Cleveland Skating Club in Shaker Heights. My dad paid a nonmembers\u2019 rate for the lessons. The club pro called me \u201cTiger.\u201d I think he called all nonmembers \u201cTiger\u201d because he didn\u2019t want to learn their names.<\/p>\n

At a recent high school reunion, a former Brush High tennis player was still mad at me — and envious of me for my private lessons. Hotshot players like him, from all over the East Side, would schlep down to Cain Park in Cleveland Heights, where the best public-court players hung out. There was a Cleveland Heights High player, Rich Greenberg, who was so into tennis he would shovel snow off the courts in the winter. He eventually played for the University of California at Santa Barbara.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Bert Stratton, age 16, 1967, Brush High courts<\/p><\/div>\n

Rich taught<\/strong><\/span> me an important life lesson: how to wait. Every winter, I had to wait six months for good weather to come around again, so I could play tennis. I wasn\u2019t going to shovel courts. Think about it: No snow blowers in the 1960s, and the courts had to be perfectly dry. And right after you shoveled, it would snow again. (And we didn\u2019t have access to indoor courts.)<\/p>\n

When I played my friend Kvetchin\u2019 Jimmy — the man with the bad racket — he muttered unintelligible things to himself and fiddled with his strings. I beat him 6-2, 6-2. He usually beats me. Funny, I, too, had a handicap. But did I complain? No, I didn\u2019t. My left hand (my dominant hand) tingled from having played a steel-string acoustic guitar the night before. I didn\u2019t mention that to Jimmy. Probably because I won.<\/p>\n

In tennis,<\/strong><\/span> it\u2019s all on you. There\u2019s usually nobody else to blame. Here\u2019s a useful rule: If you lose, blame the wind. That\u2019s less offensive than blaming your racket.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

Yiddishe Cup performs 2-3 pm this Sun. (June 16). Father’s Day. Free. Beachwood Branch, Cuyahoga County Library, 25501 Shaker Blvd. (corner of Shaker Boulevard and Richmond Road). Indoors.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  From today’s Cleveland Plain Dealer . . . It’s not about the racket by Bert Stratton CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio — When I trounced my friend Jimmy in tennis, he blamed it on his racket. His racket — his good racket — was in the shop for restringing. Jimmy said he was hitting the ball […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-pages"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31751"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31775,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31751\/revisions\/31775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}