not here, not by speech nor conversation to anyone, no matter how close they were to me.
why?
maybe cos it left too deep a scar that i didnt wanna feel again;
maybe cos i was too embarrased;
maybe cos the memory was too painful to revisit;
maybe cos it'd make everyone think i was so stupid.
why i'm going to tell it now?
maybe i've gotten over it;
maybe i know it won't affect me anymore now.
i don't know.
this is the story, of why i hung up my tennis racket.
i know, i always told others that i stopped cos i wanted to focus my time and energy to the choir and my o lvl studies.
that was not a lie, but it wasnt the primary reason either, though it was a good reason.
as far as i can remember, i had no idea why i picked up tennis.
i just wanted to play a sport i guess, and since i wasnt too bad at badminton, i decided to try my hand at tennis.
soon i was taking tennis lessons at my club and became all ra-ra about it as i was able to pick it up pretty quick, this was around the end of p6 going into sec1.
my dad was a tennis champion at varsity level and he also became interested in playing once again when i picked it up and started to play.
i was really on a passion high then, putting in all my efforts to play and praying like mad that it wouldnt rain on sundays(my training days) and on school training days.
yes though sometimes i dreaded the tough training, i had to admit it kept me pretty fit and was really fun.
i still remember playing hard to get into the school team(though it wasnt too hard) and the disappointment and joy of losses/victories.
and our team, though still 4th place at the nationals, was never really good...
and i had to come to accept that hard fact sooner or later..
i was never a good player, and knew that i was never going to make it as a career, cos there were tons of players out there who had been practicing for so many more years who were so much better that i could ever be..
and i had to resign to the fact that i sucked. and to top that, i made some big mistakes that really got my coach upset too.
eventually our coach gave up on us and when to teach chinese high instead, who were even worse but apparently had players with better attitude, and we got a new coach who was just as good, if not better that the previous one.
the hope he gave us when he came in inspired me so much that i left choir for 3 months to focus on the national tennis season, since the choir didnt have an syf year and got all hyped up to play again.
that was the period wherei started watching alot more tennis and even tennis anime, and trying out new things with my doubles partner, and that year was really a good chance for us to go futher than ever with our team of good players.
however..
my biggest shame also surfaced then.
to begin, i was never really solid at the basics of tennis, the strokes and stuff, and had a lot of problems focusing on playing well when my coach was around.
it was at the jurong club tennis courts, where we were playing i think chinese high, that i really failed badly.
that i...
killed myself in tennis.
we played a really lousy opponent, and i played the worse i had ever played in my life.
i was able to play very well in terms of service in the first few games. my serves were really strong, till my coach came to watch my match. and i dont know why, but i just crumbled.
i just couldnt serve properly and ended up serving worse than a girl to get the ball in.
to top that, my forehand totally wasnt working at all, and i couldnt hit properly no matter how hard i tried...
and my partner and i still tried out a new formation that we were working on even though i was so lousy..
i can never ever forget the words my coach said to me after that, the words that left me broken:
"if not for ernest(my partner) we would have lost. do you know how shitty you played out there? the st patricks tennis team boys were laughing at you, saying how lousy you were, that playing you would be too easy! and worst of all, you had THE CHEEK to try out that formation!"
i couldnt take the pain for the rest of that day. i just was totally turned off.
and the match just before the semifinals, i got owned totally by the stpatricks guy.
i just gave up after that. told my coach that i wanted to drop out of the tennis team when the season had ended.
i attended the cca trainings for a while after that but just gradually stopped going.
all the cca records still appeared in my cca cert though, but to me, it was just a taint to make me never forget my horrifying experience.
since that day, i hung up my racket.
i never played hard again cos the memory would just come back.
i think ive completely lost all my skill now, not that i ever had very much, and although sometimes i still feel the urge to swing freely once again, i know i cant. time just wont allow me.
well lucky for me, ive got something else to focus on now, and i know now how never to end up where i was before.
this is the end of my story.
the one i never told, till now.