Spoken like a novice

I was excited. After days of anticipation, I had my -first- formal lesson for a racket sport yesterday.

I’m officially a tennis novice !

Even the bad start couldn’t dampen it; I was caught in the mad evening jam, and when I got to the courts, Coach was already teaching the rest of the peeps the basic footwork.

We had nine girls (including me) in the class and only one boy. One of them girls was decked out in pro tennis apparel – all Nike, by the way – complete with a beautiful Wilson racket and thermoguard bag.

I was carrying a droopy backpack, wearing my old-school running shorts and using a borrowed Head racket sizes too big for my hands. Haha. I found the contrast amusing.

Coach was good. He was absolutely serious in what he did without being all stiffed up like an old headmaster. I liked him almost immediately. Of course, I loved his Wilson nCode cap even more. In fact, Coach had had so much pretty Wilson stuff on him I was beginning to think that he must be a sponsored athlete or coach or something. Haha.

He was checking out our forehand grips one by one and when he came around to me, he told me instantly that my racket’s grip was too big for my hands. I laughed and yelled I know ! I’m gonna change that soon ! When we got down to serving the shots, he took a look at my huge racket again, and swapped it with his own.

So I ended up swinging a battered Wilson Hammer for the rest of my strokes.

It was awesome. I loved it more than the borrowed Head racket. It weighed like a baby after the Head ‘ket.

But it was only when I got home did I realize, the Hyper Hammer 6.3 I was using was the famous racket that Wilson designed for Serena Williams after they signed up the Williams sisters right before the ’99 U.S Open.

Serena then went on to win the Open (and more ! ) with the racket.

How cool is that ??