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"  Published in the May 2013 issue I can tell you the last time I loved playing tennis. It was late in the summer of 1990, and I was playing the only other eleven-year-old I knew who could beat me with any consistency. He was a pint-sized McEnroe \u2014 all serve and volley and Are you KIDDING me?!? \u2014 and I was a little Borg, holding the baseline, chasing down the ball, waiting for his returns to go long or wide or in the net. I broke him late in the first set, and he slammed down his racket, screeched, and broke down in tears. It was brutally hot and impossibly sunny, and as I waited for his tantrum to subside and felt my sunscreened sweat burn my eyes, I remember thinking, This is fun. It didn&amp;#039;t last long. He beat me that day in three, and after working relentlessly on his game the following winter, he&amp;#039;d never drop a set to me again. Other kids our age also started to get serious about tennis \u2014 about topspin and pronation and strategy. And they would eventually kick my ass, too.  I never wanted to get serious. I only wanted to have fun, and those easy lessons long summer days were all the fun I ever needed. I wasn&amp;#039;t smart enough to realize until it was too late that winning, or even the prospect of winning, wasthe fun part for me, and once I let my peers get so far ahead of me n form and technique, the fun pretty much stopped. I would spend the next twenty years not playing a game that had filled my bookshelf with trophies, and I now look back on that time the way friends of mine talk about their early soccer stardom or Little League no-hitters; I was really good as a kid, you know.  That&amp;#039;s how I found myself taking daily lessons at Manhattan Plaza Racquet Club in New York City. Bored with the gym and facing another summer sitting on my ass, I convinced myself that with intensive practice and a little discipline, I could recapture what I&amp;#039;d lost and maybe even improve on it. I bought some Federer Nikes (ugly, but comfortable), borrowed a racket (see right), and committed myself to becoming the best eleven-year-old player I could possibly be.  My instructor, Hunter Holbrook, was once a DIII all-conference player (and a former intern at this magazine), and after hitting with me for an hour on my first day, he was encouraged. &amp;quot;Good fundamental stroke techniques,&amp;quot; he wrote in his notes (which he shared with me in full after I&amp;#039;d completed my training with him). &amp;quot;Understandably very rusty considering lack of time on court in recent years... but the ability is there.&amp;quot; I tore up my feet and hands with blisters, pulled muscles in my shoulders and hips. I looked at first like John Candy huffing and heaving his way through the racquetball game in Splash. But gradually, I did get better. With each lesson, which typically ended with a few games of competitive match play (with Hunter playing at around 30 percent), I&amp;#039;d sense that one familiar feeling creep up on me. Was this fun? It was fun. I was having fun! The last time I played with Hunter, his notes read, &amp;quot;With the right amount of time on court, you could really make great strides.&amp;quot; And this got to thinking about one of our lessons early on. There were two matches going on on neighboring courts. On court one: two guys roughly my age and build, hitting and spinning the shit out of the ball and locked in some kind of grudge match to settle a bar tab. On court two: an older married couple thick with age, dinking the ball back and forth, laughing at each other&amp;#039;s faults, and having what appeared to be a blast. What a great way, I thought, to spend an afternoon. For them. I had to get back to my ground strokes.    Wilson Steam 99S: A new stringing technique improves top-spin, which Wilson claims virtually lengthens the court by up to a foot. ($220; wilson.com/tennis) "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a22228/tips-on-tennis-0513/>