Thunderstruck

[Ed. Note: Pete is on vacation in Montana until the 26th. In his absence, we are proud to present programming by various members of the TW Tribe.]

I have been struck by lightning just once in my life and it happened at a rather ungodly hour of the morning.  I have always been a night-owl, so it was only too easy to stay up well past the witching hour, watching television.  Perhaps I provoked the event with my tendency to stay up through the night; perhaps it was all meant to be. Whatever the answer, it changed my life forever.

If someone were to tell me that I would one day become - no, not just a tennis fan, or a nut, or even a maniac, but someone for whom tennis would become a way of life, a source of life, the very blood running through my veins, I would at first goggle at them like a landed trout and then roll around on the floor, laughing.  Sport had never held any great charms for me and my family was more literary-oriented than anything; there was absolutely no chance that something like this could happen.

I wasn't even in my own bed when the epiphany occurred.  (No, the explanation does not include a swanky club or exotic drinks, but there is a tall, dark and handsome stranger in the mix!)  I had decided to spend last year's inter-semester university break in Sydney at the abode of my grandparents, sleeping on a fold-out bed in the lounge room in front of the television.  Living in New Zealand, the inter-semester break here occurs in late June and early July.

As far as I was concerned at that time, tennis was played on another planet and was just a tad less soporific than golf.  Of course, being the genius that I am, I was basing these opinions purely on abstract theory; I had never watched even so much as a whole set of a professional tennis match!  I only discovered that Wimbledon was on when my grandfather, who harbours a mild interest towards sport in general, remarked that he might like to watch some of it.

Getting ready to drift into a stupor, I surrendered the remote with a heavy sigh.  The channel was changed, Blackadder disappeared, and a large green court appeared in his stead with a speck of white on either side of the net.

I cannot remember which round it was or the name of the poor sod who was being annihilated; all I can recall is the tall, dark, and handsome stranger who was prowling around the court and firing geometry-defying winners from all sides as effortlessly as Legolas fired his arrows.  What perfection! What elegance!  What spectacular hair!  The man wasn't human - he was Zeus, born with a thunderbolt in his hands, born to play and excel at this game. Needless to say, that man was Roger Federer.

Lightning had struck me and the silent assassin with the teddy-bear smile had captured my heart.

You cannot appreciate tennis without appreciating Federer's game - Roger is tennis.  He has honed every shot in the book to perfection and even crafted some of his own; his mask of steely ice serves to cover the treacherous passion that lurks just beneath the surface. Federer dwells not on defeat; instead, he builds on victory.  It is through appreciating Roger's game that I understood what a wonderful world had opened up for me and I realised how wrong I'd been.. and how much I had missed.

Nowadays, I must have my daily fix of tennis or I turn into a woeful, nail-biting wreck.  I read tennis literature prolifically, hit against a wall for a minimum of two hours every day without fail, and I follow the goings-on of the tennis universe religiously. I can't imagine my life without tennis.  Now I ask, "Is life without tennis actually life?"

--M.