Tennis
Chip and Carlos Alcaraz
Life Across the Net: What Tennis Teaches Us About Resilience
It is US Open Tennis Championship season and fan week opens today in New York. I could not be more excited about attending the Men’s and Women’s finals and seeing some of the world’s top players in person. And yes, Serena Williams will be here to partner with Carlos Alcaraz in the US Open Mixed Doubles Championship! Besides my excitement at this event, how does this relate to Chit Chat with Chip?
When I think about the game of tennis, it really is more than a game of serves, volleys, forehands, and backhands. When you look beyond the court, it becomes a surprisingly powerful metaphor for life. It requires preparation, patience, discipline, adaptability, resilience, and perhaps most importantly, the ability to keep going after things do not turn out the way you hoped.
Every point in tennis begins with a serve. Someone has to put the ball into play. Life often works the same way. We can spend a great deal of time waiting for the perfect opportunity, the perfect circumstances, or for someone else to make the first move. But many of life's most meaningful experiences begin when we decide to serve—when we take the initiative, have the conversation, pursue the opportunity, make the change, or simply try something new.
Once you serve, however, you lose control over exactly what comes back across the net. You can prepare for it, anticipate it, and position yourself for it, but you cannot completely control it. That may be one of the greatest similarities between tennis and life. We can control our preparation, our attitude, our effort, and our response, but we cannot control every circumstance or the behavior of everyone around us. Life sometimes sends things across the net that we never expected.
And sometimes the ball takes a strange bounce.
When that happens in tennis, you do not get to stop the match and complain that the ball was not supposed to bounce that way. You adjust your feet, change your position, and do your best to return it. Life asks the same thing of us. Careers change. Relationships change. Plans fall apart. People disappoint us. Doors close unexpectedly. Opportunities appear that we never anticipated. Resilience is not pretending that these things do not affect us. It is developing the ability to adjust when they do.
Then there are the mistakes.
Tennis even has a name for some of them: unforced errors. Nobody made you miss the shot. Sometimes you simply hit the ball into the net or outside the lines. Life has unforced errors too. We make poor decisions. We speak too quickly. We procrastinate. We ignore good advice. We allow fear, pride, anger, or impatience to influence our choices.
The mature player does not pretend the mistake did not happen. But neither does the player spend the next five points thinking about it. You learn from the shot, reset your position, and prepare for the next ball.
That ability to reset may be one of the most valuable lessons tennis can teach us.
Watch experienced players between points. Whether they just hit an incredible winner or made an embarrassing mistake, they eventually have to turn their attention toward what comes next. They cannot live on the previous point. Yesterday's victory will not win today's point, and yesterday's mistake does not have to lose it.
Life is much the same. Some of us spend too much time replaying old points. We revisit conversations we cannot change, decisions we wish we had made differently, opportunities we missed, or disappointments that still bother us. Reflection can teach us something, but constantly replaying the past can prevent us from being ready for the next opportunity coming across the net.
Tennis also teaches us that not every ball should be played the same way. Sometimes you attack. Sometimes you defend. Sometimes you approach the net. Sometimes you stay back and patiently wait for the right opening. Wisdom in life involves learning the difference. There are moments when courage requires us to move forward aggressively, and there are moments when maturity tells us to be patient.
The boundaries of the tennis court offer another lesson. The lines do not ruin the game; they make the game possible. In life, healthy boundaries can do the same thing. Boundaries around our time, relationships, values, work, and personal well-being are not necessarily walls designed to keep people out. Often, they provide the structure that allows us to live with greater purpose and balance.
Then there is the net itself.
The net is always there. Every player knows it. You cannot pretend it does not exist, and you cannot remove it because it makes the game difficult. You simply learn how to get the ball over it.
Life has nets too.
They may appear as fear, disappointment, rejection, uncertainty, failure, change, or circumstances beyond our control. Some are temporary; others remain with us much longer than we would prefer. The objective is not always to remove every obstacle. Sometimes growth comes from becoming the kind of person who learns how to navigate it.
Perhaps the most encouraging metaphor, however, can be found in the scoring.
You can lose a point and still win the game. You can lose several games and still win the set. You can even lose a set and still win the match.
Think about how different life might feel if we remembered that.
One bad day is not necessarily a bad life. One failed relationship does not mean we are incapable of love. One career setback does not determine our professional future. One poor decision does not have to define our character. One season of difficulty does not mean every season ahead will look the same.
Sometimes we confuse losing a point with losing the match.
Tennis reminds us to keep playing.
There will be winners we celebrate and unforced errors we wish we could take back. There will be moments when we feel completely in control and others when we are simply trying to stay in the rally. There will be unexpected bounces, difficult opponents, close calls, and points that seem to last forever.
But another ball is coming.
So recover your position. Keep your eyes up. Learn from the last point without allowing it to define the next one. And when life sends something unexpected across the net, adjust your feet, trust what you have learned, and take another swing.
Because ultimately, we do not get to choose every ball life sends across the net.
But we do get to choose how we return it.
Take care of yourself and each other!
