Breaking Back

In tennis, it is such a big advantage to serve that you are expected to win every game in which you're serving.  When you win your own service game, it's called a "hold."  When you lose your service game, they call it being "broken."  I don't know the origins of these terms unless the "service break" refers to a break in the expected pattern of the server winning each game.  Since the players alternate service games, and a two game lead is needed to win a set, the set is usually won when a player breaks his opponent's serve at least once.  If no one breaks, the set goes to a special game called a tiebreaker, unless it is the final set of the match, when some tournaments require the play to continue until one player gets the two game advantage.

The best thing you can do when you've been broken is to win your opponent's next service game, which is called "breaking back."  This nullifies the advantage your opponent achieved by breaking you and puts the set back "on serve."  It also stops the momentum shift that is likely to occur when your opponent wins three straight games.  When you break back, you essentially even the score, though you may still be down by a game if your opponent served first.  You'll have to break again if you want to win the set before the tiebreak, but at least you are no longer playing from behind.

I am explaining all of this because I turn 29 today, and the best way I can think to describe the past year is that while 28, I was broken.  Sometimes in tennis you're broken when you play a loose game, or you let the other player get in your head, or you make too many unforced errors.  This was not the case for me.  Figuratively speaking, I came into 28 with a careful game plan, a good support team, proper training, and excellent conditioning.  I played the best tennis I could play while I was 28.  I pulled off shots that would have been clean winners at any other point in my life, but the balls kept coming back until I couldn't return them.  I maintained my mental focus.  I even hit a few serves that would have been aces in different games, but this time they were converted into returns that were shoved down my throat.  I was broken despite my best intentions and my best execution of those intentions.  And I was broken badly.

For the past few years I thought I would have some anxiety about turning 29.  I am not really worried about turning 30, because I'm looking forward to what my 30s have in store for me.  But I thought my 29th birthday might trigger the feeling that I was running out of time to accomplish all the things I'd expected to do in my 20s.  But this is not the case.  I am so ready to say good riddance to 28 that I welcome 29 with open arms.  I am glad this service game is over.  I do not like getting broken any more than I thought I would.  And 29 means a chance to break back.

Losing my dad was the most profoundly difficult of the several difficult experiences I endured while I was 28.  I hope that in the years to come, when I look back on 28, the pride I feel in how I played will grow stronger than the sting I've suffered from being broken so badly.  But despite any success I might have in recovering some positive sentiment for 28, it will always be the year in which I lost my dad.  It will always be the year in which I was broken.

This makes me extra thankful for my birthday this year. I can already see that 29 will be include important opportunities for me to break back.  One of the things I love about tennis and about life is that they both afford chances to stop, reset, and start over.  Everything else aside, if the baby and I make it through her birth happy and healthy, 29 will always be the age at which Billy and I had our first child.  If you read my Dad's blog, you know that he often relied on sporting metaphors to explain his experiences and his attitude about them.  In our family, this is why we love sports.  Sports give us a way of understanding our experiences and sharing them with others.  The tennis analogy feels perfect because breaking back is a hugely significant accomplishment, and at the same time, it is only the first step of many towards coming from behind to win the match.  Now that I've been broken, there is nothing else to do but just keep playing until I get the chance to break back.

(I can't claim to have drawn this parallel between life and "breaking back" myself; I first discovered it when I read James Blake's autobiography, which he titled Breaking Back.  In the book, Blake describes how fracturing his neck gave him the unexpected opportunity to spend plenty of time with his father as his father died of cancer, and how he subsequently had to overcome a debilitating case of shingles before returning to the ATP tour.)