Growing up I never really got into sports … particularly team sports.  I was on the swim team and I did compete in rollerskating but those were still mostly individual.  There were two other sports I loved but my family did not have the money for me to pursue; horseback riding and tennis.  I do still have my original wooden Chris Evert tennis racket, which I was so proud to get as a little girl.  At a time when sports was still a man’s world, this American woman was ranked the world’s number one tennis player.  She won eighteen Grand Slam singles championships and three doubles titles.  Chris Evert also won a record seven championships at the French Open and Serena Williams is tied with her record of six champions at the U.S. Open.  Evert went pro in 1972, the year Title IX was enacted.  The U.S. Congress signed Title Nine into law proclaiming there could be no act of discrimination against females in any educational program or activity receiving federal financial aid of any type.  Even though it wasn’t my thing, I noticed when I was in elementary school girls’ soccer teams were beginning to form and that it was a big deal.  Three decades later I have a cousin who will be attending college next year on a soccer scholarship.  I am so proud of her and for her.  She has worked incredibly hard since her early childhood, with the tireless support of both her parents and grandparents.  It still seems wild to me that a girl could get into college for playing a sport.  When I was in community college passing a sport was required to count toward my bachelor’s degree.  I chose tennis.  I really loved that semester and didn’t dread it like I always had gym class.  I was told I was pretty good and I got an updated racket.  My husband’s paternal side is truly sports royalty and yet what has always bonded us is our shared love of reading, museums, and travel.  The travel part I have only been blessed enough to enjoy since I got married.  So I have had two rackets in my arsenal and I broke them out when I asked my husband if he’d like to play tennis with me.  I gave him my beloved Chis Evert and I played with my college one from twenty years ago that has broken strings.  It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed just hitting the ball back and forth to each other.  One of the many things I love about my husband is that he is simply not competitive.  He enjoys playing whether he wins or loses.  I, on the other hand, have an innate desire —no, need, to win.  Playing with him made me know I wanted to really be in the game.  However, it took a LOT for me to muster my courage and go try to enter tennis courts where women were hypercompetitive, had already formed their own cliques, and knew how to play.  I do not like doing things if I cannot do them well.  I didn’t want to wear the white pleated short tennis skirt and I began to get cold feet trying to play at 48.  Armed with my “newest” racket, I was good-naturedly laughed at.  The tennis rackets now are like AIR compared with my old one!  And my original wooden one is like trying to hit with a brick.  I think I have settled on a racket I like and I have learned that several factors go into choosing one:  grip, size, weight, strings, how one hits, etc.  So I have started really learning tennis and I could not be happier.  Helen Wills Moody, an American tennis player, has been said to be arguably the most dominant tennis player of the 20th century as well as the greatest female player in history.  Ranked number one in singles in 1927, she won the Grand Slam Singles at French Open in 1928, 1929, 1930 and 1932.  She won the Grand Slam at Wimbledon in 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1933, 1935, and 1938.  In the US Open, she won the the Grand Slam singles in 1923, 1924, 1925, 1927,1928, 1929, and 1931.  She was ranked highest in Doubles in 1924 and won Grand Slam Mixed Doubles in the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open as well.  Representing the United States, she medaled gold in Singles and Doubles at the 1924 games in Paris.  Moody said, “I love the feel of hitting the ball hard, the pleasure of a rally.  It is these things that make tennis the delightful game that it is.”  I could not agree more.  “Love” may mean “zero” in the game, but I have discovered a love “match” with tennis:  it is a no contest.