May 14, 2008 09:37 am
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To the editor:
When you play tennis in the Delta — you play in the whole Delta — you travel. The other night I was with my senior 3.5 team coming home from Indianola. Somehow we got into a conversation about when and how everyone started playing tennis. Most said they started playing as adults, and two of my teammates were in their 40’s before they ever touched a racquet. I was the only one in the group for whom tennis was a childhood memory. I grew up playing in Laurel.
My parents probably never held a tennis racquet in their hand and we did not belong to the Country Club, but the “city” of Laurel gave me the game. At the city tennis courts in Daphne Park, the high school coaches taught tennis for free in a city sponsored program. All you did was show up any or every morning in the summer and you could learn to play the game. The only coach I remember by name is Cecil Williams, but there were others. My mother dropped me off and I stayed all morning. This was in the day of wooden racquets, white tennis balls in a metal can that you opened with a key you had to pry off the bottom of the can. No fancy shoes — you played in your white Keds. Everyone had a one-handed backhand and there was no such thing as a tie-breaker. We didn’t have ice or water jugs - we just drank water out of our tennis ball can. I waited in line to hit on the wall, and when I got home I would hit in the carport. I loved the game.
When I was older we moved closer to the city courts, so I could walk. In the summers I would spend all day at the courts! I played for fun, and so did everyone else. There were some good high school players that went to college on tennis scholarships, but the rest of us played strictly for recreation and social reasons.
When I was in college at Millsaps I was always begging people to play with me. When I couldn’t find anyone that would play, I would say, “I’m going to get married (only to someone who would enjoy playing tennis) and have my own children and then I’ll always have people to play with.”
Interestingly, that prediction did come true. My husband doesn’t play much now, but in our dating years a lot of our courtship took place literally on the courts. My three children all played on their high school team and love the game. At times I will admit I had to gently prod them to keep them going to practices and lessons.
In one defiant moment when my oldest daughter preferred some other activity over her scheduled tennis lesson she shouted, “”Mama, , you make everyone play tennis. You make me play tennis, you make Lucy play tennis, you make George play tennis. If Chuck (their nickname for their then 75 year old grandmother) lived with us, you’d make her play, too. You’d make the Pope play tennis.”
At age 52, I am still enjoying the game. I am captain of a senior team that I love playing with and it is with great pleasure that I send them from Greenville to Laurel, my hometown, to play in the State Senior Tennis Championship. It feels like I have come full circle. It is also with great pleasure and some irony that I will be staying home. The Senior Championship happens to fall on the weekend that my middle child, Lucy, is getting married.
I am excited about the wedding and the young man she is marrying, but sometimes in life your cup runs over and for me it’s happening the weekend of May 17 and 18.
I would love to be back in Laurel where I learned to play the game and where I learned to love the game. Hopefully, I will have another opportunity to play on my true home court.
— Laurie Gillespie
Greenville
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