The Practice

There is a basket full of balls at the back of the court. Old ones, mostly. The felt worn soft, the bounce flattened out from a thousand repetitions against a thousand different surfaces. You fill it before you start and you empty it by hitting and then you collect them all and fill it again. This is practice. This is most of it.

You fix the backhand and find the footwork was wrong all along. You sort the footwork and realise you’ve been gripping too tight. You loosen the grip and the serve falls apart. You are always, always standing at the beginning of something. The problem doesn’t disappear. It relocates.

Improvement doesn’t reduce the work. It relocates it.

This is the thing nobody tells you about getting better at something. That it doesn’t lighten. That you don’t cross a threshold into ease. That the basket will always need filling, the balls will always need collecting, and tomorrow you will come back and find the same problem waiting in a slightly different place.

And still you come.

Not because it gets easier. Not because one day it will click and stay clicked. You come because the relocating is the point. Because a problem that moves is a problem you’re still in relationship with. Because the court asks the same question every time and you are still, after all of it, interested in your answer.

You fill the basket. You start again.

Enough to come back tomorrow.