by Scott Samuelson

Though I’m at best a mediocre tennis player, I’ve achieved something in the sport that the pros achieve only at their finest, which I’ve taken to calling “tennisosity,” a hybrid of “tennis” and “virtuosity.” I coined the term several years ago, in the sweaty aftermath of a match in which my opponent and I had entered into its state. Among my friends and family, the ugly term tennisosity has stuck—I suspect because it describes something vitally yet elusively important, something with an ethical and an aesthetic dimension that can apply to any meaningful human activity.

Tennisosity (in the realm of tennis) is when you and your opponent are so well-matched that the competition not only raises both of your play to a higher level but perfectly realizes the game of tennis. The way I put it to my exhausted opponent was, “We just played the 2008 Wimbledon Final”—the battle between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, sometimes called the greatest match ever, where Nadal won his first Wimbledon against the defending champ (Federer had won the previous five straight, including the last two against Nadal). Even though neither my opponent nor I could return the serve of your average high school varsity tennis player, our rallies were just as dramatic as Federer’s and Nadal’s, each of us got to just as many shots that the other didn’t think could be gotten to, our aces were just as glorious, and our double faults were just as tragic—at least within the context of our game.

I admit that my backhand isn’t at the level of Roger Federer’s! I’m giggling at even drawing the comparison. By the normal metrics and standards of excellence in tennis, everything about my game is junk. Also, there was no public recognition riding on my match—not even the chintzy trophy of a local tournament, much less the engraved silver of the most storied competition in tennis. In fact, nobody was watching.

And yet, had others been watching us, I believe that their aesthetic experience of our tennis match would have been similar in kind to the great Wimbledon Final—obviously not concerning our individual skillsets but concerning what the interactive combination of our skillsets involved. My opponent and I had to dig deep again and again. The same kind of grit and imagination Federer and Nadal had to draw on, we had to draw on. The glory of tennis was on display for all to see—even though nobody happened to be there to see it. If I remember right, one of us cried. Read more »