I've decided after two seasons off from golf and some ten years off from tennis to try and pick up both again this summer. I'm trying to play tennis weekly with Eric, and hopefully I can find an instructor. The Seattle Tennis Center is way too popular; all the lessons for the summer have filled. Still, after just two weeks of hitting around outside on public courts, I'm having fun and rediscovering the kinetic pleasures of hitting the ball cleanly and competing on the court. I need to find more people to play with. I've realized that I really don't know many tennis players in Seattle.
The only fly in the ointment is that my shoulder is killing me. I don't think I ever fully recovered after my bike accident earlier this year, when I separated my shoulder. I hit a lot of serves last Saturday, and when I went to throw a softball on Sunday my shoulder was throbbing. I couldn't get anything on my throws. I had been working on rehabbing the shoulder in the weight room before I went on sabbatical, and I don't think it's all the way back. Doc's going to check me out next week, so maybe until then I'll just play without serving.
As for golf, I took my first private lesson ever today. It was only a half hour, but watching myself on video was extremely helpful. The most frustrating thing about golf is not knowing why you're not hitting the ball the way you want to. It's time for me to finally learn all the shots, all the fundamentals of the game. All these years just guessing at what to do while hacking around the grass--I don't know how people find that fun. It's just aggravation for me. But when you get a few tips and suddenly start hitting beautiful 7 irons, one after the other, like I did today, it's mystical and joyous in a way that non-golfers will never understand.