Tennis

• 

• 

• 

I actually have played tennis … in the Monterey Bay area, I’ve hit all the best clubs! Even got a NorCal Tennis Association 3.0 rating during a session at Pebble Beach Tennis Club. Well, that’s good enough to play ladies C doubles league! My team was Sherwood, based at Sherwood Tennis Center in Salinas. I played from 1991 to 1997.

I also played in a tennis league for a while when I lived in Gustine in the mid-1980s. Played in some vicious winds in Los Banos; also recall having a match in Modesto.

---

What’s this old thing, you ask? Why, it’s the famous perfectly-round-headed Wilson T2000, the preferred racket of 1970s ultra-tennis brat Jimmy Connors. The new steel beast was quite a popular buy, and the first metal racket sold by Wilson. This was my sister Helen’s racket; when she’d gotten all out of it and moved on to a Head racket, she passed it on to me. It still had rubber protective coating wrapped around the frame, but with time it aged and stiffened, the yellow rot coming off the steel rim in chunks. Ah, memories.