I grew up as a tennis player, easily playing more than twenty hours a week. As the years went by, I lost interest, probably due to some age-related injuries—shoulders, knees, back—you get the idea. As my hours on the court dwindled, so did my time spent watching tennis on television. I tell you this for context.
Recently, I took my family across the country to celebrate a friend's milestone birthday. We flew into Boston and then drove up to Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. A couple of dinners and skiing were on the agenda for the weekend, and we were staying at the iconic Mt. Washington Hotel, now the Omni Mount Washington Resort. A grand structure steeped in world history; it served as the venue for the talks centering on reconstruction in Europe post-WWII. It looks like something out of a Wes Anderson film, you know the one.
After checking in, we headed up the central staircase en route to our room. On the landing of the first set of stairs, we found ourselves gazing out a giant picture window that overlooked the grounds behind the hotel. As we stared out onto a snow-covered field that framed Mt. Washington, I heard someone say, "It's a shame they took out the tennis courts, I miss the Volvo." I was immediately hit with a wave of unexpected nostalgia. The Mt. Washington Hotel used to host a tennis tournament called, "The Volvo International." It was a smaller event that always attracted a great draw of players. It was also a tournament in search of a permanent home—having moved several times from Mt. Washington, to North Conway and finally to Stratton Mountain. It was the Stratton version where I witnessed true tennis brilliance firsthand.
I recounted the 1985 match to my wife as if I had just witnessed it yesterday. It was the artistry of Johnny Mac versus the cold precision of a Cold War-era warrior named Ivan Lendl. For a little under two hours, I watched McEnroe serve the ball at impossible angles, attack the net, and be perfectly positioned to meet Lendl's return. An effortless volley would follow at an even more impossible angle to put the ball out of poor Ivan's reach. Not only was McEnroe truly brilliant at his craft, but he was a showman who knew how to ignite a crowd. He would look to the audience and groan after a missed shot and needlessly fall to the ground to punctuate a point. If an umpire missed a call, a seismic eruption would occur. It was high-theater by way of catgut and wood. That was the moment I fell in love with the sport.
He would look to the audience and groan after a missed shot and needlessly fall to the ground to punctuate a point.
I finished sharing the memory with my wife, and then we went up to our room to unpack, relax, and get ready to dine. I thought that this was where the story would end, but because we live in the times that we do, the story lived on. After being seated in the dining room, my son took my phone and started to scroll through various apps—searching for something to entertain himself while he waited for his burger and fries.
Suddenly, he thrust the phone under my nose and said, "Who's this?" I took the phone and looked at the opened Instagram feed, and to my surprise, it was a clip of McEnroe playing Borg on the emerald lawns of Wimbledon. I explained to my son that this was the tennis player I had just finished telling him and his mom about. He looked at me and asked the question we were all wondering, "Does Siri read your mind?"
Over the next few days, every time I opened Instagram, I was greeted with McEnroe vs. Connors—two brats engaged in heated battle, or McEnroe rallying on grass against an immensely cool Swede named Borg, and finally Mac against an equally combustible Năstase. Usually, these vignettes were set to some kind of folksy tune from Dylan or The Dead, evoking a simpler time in tennis—a time when the sport was ruled by guile and not power. I would smile to myself as I watched these men swathed in the fashions of the day (Borg dripping in Fila and a young Mac in Tacchini) armed with racquets made of ash manufactured by Donnay or Dunlop rally with a crisp new ball from Slazenger. This was a time before graphite composites ruled the courts and players called themselves "brands."
I wish I could say this was the thing that led me back to the courts, that my forehand never left me, and that my first serve still had its pop. Sadly, that is not the case. However, I have started watching the sport again on television or whatever device I have handy at the moment. Alcaraz, Sinner, and Medvedev are spectacular to watch, but they do not match the brilliance or showmanship of some of my heroes from the past.
I keep asking myself if Instagram is the ultimate tool to rekindle some lost sense of nostalgia (there is a highlight reel for just about everything that has ever been filmed) or if it is simply an ingenious marketing tool. I guess ultimately it doesn't matter, my love of tennis has been rekindled and I have received numerous compliments on my Tacchini tracksuit.