The Pull Towards Play: Series 004

Stories from the inner life of tennis.

The Pull Towards Play is a series of short portraits of real tennis players from around the world. Not professionals. Just people who keep showing up, for reasons that are hard to name and impossible to ignore.

AMANDA GREELEY: Charleston, South Carolina

She was three years old. Not tall enough to see over the net.

Her grandfather put a racquet in her hands anyway. On the head cover, in the playful handwriting she has loved her whole life, he wrote her a note.

“For Amanda. The first step on your way to Wimbledon. Remember me when you get there. Grandpa.”

He wasn’t a tennis player. He was a sports fan, a lefty like her, someone who saw something in her before she could see it herself. She still has the racquet. She still has the handwriting. That same handwriting found its way quietly into the brand she eventually built, a detail she never planned and can’t quite explain.

“It’s not crazy to believe that racquet changed the course of my life.”

Amanda Greeley founded Spence, a racquet sports apparel brand rooted in the belief that tennis begins with love. She lives in Charleston, runs, swims, moves through the world actively. But the court is its own thing entirely.

“Some days it just flows. On others it’s wildly frustrating. There’s a specific kind of satisfaction that comes from hitting a perfect backhand that I never feel when I’m running.”

She thinks about what the court gives adults that almost nothing else does. The chance to really play. Not for anything in particular. Just for the feeling of it.

“As an adult it’s hard to find arenas where you can really play. I might not even be playing for anything, but there’s always an opportunity to feel like a winner.”

What is tennis to her, really?

“Making contact. With the ball, with yourself, with others. It touches on every feeling. The physical, the mental, the emotional. I hate it. I love it. I never want the game to end.”

Her grandfather never made it to Wimbledon. Neither has she. But something he wrote on a racket cover when she was three years old is still moving through the world.

She is still following its instructions.

Amanda Greeley is the founder of Spence, a racquet sports apparel brand.