I’ve always had a from-a-distance fascination with tennis, although, aside from a summer camp my mother forced me to attend as a 9-year-old, I’ve never played the sport.

There were/are four perfectly-useful clay tennis courts at the playground I grew up playing basketball at; no one ever used them save for kids at summer camps, the random old people’s recreational game, and one guy from my neighborhood who played seriously (I knew him because he also played basketball a lot; he actually went to college on a tennis scholarship— I googled him and found his college tennis record was 10-28. Tennis ain’t no joke).