Tennis

Tennis has been my passion for my entire life. It's a sport that changed so much in the past two, really one decade. Those short shorts are long gone, wooden rackets have become carbon, titanium, graphite, or what have you, and its not much of a loser sport anymore. 40 years ago, it was considered a sport for people weren't coordinated or athletic enough. Now, to be above average, you have to have excellent coordination, relatively excellent fitness, above-average balance, pin-point concentration, and more agility than what you require in football. Anybody can throw a football, bounce a basketball, kick a soccer ball. Hitting an apple-sized yellow fuzzball with a racquet and getting it over a net waist-high is harder than it seems. It still is a pretty conservative sport - meaning that its athletes don't have tattoos all over their body, get arrested for dog fighting, don't cheat on their wives with 13 other women, and betray their hometown to join up with other big players in Miami. It's really one of the few sports that live up to the reputation as classy and suave. Well, it does have the raw intensity people look for - Rafael Nadal. To me, tennis players are how people should be. They have a balanced life and they don't lose their head. They know what they're doing and they enjoy it.