English Tennis

Yesterday I went along to a tennis club to look around and join in the 'club night', where club members turn up and play casually, then lounge around at the bar.

The facilities were good with a total of ten tennis courts, three acrylic/sand courts and seven hard courts. I was given a small piece of paper with a security code on it to get into the changing rooms. Lots of people had left their bags in there but it wasn't all that secure considering they hand out the code to prospective members without even taking their particulars.

As I had expected being a Friday night, there weren't many young people around. I'd say most of the youngest tennis players were in their 30s. Also, the standard was quite low. However, I was told that there are various teams and whatever your level there is someone to play with. It's hard to judge whether to fork out £500 based on that advice, though.

I found playing tennis with English people utterly alien to me. It's totally different to playing with Japanese people, whom I play with regularly. All the time I kept having to stop myself from replying in Japanese.

It felt to me like there was a distinct lack of tennis etiquette last night inspite of the fact that everyone was very friendly. People return balls to the other side of the court, but don't even aim at the server or wait for the server to be in a position to receive the ball. I saw people lift the net and kick balls back, too! There's also a lot more banter going on between points, or so it felt.

In terms of rules, they played '1st one in.' which means on the first point of your first service game you can keep serving until you get the ball in. I've never played that before. It also feels strange how people simply say, 'No.' when the ball is out whereas a Japanese person will never say that and will typically point to the sky like an official (and a ball which is in gets a baseball 'safe' gesture pointing to the ground).

Back in the changing rooms there were a couple of young French guys getting changed. One of them looked at my racket and said, 'Oh, the old Prestige. Can I take a look?' He seemed impressed saying that the old ones were best but was unaware that the Prestige Classic had been re-released. I'm guessing these guys were pretty good, but where were they playing?

Comments

[Robert]

Hello Darren,

You have a very creative site. Where did you play tennis in Japan?

BTW, I like the Head racket too but have never own a Prestige. I demo one once...hmm...very powerful and precise...hmm...interesting.

Keep up the good work :)
Rob

[Darren]

Thanks Rob. I used to play in different areas in Kanagawa-ken, mainly around Sagamihara, Zama, Hadano and often in Hachioji which is technically Tokyo.

The Prestige is actually very low on power but this would depend on strings and tension, too. It is high on control, very nice!