Taking the Plunge

Whenever I think about the financial equation of the tennis court and associated amenities I just had built and question my sanity, I then experience incredible non-financial benefits to lend credence to my decision to do what I did and invest what I have. In the just missed category, I was on the precipice of achieving one of my goals, which was to have a player stay at the house and practice on the court prior to heading out to the desert for the BNP Paribas tournament at Indian Wells. Through someone I have gotten to know a bit after he has come over to hit with me a few times he came to learn my goal and reached out to me and said that a European woman who is ranked in the 70 range needed a place to stay and practice for one night since her hotel in the desert wouldn’t be ready on the day she was arriving. Heather and I discussed it and thought it would be great to break the ice to host her and her dad. We were excited to meet a touring professional and to watch her practice. But it was not to be as her flight in Europe to catch her connection to Los Angeles was late and she ended up missing the flight. This meant she would end up coming in the next day and no longer needed to stay at our house because she could check into her hotel after arriving in the desert. 

One of the goals I had for building The Eleven (the name of the court) and other amenities was to create a place where people who love tennis could congregate to play and to watch others doing so. And from this new relationships would be built and existing ones strengthened as well as being a catalyst for others to experience the same. I would also hope that as the word gets out about the quality of the tennis experience and overall feeling of being at the house that tennis enthusiasts (ideally at my level or above so I can have more potential people to play with) would make contact and come over to play.

With this backdrop, a couple of interesting things took place recently that is corroborating my belief that what we built will have a magnetic pull for people both new in my life and maybe even drum up people from my past as well. My home phone rang recently (yes I still have a landline). I can’t remember when I last answered it because virtually everyone who calls me is spam or some type of solicitation and, like everyone else, people who know me will call my cell phone. A little while back, however, the phone rang, I ignored it, and the person chose to leave a message. The answering machine is a little ways away in the kitchen but it can be loud enough to hear when someone is leaving a message and to get a general feel for what they want. To my surprise it was a person reaching out who I went to UCLA with over 40 years ago. Like me, he has lived in Orange County since graduating and we saw each other quite sporadically during the first 10 years but, since then, I think the last time we connected was at least 20 years ago.

It turns out that he is an avid tennis player as well. His wife was a great college player and played pro for a short period of time and they have two kids who are really good as well. He heard that I had built a court from a mutual acquaintance and wanted to hit with me. I listened to the message again, this time hovering over the machine verses from the distance of my home office, so I could listen clearly to what he said. I called him back shortly thereafter and told him how great it was to hear from him and that I would love for him to come over and play tennis.

He has been playing fairly regularly for 30 years or so while I got back into tennis about five years ago. He had some intel on me because he has played against someone who has given me a number of lessons over the years and he told my friend that I have improved a lot in the relatively short period of time I’ve been playing. Despite this knowledge, my friend was fairly confident that he would be able to handle me pretty easily given how much longer he has been playing. Much to his chagrin, I beat him rather easily. I think it was in the range of 6-1, 6-2 or so. Afterwards he said he was shocked and humbled that he lost to me like that and it was a good reminder that he still has a lot to work on.

This photo was taken after the match and one can see that whatever happens on the court, afterwards smiles and good cheer take over. It was great to catch up with him and find out what he’s been up to and to learn more about his wife and kids. We intend to stay in touch and play tennis more regularly. I have The Eleven to thank for reacquainting us after all of these years.

Another nice thing that happened on the relationship front was receiving a call from my sister asking me if I was at home. I said I wasn’t currently but was heading back there. Her daughter recently got married and her new husband is a doctor that is interviewing for fellowships in his desired field and his goal is to return to California where he grew up. He had just finished one of his interviews and he had some time before his next engagement and wanted to know if I would be open to him coming over and playing some tennis. I’m always up for a good competitive match and my sister said he was a very good player who played a lot growing up. Plus it would give me a chance to get to know him a little bit better. I told my son that Andrew was coming over and he was excited to hear that so he said he would come over as well and wanted to hit a bit with us.

After warming up for a short period of time I could tell he was going to be a pretty formidable opponent if we decided to play a set or two. He hadn’t played in eight months but he had some serious power. I asked him if he wanted to play a set and he said sure. He took some serves and, while he was definitely rusty on that front, he eventually got the kinks out and it was go time. I won’t give all of the boring details but let’s say that I had my chance to come out on top but he ended up winning 7-6 with the tie break going to him 7-5. It was pretty darned close. He has a wickedly powerful serve, a ferocious forehand, and in spite of being at least 25 years older and not having the power he does, I still gave him a run for his money. Here is a picture of the three of us. This picture was taken before our match.

Andrew, Gary and Jacob at The Eleven

You will see in the background that there is a ball machine on the baseline. This machine is one of the only ones that can serve. It can also do so at a speed up to 110 mph and replicate lefty, slice, topspin, flat, kick serves, etc. It also has great variability in terms of the types of ground strokes it can feed you. 

On a recent Saturday night Heather was celebrating some of her friends’ birthdays in Los Angeles. We have been hitting together a lot recently which has been great. And with a lot of people having left town to go to the tournament in Indian Wells, it was pretty much Harry, Beans, and myself. I occupied myself by watching some of the matches on the Tennis Channel, a few of which were outstanding. I then looked out the window and saw that it was getting dark. I turned on the lights to the court via the app, set up the ball machine, and made a concerted effort to work on my backhand and my forehand form. I took this picture just before I started to capture the sunset  from the court.

I did three rounds of the ball machine and I was in heaven. Here is what one side of the court looked like after one of those rounds.

One of the supposed bummers about using a ball machine is that you then have to clean up all of the balls when you’re done. I actually found this to be a very meditative and calming act. The first clean up took nine minutes and then I became more efficient and I got it down to six minutes. The first two sessions took nine minutes because the balls were pretty much coming straight at me. On the third session, however, I recalibrated it so it would hit one ball wide to my forehand and the other down the middle. This took more time to go through all of the balls (15 minutes).

Adding the side to side movement put some strain on my hip/sciatica so by the end I was in some mild discomfort. Recently, however, I had been home on a Saturday night and it had been raining all day and night and I was feeling like I really had to get a jolt of energy in my system. I have a pool which I rarely heat. Every so often I think about having a pool that doesn’t get used very much and how that’s kind of disappointing. I decided to turn lemons into lemonades and use the fact that I have an unheated pool that doesn’t get used very much into a vehicle for bringing great vitality to me. Long time readers know that I started to add at least 30 seconds of cold water to my showers six years ago and I have been doing this religiously since I began. I have also read about cold plunges so I figured why not use the pool to inject that sorely needed energy into me by jumping in and doing a lap or two. So that is what I did.

Wow, was it cold but boy did it also wake me up and give me the energy I needed. I looked on my app to find out the temperature and it said it was 55 degrees. It turns out that the temperature range for cold plunges is between 50 and 60 degrees so I was right in the range. It felt even more invigorating than adding cold to my showers because this is a complete, shocking immersion versus the shower being a bit more gradual and more under your control in terms of how the water is dispersed and where. When jumping into the pool, however, there is no turning back and you’re all in.

One of the benefits of having done the cold plunge a couple of times before using the ball machine was that I found that it helped lessen some of my back pain from all of the movement in tennis. I had the perfect antidote to my post-ball machine discomfort: another cold plunge. And that is what I did and it felt amazing. I dried off, went back in the house, made some dinner, and returned to watching some great tennis.

The moral of the story is that I am so glad that I took the plunge to build The Eleven and to jump into my unheated 55 degree pool. Both have already added to the quality of my life and continuing to play tennis regularly and taking cold plunges will hopefully add many more years of a life filled with deep and meaningful relationships and living my life with courage and vitality while remaining vital.