The Pull Towards Play began with a simple question: what keeps bringing people back to the court?
The first ten answers came from Korea, Bengaluru, Melbourne, Charleston, New York, Shanghai, Brooklyn, Madrid and São Paulo. They are stories about persistence, memory, identity, creativity, family and the strange hold a game can have over a life.
Collected here are the first ten.
001: LETSKO, KOREA
He walked past the same court every day for years during a time when work was everything. One day, he stopped walking past it.
002: YADUSH, BENGALURU, INDIA
He came to tennis at 38, from zero, and lost every single morning for 448 days. He kept setting his alarm for 4:30am anyway.
003: KATE, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA
She spent thirty years solving problems other people couldn’t. The one thing she couldn’t fix was a backhand. Until she stopped trying.
004: AMANDA, SOUTH CAROLINA
Her grandfather wrote her a note on a racquet cover when she was three years old. She still has the racquet. She is still following its instructions.
005: BARNABA, NEW YORK
He found a court in New York he refuses to name. If you share the address, as his friend says, you might as well never go back.
006: YOYO, SHANGHAI
Behind a camera, she chooses what enters the frame. On court, she doesn’t get that choice. Everything enters.
007: EVAN, BROOKLYN
He waited for someone else to make the kind of tennis stories he wanted to see. Eventually, he realised that maybe he was the person who was supposed to make them.
008: MADISON, MELBOURNE
Her mother yelled from the sidelines once when she was twelve. She has never forgotten it. At thirty-three weeks pregnant, she was still on court.
009: MRKA, MADRID
His father was his favourite player. Not Federer. Not Nadal. His father. That is where it began.
010: DIEGO, SÃO PAULO
He almost went professional at rugby before an injury changed everything. Of all the sports that followed, tennis is the only one he has never stopped.
The Pull Towards Play continues.
If you have a story about what keeps bringing you back to the court, reach out as I’d love to hear it.