Tag: court tennis
According to Yogi Berra, a malaprop-prone former catcher for the New York Yankees, “it is tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Fortunately, predictions are usually passive. They tell you what might happen if all you did was extrapolate from current trends. The better view, it seems to me, is to ask what you […]
Clearly the title should be Farewell, Mr. Ambassador, but nobody ever called Temple Grassi “Mr. Ambassador.” Had they done so he would have been one among many, but “The Ambassador” made him unique. The inadvertent word choice grew over time to reflect reality. Temple Grassi was a most unusual fellow but now he is gone, […]
Followers of this series can be forgiven for thinking that court tennis was exclusively an up-market game played only by cardinals and kings, because their courts, which tended to be in palaces, probably survived disproportionately. More people wrote about them too. This, however, is not entirely the case. There was much gambling on the game, […]
There is good and bad about playing a small game. By now, you have seen much of the good. Players of small games are more enthusiastic and see themselves as integral to its very existence. After years of involvement, you have met many of the players from other countries and perhaps stayed in their houses […]
The journey continues with a non-tour of the unplayed American courts. Many overseas visitors tour the United States, playing each court in succession over a short period of time and I suppose some Americans do the same, but I never did. Playing lots of courts in short order is more appealing when traveling abroad. We […]
Would you like to be the role model for a fictional character? Unfortunately, it is not really your choice; much depends on whom the author would like to choose. Kenneth Grahame wrote The Wind in the Willows in 1908, and created the famous Mr. Toad along with Mole, Ratty and Badger. The book is designed […]
There were two trips abroad in 2007 and these will result in three stories because one will be solely devoted to Hardwick and its especially colorful history. In late May and early June, I went back to England to play 6 courts that were new to me, two that were not and another that is […]
The entire plot of Around the World in 80 Days, the 1872 Jules Verne novel from which the title of this series is shamelessly pinched, is that Phileas Fogg will not make his quest and thus lose his Reform Club bet. Indeed, he very nearly doesn’t, and all appears lost until he realizes he has […]
There are podcasts on everything else, why not a podcast about court tennis? If not a whole series, how about just one episode? The world tour of playing in almost all the courts and even helping to build some of them has been ongoing for several months now, but today it takes a new turn […]