One of my hobbies is to imagine alterations to various sports’ rules, playing fields, or equipment. I’m not proud of it ... it’s just something my brain does for pleasure. Maybe you’d like to hear about it.
First let me dismiss the idea that we’ve settled on the optimum sports arrangements after many years of trial and error. There are uncountably many possible sports combinations in the universe, and we’ve got, what, a couple dozen mainstream varieties? If you honestly believe sports cannot be improved upon or new, more interesting sports invented, I pity your pessimism.
You know what else I pity? I pity people who have not experienced the feeling of hitting a tennis ball as hard as they can at a perfect 45 degree angle in the sweet spot of the racquet with just a little bit of backspin and watching that sucker sail. It is one of the finest pleasures in life. (I imagine it is similar to the feeling of ripping a drive 350 feet down the fairway, or launching one into the left field lights, but I don’t know why you would put yourself against those odds when it’s so much easier to hit a bouncy ball with an oversized paddle.)
The point is that the game of tennis does not reward launching balls as far or as high as you can. And if you ask me, that’s poor design.
So what’s a better design? Don’t worry. I’m here to help.
Some solutions include using tennis equipment in the games of golf or baseball. Those are too obvious.
Basketball probably would not go too well with tennis equipment unless maybe you played on a court twice the size and used a kiddie-pool-sized hoop way up high in the air ... but I like the idea of a team sport where you try to advance the tennis ball by dribbling or passing it. ...Maybe a soccer field?? They play on grass at Wimbledon, so it makes sense. It’d be like lacrosse, but a lot less manly. I like it.
But still, we need to think “outside the box” as unoriginal managers who wish they were original are apt to say.
Okay, how’s this. Imagine two tennis-court-sized rafts floating in a lake far enough apart that you can get the pleasurable sensation of launching the ball, but not so far apart that you cannot easily hit the target. It’s like extreme floating badminton. It might be fun to watch, but it’d be even more fun to play.
There is a more accessible version you can play if you don’t have tennis-court-sized rafts lying around, and my friend Pavs and I do this on occasion. Find some unused tennis courts where there are three or four courts in succession. Simply use the courts on the opposite ends as your playing surface. Everything else is out of bounds. That's it.
If you have five or more courts in succession, you can play a game that’s even better. In this game, there are no islands to defend. You use the fence behind your opponent as your goal. You just keep hitting it as far as you can to push your opponent farther and farther back so you can move up close enough to hit the ball into the fence and score a point. It’s a lovely game, but it’s tiring as hell, and your arm will be as good as paralyzed for the next two days.
And that’s just tennis. I have others. At least 50% of the time I am watching sports, I am thinking about this stuff. (And that ends up being a depressing amount of time.)
Sadly, most people I share such thoughts with are unamused. Apparently not everyone gets pleasure from fantasizing about alternate sports realities. I am sorry if you are one of those people.
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Earlier:
Tennis ball + dog + chasing = lots of backyard fun and embarrassment
Bankruptcy tourism
1 hour ago
