Passage Transcript

i would definitely say that tennis is my favorite sport. uh, my parents both played it, played in college. my mom's really into it, and she plays tennis about three times a week at least. plays with the team. and she always has some kind of story about the ladies that she plays with. and, uh, she goes down to Florida and stuff like that. has a great time. but she kind of, uh, basically gave a racket to me and my brother, made us kind of start playing when i was around five years old. i've been playing since then. uh, she started_ she taught us at first, and then, the same uh_ i had a_ ... we went to a swim club called Minisink and the pro there turned out to be my high school teacher. and, uh, so i knew him for like so long. and he was the same pro_ he's actually the same coach for the men's team at high school. and so, uh, he taught me basically everything I know. and i think he's a great guy, but some people have problems with him. but i would play_ played for some high school matches. i played, uh, Minisink matches. but, i played_ like the whole idea is you want to play tournaments that you get, points. and you get like a ranking. and you play a certain amount of tournaments a year. so one year, i decided that i would try to do that.

so, i started playing some tournaments. and i played my first tournament, and i kicked butt in the first round. i won six one, six one. and then i got whooped the second round, and lost six zero, six zero. but that's okay. i still felt pretty good because i lost_ if you lose to people who are better than you, it really doesn't really matter, cuz, they might have been playing for twice as long as you. some people play it for half as long as you, and still a lot better than you. but i mean, what can you do. if you've played the best you can, it doesn't really matter.

but, uh, the thing is, uh_ i had to play three tournaments a year. and, uh, i played one tournament and i lost the second round, like i said. and then i was gonna play a second tournament. so i signed up for it, and it was in some place about half hour away form my home. and i got there, and it turned out i was only, the second person signed up for the entire tournament. and so there_ the people who ran it were like, "do you even want to bother playing the tournament?" and i was like_ "well this is a great opportunity, because if i win then i've won a tournament only with one match. so i can beat one guy, and even if i don't, like who cares." so_ and_ cuz you get points for, where you finish. so a runner-up gets the points anyway. so i was kind of hoping that the other guy i was gonna playing against, was gonna dropout,and just give me the trophy. but he didn't. so, anyway we went out and played, and we didn't even start_ we started like way after, because i got there for a seven o'clock match. we didn't start playing until like ten at night. it was ridiculous. so, uh, we got out there, and i realized that this guy was a lot better than me. so it probably like hurt my whole mental angle on the match. so basically he whipped my butt. i think it was six two, six one. and that was it, it was probably over in less than an hour. but i mean who cares, cuz i got my_ i got a little runner-up trophy. i got points to be on the U-S-T-A. and the part of that_ they have like a ranking. i think now. i'm probably really in the thousand billionth, or something like that. that's pretty good. and, it was a lot of fun, even though i didn't win anything.