Jeff Agase jagase@media.ucla.edu
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There’s futility, and then there’s the Daily Bruin
Tennis Tournament.
It’s redefining the word with every double-fault and
unforced error. And it’s coming to a public tennis court near
you.
That’s not necessarily a good thing, either. When the
eight competitors from the Daily Bruin Sports section aren’t
wheezing in good-Lord-I-need-a-beer agony, they’re unleashing
a Jim Mora-style tirade of profanities and unintelligible
self-damnations.
There was, however, something truly redeeming in this
embarrassing exercise in amateurism, something that now makes me
think twice before I criticize.
It might make you think, too. First, though, you need to know
something about sports writers.
There are basically two kinds of sports writers. There’s
the one whose love and knowledge of sports far surpasses any
modicum of physical ability to play them. And then there’s
the one who, um, well, uh “¦
So as I was saying, there’s basically one kind of sports
writer. If you’re angry that I left out words like
“know-it-all” and “smart ass” in the
description, read on. Many of us were put in our places once the
ball was put into play.
The DBTT is a double-elimination, best of three sets tournament
played mostly at the Los Angeles Tennis Center. We have enough
respect to play on the side courts so as to force as few passersby
as possible to lose faith in humanity.
It makes perfect sense that the DBTT is double-elimination,
because that’s the most confusing format imaginable. What
else would you expect from tournament director Gilbert
Quiñonez, who last month began “fantasy” fantasy
baseball, where you take people’s fantasy players and
describe an imaginary game between them in full detail?
You can’t make this stuff up, folks.
An e-mail circulated around the office two weeks ago, and nine
people signed on. Two days later, sports editor Scott Schultz
supplied some pathetic excuse about his shoulder hurting and how it
was central to his service game, and how that’s central to
his tennis game, and blah, blah, blah.
BRIDGET O’BRIEN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Jeff
Agase swings at the tennis ball.
And he wants us to stop making fun of the fact that he’s
33. Come on.
Eight is a good number, though. And boy, do we have some
characters mixed up in this charade. In fact, that’s at least
90 percent of the fun of the DBTT.
You’d recognize at least four of the combatants since they
write columns for this fine newspaper. So if there’s ever
been a time when you’ve wanted to tell one of us how much we
stink but been too bashful to do so, let it out.
This isn’t exactly our finest hour.
The other 10 percent is the hilarity of listening to each person
talk about how good he was in high school. None of us has really
kept up with tennis in college, so it’s pretty funny to hear
everyone hype himself up.
You hear about a lot of divisions and leagues that you’ve
never heard of and that probably don’t even exist. You hear
things like, “Yeah, I was all-league for two years in
Westchester, N.Y.’s Class EEE, Alpha Division.”
Oh, and of course, hardly anyone lost a match in high school.
You see, sports writers are by nature competitive jerks, so
it’s not really surprising that there was an entire week of
not-entirely-truthful trash-talking.
But after subjecting myself to a week of the DBTT, I’d
like to see what the guys who didn’t make all-league play
like. Never before have the things said in trash talk been so off
the mark. But hey, that’s the way of the sports writer.
Things really got started with a four-match blockbuster known as
“Wacky Wednesday.” At the very least, no matter how bad
the actual tennis would be, I figured that journalists would come
up with an inventive name.
I stand corrected. It was changed ““ to “Super Tennis
Wednesday.” Ah, much better. I swear, we’re a bunch of
Fitzgeralds here.
But it was on this day, among the 10 unforced errors for every
winner and the second serves that Apolo Ohno could skate faster
than, that sports came into perspective for me.
We at The Bruin have the poor man’s version of
Agassi/Sampras. It’s called Agase/Mazeika, and by all
accounts I was supposed to win this thing easily.
Two hours into a scorching afternoon, though, I found myself
down 6-5 in the third set, without a first serve, and panicked
beyond belief.
I mean it. Look, this wasn’t Wimbledon , but it was
important to me, if only so that I didn’t become the rear end
of every joke here at the office. And right in the middle of
another of my double-faults, I thought about all the times I had
talked about all sorts of teams “choking” or “not
showing up to play,” the Bruins included.
Makes you think. I might be breaking every unwritten rule in the
unwritten book of sports journalism, but I must admit that often we
lose perspective of the enormous psychological and physical
pressure tormenting athletes in every game.
I felt the pressure on (cringe) “Super Tennis
Wednesday.” It was just a couple of stupid armchair
quarterbacks playing a stupid tennis match, but I felt it.
So who knows. Maybe I’ll remember my win over Vytas before
I am quick to chastise the Bruins for their inconsistency, or Phil
Mickelson for his choke artwork.
Maybe. It’s not my job to win tennis matches, but
it’s Steve Lavin’s job to win basketball games. Think
about your own “job” ““ whatever it may be ““
and you might realize that sometimes, all of us choke, all of us
don’t show up.
I rallied to win the final set in a tiebreaker. Don’t
laugh, but the relief I felt after my comeback was greater than
anything I ever experienced after watching a UCLA football or
basketball team pull out a “W.”
Actually, laugh. Laugh all you want. I meant to keep the mood
light, but with a point.
The participants took care of that, though. Gilbert informed us
all before the DBTT that he once lost in a drill to a guy in a
wheelchair.
And Gilbert won his first match.