My Father’s Tennis Court x Racquet Magazine
Sometimes when I wake up and look out the window, I see him on the court. Working. It can be an unenjoyable cold, misty, and wet morning in late fall, and he is still out there. He says the only time he doesn’t work on the court is when it snows. The struggle of a grass court, but also its special beauty, is that it is nothing if you can’t play on it. We can only play the two summer months of July and August, maybe three with June, yet it demands work all year round. That work is my father’s honour, his pleasure, his mediation and where he enjoys being. He told me once that “some people tend their roses, I tend my grass court. There’s no difference.”
I wanted the film to be a testament to his work, and too him. Nothing last forever. The film was my way to document that process as an observer but also as a son.
When my own son runs out the door, he dashes to the court because he sees my father. It is a very special feeling– almost like time is going backwards. It’s what I did as a kid just a little older than my son is now. It is me being at my fathers age when I was a child. It is memories replaying in real time and it is time moving fast and disappearing at the same time.
To me it is the strongest feeling of love because it is a feeling of unity. In many ways it makes the tennis court more about family, about life and love, responsibility and generations to come. Not just about tennis. But it can only be like that if it is as close to perfection as possible. Otherwise it is not a grass tennis court.
Read the full essay here
