GOOD SPORTSMANSHIP DEMEANS us all sometimes.
These are the moments that lay bare for all to see an undeniably ugly truth: somebody here can’t cut it.
Exhibit A: My men’s 4.0 doubles first-round match in the Saundra Kent Memorial Tennis Tournament at the Erickson Park Tennis Courts in Port Angeles this past weekend.
Paired with the gangly and gregarious Rich Riski — Peninsula College faculty member and former Peninsula Daily News photographer — my talents, or lack there of, could no longer be hidden
My serve was punchless, my ground strokes erratic and my backhand missing in action; the latter due to an ill-begotten sleeping position earlier that week.
(Side note: You know the aging process is catching up to you when you’re capable of injuring your shoulder while sleeping. Truly a grim realization.)
Tennis exposes one’s shortcomings like few other sports.
If your opponent can’t hit a decent backhand, that will become painfully obvious by the end of warm-ups. Thus, the game plan is apparent before a match even starts.
If you want to win, you expose that weakness as much as possible. (Translation: hit it to the backhand every chance you get.)
There are notable exceptions, however.
The most common of them occurs when your opponent is so awful, so inept, that the only hope for any semblance of a match to materialize is to placate said sorry sack.
It didn’t take long for our opponents — a pair of affable Quimper Peninsula residents — to realize that’s exactly what they had on their hands with yours truly.
As passable as Riski’s talents were — and believe me when I say he does well by his Roger Federer man crush — it could not hide what I brought (or failed to bring) to the table.
So it wasn’t too surprising when the soft shots and unnecessary compliments began flying my way by the end of the first set (a 6-0 drubbing).
That’s just how civilized adults handle untenable competitive situations. (Please note that the word “civilized” excludes City League basketball.)
Few of us have it on our hearts to step on an obviously weak opponent’s throat and not let up.
We prefer everyone enjoy the festivities, so we do our best not to embarrass anyone.
Of course, the sort of kid-gloves treatment I received Saturday accomplishes the opposite to some degree.
Let’s put it this way: you know it’s bad when your opponents are more excited about your own forehand winner than you are.
Riski greeted each of my rocket-launched forehand shots with the same chorus, “It’s better to hit it over the net than into it.”
(Never mind the fact that those shots consistently landed two to three feet beyond the baseline.)
And our opponents were more than a little generous with the line calls.
It was almost as if I was walking around with a neon sign above my head blinking: “This guy is uncomfortably bad, please make him feel welcome.”
By the end of match, which we lost 6-0, 6-1, I couldn’t help but be a little embarrassed.
The competitor in me blanched at the thought of not getting my opponents’ best for an entire match.
And despite everyone’s comments to the contrary, I knew I played horribly.
For some reason, I just wanted a little confirmation of that fact.
Sure, I have little doubt everyone’s politeness came from a good place.
One might even argue such sportsmanship is one of the reasons so many people refer to tennis as a “gentleman’s game.”
But in the end, I’m a lot like Tom Cruise in “A Few Good Men.”
I just want the truth.
Trust me, I can handle it.
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Matt Schubert is the outdoors and sports columnist for the Peninsula Daily News. His column regularly appears on Thursdays and Fridays. He can be reached at matt.schubert@peninsuladailynews.com.
