chapter 11.. Simply an Insight

"And when the event, the big change in your life, is simply an insight, isn't that a strange thing? That absolutely nothing changes except that you see things differently and you're less fearful and less anxious and generally stronger as a result. Isn't it amazing that a completely invisible thing in your head can feel realer than anything you've ever experienced before..." 

Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections

 

All it took was a little belief. But could I make it last? Could I store it away, to be used during my next important match? Or would my new found belief be as fleeting as the horizon on a passing train? 

A conundrum in a paradox. Winning spawned belief, but I needed belief in order to win. But not always. Frequently tennis was pure survival, where more matches were lost than won, where all it took to pick up the balls was to not collapse, to hold a little steadier in the storm. For I was learning the crippling doubt I'd long been afflicted by affected everybody on the tennis court.

On the cusp of a mental breakthrough. Just keep my shit together and compete a little calmer. I didn't have to woo the crowd, hit tweeners for winners, or make the evening news' play of the day. There were no style points in tennis, scoring was not by artistic merit or degree of difficulty, nor were there bonus points for being dazzling. Success seemed to hinge simply by not getting overwhelmed by the moment, something that shouldn't have been that hard. To not do something. But the pressurized air of intense competition. It revealed. My past experiences on the court felt oppressive, like I was competing 20000 leagues beneath the sea. But for once I hovered above it all, competing unaffected. A strange confounding feeling in this equally confounding sport.

Belief. What was it? A somewhat nebulous term. Hard to define, even harder to quantify. I learned at Ojai that much of belief was lack of doubt. I didn't have to think anything positive in particular. Just train the mind to quiet the doubt. Addition by subtraction again. Yet, because tennis, there was always doubt. You could employ all sorts of methods to tame the doubt. You could deny it, you could defy it. You could lean in to it, embracing the tension. Or compartmentalize it, keeping the increasing tension at bay.

Some played mind games with it, lying to themselves there's no pressure and that tennis is only a game. But you're always engaged with it, conversing with it, like talking to a snarling dog, soft assurances in the hope it didn't bite. Yet when it erupted, there was no putting the genie back in the bottle. Doubt was now a virus in your operating system. Past tennis traumas rushed to the surface. Your most memorable collapses raced to the forefront of your mind. Now you were playing two opponents. The one across the net, and the far more formidable one between your ears.

But there were valid reasons for the doubt. There was doubt in preparation (somethings was always a little off), there was doubt about performance (will I play well or not), and the ultimate doubt, the doubt of the outcome. Competitive tennis, the original steel cage match. Two highly skilled, athletic, uber-talented, fiercely competitive players entered a fenced in rectangle. Hours later, one picked up the balls to report the score. The vanquished other went home, grinding over what could have been. The cruelest of zero sum games. The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, all hanging in a shared moment. And it could all come down to one shot. By you. In the heat of the moment, when it mattered most. 

But you can't think like that...

Against all evidence, you have to believe that in that moment against that opponent in that tournament hitting that improbably low percentage shot that you've missed thousands of times that this time you're going to make it. For though you've missed it thousands of times, you've also made it thousands of times. And whichever thought rushes to the surface of your consciousness in that precise moment of contact will often determine your fate.

Like the cornerback in football who keeps getting burned, tennis players need a short memory. Or no memory. We need Will Smith from Men in Black with the memory gun, zapping the mind clean each time. We need a shooters mentality. A shooter has to believe no matter how many he's missed in a row he's going to make the next one. Because you're battling the same kids who've been beating your ass year after year, who you know are better, tougher and more experienced than you, yet you still have to believe that today is your day. Like the late great Vitas Gerulaitis said after finally beating Jimmy Connors on his 17th try. Nobody beats Vitas Gerulaitis 17 times in a row...

I discovered there was a belief spectrum. A confidence continuum. I'd been a national level junior tennis player since I was eleven, so of course I had some belief. But what percentage of the time? Pretty much all the time in practice and matches where I was favored. Not so much trying to close out matches, even less with lots of people around, and major major problems trying to finish matches against the guys I looked up to in awe.

But I was also learning belief/doubt wasn't strictly about tennis. It had much to do with self-esteem. And as a perpetually fucked up socially struggling teenager, with so much conflict and negativity swirling about me internally and at home, I often didn't feel good about myself at all. (high on mushrooms on a mountaintop aside) 

And wherever I went, there I was, bringing that messy kid with me every time I stepped on the court. Because my secret life wasn't a secret to me. I knew what I was doing. I knew how out of control I'd been. How dangerous I had been dealing drugs. A felony a day keeping the serenity away, doing life always on the wrong side of right and wrong. 

For believing in myself transcended tennis. It was about feeling good about myself, about being a good person and doing right and living right and not having all this conflict and drama in my daily life. And for so long I simply wasn't. And a person can only compartmentalize so much bad behavior and ethical lapses, for that toxic shit has a half life that'll likely exceed my own. For the subconscious. Its not some hard drive easily erased. And that bill kept coming due at the worst of times. In tight stressful tennis matches that mattered mightily to me.

For abusing drugs messed with my karma. The lying, the cheating, the stealing. The self-destructiveness. You rot from the inside. Those same insides you mine for strength during tight tennis matches. Where grit, fight, toughness and belief reside. And I had some of those. But the recipe of my psychic stew was long on other ingredients too, making it impossible to compete happy joyous and free, for deep down, when I needed strength and resolve, I would turn inward only to find the twisted scorched soul of a teenage drug addict. The quintessential interference of the Inner Game.

But for the time being I was now doing better.  Long Beach was my first bottom and in that bottom I saw myself as I was. Reality finally breached my drugged out forcefield, where to deny the painfully obvious was no longer possible. And in that moment of clarity, a chance arose to alter my life's course  for the better. But the moment had to be seized, for the window to change could close quickly, and there may not be another one. But I got lucky. I was able to change enough after Long Beach, with Ojai the outcome. 

I returned from Ojai in the best place I'd been in some time. Playing well, competing even better, while managing my emotions on the court and my behavior off it. Sober up, shut up, stop making a fool of myself, play hard, play fair, and what a revelation. People wanted me around, not the least being the college coaches and even my Dad. 

With my awful terrible disastrous year turned around, life felt lighter. But there would be little time to relax and reflect as the next event loomed right around the corner, this one the South Bay, one of SoCal's marquee junior events and luckily for me, my age group was being played at my home club, the RHPRC right up the street in Torrance.

Playing with a newfound aura of calm and belief, I raced through my early rounds, picking up a few  solid wins along the way, setting up a finals show down with future Kalamazoo (footnote) Champion and frequent thorn in my side John Letts, from our rival club the Jack Kramer Club. My club RHPRC had a bad case of club envy, particularly toward Kramer, with its affluence and lore and endless assembly line of top ranked juniors. But I was the best kid at our club playing the best kid from their club, with a rarity in junior tennis, a legit home court advantage. 

Playing John was tough. All things being equal, he was better than me, so I was going to need a little luck to have any shot. Match day arrives, and on a typical scorching hot SoCal Sunday afternoon, we descended on to my club's sunken center court, my second home these past four years in California, with my crazy support crew of misfit members out in force to cheer me on. 

And with every point I won, a couple hundred tennis crazed liquored up club members would bang on the lounge windows. Uncertain if their cheering rattled John or inspired me, likely some combo thereof. Either way, I played about as well as I could, winning handily in straight sets in little over an hour. And boy oh boy, let the celebration begin. ((PICTURE))

How cool was this, winning a big tourney at my home club, where I'd spent an ungodly number of hours learning tennis but more importantly growing up. Four years ago I arrived in California a hyper shy fourteen year old not exactly going anywhere. Now I was on the cusp of junior tennis' big time. And as I opened the doors to the club lounge, winning trophy in hand, the boisterous bar crowd erupted in  applause, filling me with a rush of emotions I'd never experienced in my life before.

It was an important moment for me. My club had become my support system, my team behind the scenes really. When things got tough for me at home, the club members took me in, embracing me, loving me unconditionally. I had become the club mascot, a point of pride for our blossoming facility. But now I was putting RHPRC on the map with all the other junior tennis factories throughout SoCal. 

As I took a victory lap through the bar among all the club crazies who had supported me and my tennis these four years, from the corner of my eye I looked for my Dad. And just as my Dad always seemed to know where I was as a kid sneaking around the house or at our tennis club, I walked a direct path toward where I thought my Dad would be standing in such a crowded boisterous room. And sure enough, there he was, off to the side, standing as far back from the celebrating throngs as possible. One part anti-social, another part socially challenged, hanging with the boys at the club wasn't Dad's vibe, but it was totally my vibe, especially today, so I waved him over as I continued to go table to table, soaking in all the good cheer. 

But Dad being Dad, he stayed to himself, allowing me my moment. Yet, like always, I felt his presence in the room watching the celebration while watching me. What was he thinking, seeing all this praise heaped upon me? Was he embarrassed? Or was he disappointed he couldn't let his guard down even for a moment to revel so? Either way, he stayed off to the side by himself, never breaking character, arms crossed, head down, dead stare behind his dark framed glasses watching me navigate the gauntlet of congratulations from afar.

I would periodically catch my Dad making an ever slight grin as he soaked up the festivities. And as much as he didn't want to show it, the whole spectacle of me winning such a big match at our home club, the club we joined before it was even built yet, after moving to a town where we knew nobody and barely any tennis was being played, where the last time he watched me play Letts, he had to hustle to his car to find me a racket to finish the match. Now a couple years later, here I was, all grown up, taking care of business all on my own. 

Was this how he always wanted it? 

Celebration over, a few days later and it was on to the next tourney, my first professional prized money event being held a couple hours south in the San Diego area. Somehow I also managed to get invited that weekend to the La Jolla, California prom, so a busy few days it shaped up to be.

Before driving down, I had small 30 dollar check in need of cashing. My Dad offered to help, driving me up to the bank. After signing the check over to him, he walked in to the bank, coming back out with the cash. He gave me back forty. A bittersweet gesture, for I could tell he was trying. 

He put his whole life in to caring for my Mom, raising me and my brothers, supporting us, providing us a home and opportunities not every kid was blessed with. Yet he seemed to take so little joy from our lives and in our accomplishments, his presence an unrelenting confounding force, a controlling domineering influence over my family, all of us struggling under his weighty presence to properly grow and express ourselves. 

What was he getting out of all this?

Making my way down to La Jolla, I had a great first day at the tourney, winning a couple tough matches, beating my first ever world ranked player in Jack Krueger of USC lore. Exhausted and running way late, I jammed to my stressed out date's house, having only ten minutes to get ready for the prom. Hustling, I pulled it off in eight, with a couple minutes to spare. Sometimes its pays to be a guy. 

Prom night commences. Limos and pre-gaming and all that jazz. So much for sobriety this weekend. I got way too wasted, ending up in a hotel drinking whiskey and doing cocaine all night. Long night. Longer morning. The sun was rising yet I'd yet to sleep. Still hammered, I got sick all over my tux. 

With only a couple hours to go before the finals of my first pro tournament, I could barely walk down the hall. I eventually gathered myself, finding my way to the event. Unsure of how I was going to play a tennis match, I finished my remaining cocaine in the bathroom, making me buckle over in nausea once again all over the back of the court in front of a growing crowd. But my purge proved cathartic, as I proceeded to play about as well as I ever had, winning the match in straight sets over a former top 250 player Mike Shore and a tidy prize money check. And all I could think of as I gathered my belongings and headed to my car was how badly I needed a bed.

As I began the couple hour scramble home to Torrance, I realized immediately I wasn't going to make it. Pulling off to the side of the freeway, I reclined my seat all the way back, drifting off to a dreamy hot sleep right there on the shoulder of the I-5, until I heard a tap on my window. It was a California Highway Patrolman. Groggy, I tried to explain to him the confusion that was my car. I showed him the trophy and the winning check, the ink barely dry with that day's date. But he wasn't interested in my tennis. He wanted to know where the smell of alcohol was coming from. I tried to explain to him my prom/tux/all nighter debacle, leaving out the criminal stuff. He stood there quizzically, trying to size up the scene. The sweaty clothes, the puked on tux, the fresh check, the passed out driver, the smell of alcohol in the car. Staring down upon the scene, he had no idea what to make of me. 

Join the club buddy...

Trying to explain myself. Yet how do I explain the past 24 hours? Legally drunk professional tournament winner with narcotics racing through his system. Yup, that's me. He eventually waived me home, wishing me well, but not without a resigned shake of the head. 

Fun weekend over, I came home knowing I got away with a little too much. Maybe being young and active, I was still impervious to hangovers, but my grandiosity got a lethal infusion that weekend, that I could do anything I wanted and get away with it. 

Because tennis again, there was little rest for the weary. Couple days later and I was right back to the SoCal junior tennis pressure cooker with CIF Finals.  CIF at that time was the largest junior tournament in the world. The entire SoCal high school system. Three weeks, eleven rounds. I had won my league, then swept through the Regionals, seven rounds down, four to go against all the usual suspects, setting up a two day four match shootout for the most prestigious title in SoCal junior tennis.

Unseeded, I got through the first day unscathed, beating future US Olympian and USC All American Eric Amend in a tight quarter. The next day was Sunday, the business day of a tournament. Huge opportunity. Two more tough matches for a marquee accomplishment, which was not lost on my Dad nor my high school coach, who accompanied me on an overcast June morning to the Los Caballeros Tennis Center to do battle.

And in what would amount to my final SoCal junior tennis tournament, I finally had a team with me. Semi-finals, I get future NCAA All-American Bruce Man Son Hing. We always battled hard, but up to then, I had his number. And on that Sunday morning my good fortunes continued, grinding out another long three setter, putting me in the Finals of CIF to face none other than Tim Pawsat once again.  

Dating back to Ojai. Five weekends of straight tournaments and I hadn't lost a match. But I was slowing. Everything hurt as I took the court for the finals against the strongest fittest guy in all junior tennis who was foaming at the mouth to put one on me. 

Match time. And Tim came out bombing. I had no answers. I lost the first set 6-0 and it wasn't even that close. I started thinking about pulling the rip cord. But I had my team with me. And more matches are lost than won. And maybe if I stuck around for as long as possible, something good might happen.

I finally managed to win a game, then broke serve on a complete shank winner. Finally getting my first wind, I settled in, playing a decent set to even things up for, what else, another 3 setter. But my legs were going and the cramps were coming. And there was no way I was getting through this match without locking up.

At a game a piece in the third I collapsed. Full leg and abdomen cramps. Tennis' rules were weird then. Cramps were not considered an injury, so I wasn't allowed to receive treatment from the trainer. But the trainer and referee came out anyway. Writhing around on the ground, they told me I had five minutes to resume play. I looked over at Pawsat, obviously annoyed I wasn't defaulted and that the match was still going. As a courtesy, I told him they were giving me five minutes to which he snapped back... Yeah, and you've already used four of them. To which I slowly picked myself up and said ..Well fuck you, I don't need 5 minutes to beat your ass. Lets go!!

Ahhh, junior tennis. 

I would proceed to not lose another game, winning far and away the biggest tourney of my life, in front of my Dad and my high school coach. The SoCal CIF Championships.  ((Winners List)) And good thing I had a team with me, for my cramping had just begun.

In what seemed like forever, my Dad and high school Coach carried me to the car, helping me in to the back of my Dad's van once again. But I would be in no need of consoling. This was celebration time. Dad once again pulled over to the first store he could find, coming out with full brown paper bags. One for himself, one for my Coach, and a much larger one for me. The Gatorade on top for the electrolytes, two giant Fosters Lagers in the bottom for a job well done. 

Lets just say it was one of our more pleasant drives home...

Back home, things were happening fast. Having success affected everything; my mind quieted, tension on the home-front  eased, while me seemingly insatiable craving for drugs abated some. But with success came obligations. My high school that I loathed with every fiber of my being honored me with a special assembly as Torrance High School's first CIF individual champion in its 75 years of existence. My tennis club, never one to miss an opportunity to celebrate, threw me a huge raucous party with all the trimmings. The local newspapers all wrote me up nicely, several of them calling the house for interviews and quotes. It was a lot of commotion for our normally quiet household. Then the Mayor of Torrance called, inviting me and my parents to City Hall to salute my accomplishment with a plaque and a speech in front of a packed city council. (As stated earlier, not a lot of excitement happened in Torrance). 

Then the college coaches began descending upon Torrance, all wanting to take me dinner or come over to our house to pitch my parents. All of a sudden, I was a hot prospect. Dinners and trips and all sorts of scholarship offers started coming in, the constant infusion of praise and attention working wonders on my moods.

Yet there was still one accolade I craved. All these years of junior tennis watching the American JDC team strutting the tournament grounds with the USA on their jackets. That was always the ultimate goal, to make JDC and to represent the United States on junior tennis' world stage. Yet for the body of my junior career, being invited to JDC wasn't just a long shot, it was a no shot. But with a month of signature wins on my record, I had an outside chance, but it was going to take some luck. The 36 invitations to the nation's best juniors had already gone out. But I sat down, wrote an impassioned letter, and sent it off to the JDC Selection Committee, putting it in the hands of the tennis Gods to decide. 

In the mean time, I had to pick a college. The decision was agonizing. Problems of abundance for sure. What world class university to attend? But the choice was hard, myself still woefully misinformed about what higher learning was all about with my parents absolutely no help, having backed away completely from the process. 

I'd narrowed my choices down to Berkeley and UCLA. Full ride, half ride. San Francisco, Los Angeles. Bay area, Grateful Dead and the Greek Theater. West La nightlife with all its glitz and glamor. Most importantly, I would play immediately at Berkeley. At UCLA I was almost assured of riding the bench. Asking everyone I could for advice, I was talking to my Head racket rep Stu Hansen one day who cleared it all up for me. He said the people I would meet playing tennis for UCLA would change my life forever. And that was all I needed. I called Coach Bassett that day and accepted a partial scholarship to play college tennis for the UCLA Bruins.

Excited to tell my parents about my decision, I arrived home to everyone sitting at the dinner table with a letter from the USTA at my setting. I knew what it was. I hadn't even told my parents I'd applied, it was such a long shot. Nervous yet hopeful, I opened the letter to discover that one of the invitees had pulled out with an injury and would I accept their invitation to try out for the 1982 US JDC team to be held the following week at Vic Braden's Coto De Caza resort in Southern California.

And there it was. The ultimate junior tennis opportunity, one hour south, a dream I had coveted from the first time I saw that USA on the back of a jacket. 

And, because tennis, I now had two weeks to get ready...