Tennis wisdom is as much an artistic pursuit as Platonian divine frenzy. Better believe it―even if you don’t want to. Not that we’d be able to impose ‘sanctions’ otherwise―or, ask you to stop watching the sport. We can’t do that. You know it fully well, don’t you? But, we are all entitled to have one fixated opinion. It could be yours too. Tennis, to most enthusiasts, like you, is a pioneering scientific exploration based on empirical evidence. Apologies for being so emphatic with such a clinical precept―something that may, of course, not be fully appealing to your liking, or representative of the contemplative traditions of conventional wisdom.
You may call such allegorical extensions, or platitudes, a paradox―so to say. One that is more than relatively akin to the 1998 version of tennis ace Steffi Graf’s dilemma just as well: of how she was wrestling with the question of whether or not to retire. That her comeback trail was stalled earlier, or that she emerged from her shadow and cantered home to a facile triumph, at the A&P Women’s Classic Tournament, was just passé. Why? Her continuity in the game also held a major question-mark―even though Graf, like all true champions, was more than upbeat about her giving the likes of Martina Hingis, and the rest of the teen brigade, a run for their money.
Graf (born, June 14, 1969) was always Graf, all right―tennis’ own institution in her own right. She’d been there before, and she knew fully well that it would be just too difficult for her to be there, again. What’s important, however, at that moment was she still loved the game just as much―maybe, way too much than any time before. As she said in an interview, soon after she returned to the sport, in 1997:
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