All I Really Need to Know I Learned… Playing Doubles
The game of singles tennis is not a bad metaphor for our life’s adventure as human beings. If life is an “arena,” as Teddy Roosevelt once wrote, a singles match is a place for the kind of person he wrote about, the solo individual, someone who “strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again” but keeps striving, trying to figure out how to navigate life’s adversities and opportunities.
But the older I get, the more I think tennis doubles is a better metaphor for how we make it through this life.
Our own individual efforts are, of course, always important for our success, but we never really make it if we don’t figure out how to work with other people who have knowledge and abilities we don’t, who rally us or counsel us or challenge us or threaten us or inspire us out of depression or allow us to do those things for them, who come into our lives from time to time with shared or at least aligned goals and partner with us to achieve them.
Without a series of partners sharing our journey through life, we’d learn less, fail more and see fewer colors in our lives.
And my life would be immeasurable duller without the kaleidoscope of doubles partners I’ve had on the tennis court.
There are probably three big categories of people I’ve played with on the court. See if the types tally with the partners you’ve run into in your work, play and spiritual lives, and think about how each kind of partner has helped shape who you are.
You gotta find mentors – When I was twelve when I played my first tennis tournament with my father. I was a self-hating, racquet-flinging, loud, obnoxious young tennis player. He was calm, positive, optimistic. I don’t recall him saying anything specific to me about my behavior, but I so wanted to be like him and be loved by him that I became a different person when we played together. I shut up. I listened. I learned. And, maybe not too surprisingly, I played better. Our final match in that first tournament we played was a two and a half hour marathon, against a team that should have beaten us, except that I trusted my father to come up with the strategy that would get us through. Winning that tournament, with him, will probably always be my career tennis highlight.
I’ve had other partners who I viewed as mentors. I let them teach me new shots and deferred to them on strategies because I knew they knew stuff I didn’t, and, if I wanted to get better, I knew they could help.
My tennis relationship with my father flipped as we got older.
Over the course of a life, our time as mentee tends to find balance with our time as mentor. As my father got older, our matches changed. I found myself, without thinking about it, taking the lead as problem solver in our matches against others. And in other doubles partnerships I’ve recognized I’m the one my partner is looking to for mentorship.
It takes an act of volition to let a mentor into your life -- and patience to be a mentor. But life is so much better once you recognize the value of both.
You gotta learn to work (and play) with strangers (and people you don’t like) – For the past two weeks I’ve been playing in a series of doubles matches with partners I’ve never been on a court with before.
The experience is not so different from a blind date.
You’re both nervous. Will they like you? Will you disappoint them? Are they really as awesome as your friends say they are, or will they disappoint? Can you get to the finish line with a result you both feel good about?
There’s a lot to work out the first time you play doubles with someone new. Who serves first? Who plays which side? Who runs for lobs? Who gets which balls when they go down the middle? And while you’re working through that, you’re also trying to find a balance between confidence and humility, friendliness and assertiveness -- all while trying to outwit and outhit those people on the other side of the net.
When you’re playing with strangers, one of the big things is just avoiding running into each other.
Each of my partners over the past couple of weeks had his own style. One refused to move for anything out of his reach. One hated coming to the net; another hated staying back. One of them immediately decided they were going to be “the boss” of the team; another totally deferred to anything I said; with only one of them did I establish a “shared governance” approach.
We get assigned all kinds of partners throughout our lives.
In my life’s different jobs, casting directors picked the women I was supposed to fall in love with on stage; department heads told me who I would coteach courses with; my TV stories were daily collaborations with a rotating cascade of photographers; public policy strategies and joint ventures required finding ways to pull together coalitions of the willing, the hostile and the lukewarm. Volunteer work of all sorts requires getting beyond the personality quirks of strangers or near strangers to accomplish goals.
Making any of those partnerships work requires versatility -- an ability to adapt on the fly as situations and information changes, and humility – an ability to know when to lead, when to follow and when to discuss. Doubles with strangers is all that in microcosm and it’s helped me get better at the rest of life.
You gotta find soulmates – We learn so much from mentors. We learn a different set of things when we are able to mentor others. And we learn every time we are thrust into an unexpected project with unfamiliar partners. But there is no greater joy than when you find someone who wants to stand beside you for a long-term partnership. That’s the family member or best friend or significant other or spouse that shares your goals, knows your strengths and weaknesses and chooses to join you on the journey. Our lives are better if we find those people.
On the doubles court that person may start as a mentor or a mentee or a stranger, but over time the relationship becomes almost symbiotic. You know what that other person can do and will do and you know they know you. I never had much in common off the tennis court with my greatest doubles partner, a guy I met in my early 30’s. But over the course of thirty years, we played glorious tennis together.
There’s a lot to learn about tennis and life in this memoir.
Abraham Verghese, a medical doctor, essayist and novelist, who has written some of the most beautiful prose I have read, devoted one of his books to describing the relationship he had with a man who became the subject of his book The Tennis Partner.
“Tennis,” Verghese wrote, “Has a way of bringing people from other walks of life together, uniting them through a common passion.”
Doug and I came from different parts of the country, liked different kinds of music, had different politics, worked in very different jobs. I was married; he was single for much of our time together. We spent surprisingly little time together off the tennis court.
But on the court, with a joint project of winning a doubles match, everything synched up. We developed nicknames for special serves we would use in special situations. I would nod before a point and he would know exactly what I meant. If I was nervous or confused or exhausted, or bringing some work or personal anxiety to the court, he would pick me up and let me do the same for him. When my mood cratered he could say one word to get me out of my funk. I knew how long to let him stew before I shook him out of it.
The closest thing I’ve had to a tennis soulmate was this guy.
And we flowed so well. When I moved left, he filled the gap. We moved up and back like one of those inflatable roadside tube men. We knew who would run for which balls, where the other was going to hit shots and exactly what we should do in response.
Doug was a master of strategy, of making the little adjustments that worked best to take the other team out of what they wanted to do and make them miss by an inch. There’s not much more satisfying than winning a match against a team that is more skilled than you. We did that a lot. Until we couldn’t do it any more.
Whatever we do over the course or our lives, we’re going to have a series of partners. Some we get to choose; others are thrust upon us; we can learn from all of them. Among those people, we may find a tiny number of delightful work colleagues. One or two best friends. If we are blessed, one ideal spouse. And, maybe, just maybe, we might find a perfect doubles partner. If you haven’t yet found those people in your life, keep looking. “In the game of tennis,” Verghese writes, “Every point matters, and so does every moment in life.”
-Leslie
Notes:
Despite the book title, you can’t learn everything in kindergarten: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_I_Really_Need_to_Know_I_Learned_in_Kindergarten
Context for Teddy Roosevelt quote, 1910: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_in_a_Republic
The origins of the inflatable tube man: https://www.atlantamagazine.com/news-culture-articles/the-caribbean-origins-of-the-waving-inflatable-tube-man/
The Tennis Partner, by Abraham Verghese: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/187117.The_Tennis_Partner