Ever found yourself on the tennis court fuming over an opponent’s sneaky tactics or wondering why your friendly match feels more like a battlefield? You’re not alone!
They know these things may be a little silly, but Carolyn, Erin, and Michelle discuss their pet peeves from playing 2.5 to 4.0 tenni
Transcript of Our Conversation
Speaker 1: 0:01
Hey, this is Carolyn Erin and I have a quick request for you. If you’re enjoying Second Serve, please follow the show on Apple Podcasts and if you have a little more time, leave us a rating and review wherever you listen. It helps others find our show and helps us know what you like about it. Thanks, Hi, this is Carolyn. I’m here tonight with Aaron and Michelle and we’re going to talk about pet peeves in playing adult recreational tennis. We all have them. Aaron, do you want to start us off with some of your pet peeves?Speaker 2: 0:36
Sure, there are so many right, and I’m sure everyone has their own pet peeves, but ones that I can think of specifically are when I’m serving or when my partner is serving. If our opponents in doubles like, come together and strategize and don’t go to our pace of our serve, you’re supposed to play to the server’s pace. And I actually had a match that I was the server and that my opponents would line up like staggered, one would be at the baseline, one would be at the net, and they did this multiple times and I’m like this is just strategy to irritate me. But they would line up and then I would bounce the ball once and they would be like, oh, hang on a minute, and then like, get back together and have a conversation about what they were going to do. But after like the third or fourth time, I felt like it was purely strategy, just to get under my skin, which it worked.Speaker 2: 1:32
But I also didn’t want to be the jerk, to be like you can’t do that, that’s against the rules. So I was trying to stay calm, but it was just, oh, it was so irritating to me, I just thought it was rude. And during that same match actually we were not getting along with those opponents, which is very unlike me, but we were just having a contentious match, it wasn’t pretty, and one of the women, between the second set and the third set tiebreak, decided to eat as slowly as humanly possible, like eat a banana, to the point where I became like a toddler and had to like kind of be even a little bit worse than her and I yelled across like two courts to one of my teammates that was already done playing and I was like does anyone have a banana that I can eat slowly over here?Speaker 2: 2:17
You know, it was just awful, but yes, and then another one has happened to me in a long time. We kind of just talked about this recently, but, um, I used to really dislike when someone would, if we weren’t switching sides um, maybe someone just got, had just been broken, or maybe they’ve held their server or whatever, but instead of like handing the balls nicely, they would just throw them on my side and like like in singles. That’s happened to me where I’ve turned my back and then like someone’s just thrown the ball over without saying anything. I know it happens in juniors all the time and they don’t care. It’s just like part of the game. But I feel like in adult recreational tennis like especially mom tennis there’s no reason you can’t like hand someone the balls, even if it’s on your racket, or some people just like throw them on the ground and don’t really care how far they roll away. Um, so those are kind of the ones that I could think of right off the top of my head. How about you guys? How about you?Speaker 3: 3:13
Michelle? How about you, Michelle? So I really don’t like it when I hit the ball and it doesn’t stay on the court. That’s my own personal issue, but I’m just kidding.Speaker 2: 3:24
I have that same issue.Speaker 3: 3:25
That’s actually top of the list annoying for me. But or hitting in the net. I’m going to say hitting in the net’s most annoying. No, in all seriousness, though, questioning whether a ball was out or not is, I find, really annoying. I think, if you’re doing it point after point after point, like it, and it’s a strategy, I find that so irky. It irks me.Speaker 3: 3:47
And also not calling the score. Yes, and I’ve seen this done a couple of ways where, first of all, I feel like it’s just good to make sure everybody’s on the same page, that there isn’t a disagreement. Sometimes I’m like I don’t want to ask them to repeat it because they’ve bounced their ball, they’re in their flow. I don’t I don’t want to interrupt their service because it’s rude or whatever, but I also don’t know if they know what the score is, or have they called it wrong, or did they call a ball out that I thought was in? Or you know, are we on the same page? And then probably the last one is and I guess this is impossible to know if it’s actually insincere or not but especially when you’re losing or you’re frustrated, and then and it’s probably just a courtesy thing, but I find it kind of annoying if they give you like a fake compliment like great, great serve, that I returned really well and had a winner.Speaker 3: 4:43
I mean, like you know, I don’t know, and it could be shot.Speaker 2: 4:46
Finally.Speaker 3: 4:51
I just thought of another one, when you said that, oh, after you lose to them and they say yeah, we, I played really poorly, yes, yes. Why do people do that?Speaker 3: 5:02
you lost and they won and they play poorly, like it’s just like unnecessary, like right, I don’t even think anything and even if it’s true because I mean, I’m not saying it’s not true, it’s just kind of like, you know, shut your pie hole a little bit like that’s just obnoxious. I don’t even think it even means to be, and maybe they’re just exuberant because they played so badly, they didn’t think they were going to get a win and they did so it could all be. Completely none of these are actually, you know, intentional, but just I just thought of one other one that goes with that.Speaker 2: 5:35
When someone says, when they just beat you and then they go, this is the first time we ever played a match together Like, thanks, you have no experience together, but you just beat the pants off my partner and I thanks for letting us know, or the doubles player, the other players? We’ve never like we just met today or you know, like they’re on the same team, but they’ve literally never played in that, whereas you’re playing with your person.Speaker 1: 5:58
that’s five years.Speaker 2: 5:59
Yeah.Speaker 1: 6:00
Yeah, that’s like my normal partner, yeah.Speaker 3: 6:03
Can we make a pact to just flat lie about it every time we’re ever asked that Like I have never seen this person before.Speaker 2: 6:10
Yeah, I actually. So on the flip side of that, I have had someone where, if we’ve beaten them, they say, oh, do you guys play together a lot? And then you’re kind of like, what do I say? Do I say, oh, yeah, all the time, or you don’t want to tell them? No, this is the first day we’ve ever met.Speaker 3: 6:27
We’re on this dating tennis app and we just swiped. Which way are you supposed to swipe? Swipe left and they matched us and then we came and played. I don’t know how it happened. Yeah, I know that Carolyn?Speaker 2: 6:39
I know Carolyn has a ton.Speaker 1: 6:41
Not a ton.Speaker 2: 6:42
Okay, some.Speaker 1: 6:45
I do have some. I do not enjoy it when people talk during a match. As far as asking me about my children what do you do? Where do you go to school? I feel like all that. I want to talk to people, but after the match, not during, not at changeovers. I don’t want to know what restaurants you’re going to, how far you ran in the morning. I don’t even want to know about someone’s divorce until after.Speaker 3: 7:15
I want to know after the match, but not during it. I want to know everything, See.Speaker 2: 7:17
Michelle and I are very similar.Speaker 3: 7:21
Tell me everything.Speaker 1: 7:22
Yeah, see, I think it depends on your personality, but I would just rather not talk until the end of the match. The other thing that really bothers me and it’s especially bad for singles matches is when they want to warm up for a really long time, like the match starts at 930 and at 950, we’re still hitting. I know that’s probably strategy, where they’re trying to see what my strengths and weaknesses are and everything like that, but I’m telling you, within the first game you’ll figure that out very quickly. I mean, hit to me twice, you’ll know what my issues are, but that really bothers me. Does that bother you guys?Speaker 3: 7:59
Yes, a lot when, especially for a rescheduled match, and you’re already at a weird time and you’ve already juggled kids or commitments or whatever, and I think maybe part of that’s just where you’re at in life too. You know, if you’re paying by the hour for a babysitter, then you’re ready to get going, you know. And then some of it’s just personality. Like some people are very attached to warmups. They find them super useful, not just for themselves but, like you said, to get intel or whatever about. You know how they look. But again, I don’t think that takes really that long to be like, okay, that’s the stronger player, or she seems to always slice, or whatever.Speaker 1: 8:38
Yeah.Speaker 3: 8:38
This is not my pet peeve, but I know this is someone else’s pet peeve People calling the ball before it lands, calling it out. It’s also a rule.Speaker 2: 8:48
It’s a rule they can’t do that and it’s a big one, but people I mean.Speaker 3: 8:52
even if it’s going to fly to the moon, you should not put your little finger up until it lands.Speaker 1: 8:59
Yeah, that’s a good one.Speaker 3: 9:00
But it certainly is a peeve when people do it.Speaker 2: 9:05
Yeah, because you don’t know how it’s going to land in. Although you know me, I think all my balls are out, but a lot of times they land in. They land in Erin. So if someone called it out before it actually hit the tape, then it would be a problem, because a lot of them land in, apparently, even though I’m like that ball wasn’t in right and Carolyn was like it’s like four feet in.Speaker 1: 9:19
What are you talking about? I’m like it’s. Thanks very much to Michelle and Aaron. There is a part two to Pet Peeves where Aaron will discuss her number one pet peeve as a captain, and all three of us will discuss the things we do. That we know probably bothers other people. We hope you’ll check out our website, which is SecondSirPodcastcom. Thanks so much for listening and hope to see you on the court soon.