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A tennis match

By Alessandro Antonicelli (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2011-05-04 09:53

I like tennis, I think I like to think that I can play tennis pretty well, well its ok - neither good nor bad. In fact I have played since the age of eight but this means nothing really I'm still not that good.

Alessandro Antonicelli

Anyway, football and tennis are the two sports which I am most interested in and therefore when I came to Changchun all the way from Italy, I tried to look for someone who wanted to play with me.

It was not easy at all. In fact for a long time I could not practice either of these activities although I really love them. But finally one day, thanks to a former colleague of mine, Reno, I was introduced to an amazing sports center a little way out from the downtown area.

We went there - one of those places called "Yathai".

It had an Olympic size swimming pool, a tennis court, a golf range, bowling lanes, a sauna and bath. Heaven!

We were having a good swim in the swimming pool and a couple of local gentleman noticed my tennis racket in the changing room. My spoken Chinese back then was really terrible (comprehension as well and after four years not that much has changed!) but my Singaporean friend Reno translated for me - his Chinese was good.

Well the fact is that they were trying to invite me for a game of tennis. We asked the tennis trainer, a young guy who was in charge of the tennis courts to join us for a game of doubles.

During the warm-up I was pleased due to the high standard of play shown by the players and I could foresee that the match was going to be good and competitive.

We started. My partner, the trainer, was ok but it was pretty clear that he was very nervous playing with a foreigner and against two big bosses from some local companies who are never supposed to loose whilst they play against him. He must let them win!

But it was also clear to him from the beginning that I was pretty competitive and didn't want to think for even one second of giving up the match to them.

Alright, ready to go, start! The first part of the match was pretty equal. I want to say here that when I play tennis I tend to shout against myself when I make some silly mistake. I tend to be very strict with trying to keep my concentration up. The same happens when I play football. On the other hand I'm tolerant with my companions and always try to encourage them - both doubles tennis and football are essentially team oriented sports.

My partner was good but not too keen on "battling". Anyway the tension grew and we won the first set 6-3 but then we were badly loosing the second when suddenly I noticed that anytime I made mistake my two friends on the other side of the court laughed at me.

I made quite a lot of mistakes during the second set and had to bear many of those loud laughs. I started thinking that they just wanted to provoke me, to make me angry so that I would make more mistakes.

In my sport and social habits this is considered to be pretty offensive. I don't even want to mention the word "western culture" but in a sports match as well as in life we are trained not to laugh at other peoples' failures as it is considered impolite. On the other hand it is considered good to cheer or clap when there is a good shot or performance even though he or she is your opponent. But here it was going the other way round, a mistake = laugh, a good shot = nothing.

Frankly speaking I was almost loosing control and I started shouting on my own anytime we scored some good points and this is not my usual style. We lost the second set pretty badly- 6-1 - third and final set then!

By this time I was a bit upset and started smiling at them when they made a mistake. My revenge.

The match was pretty close just like the first set when I noticed that my opponents started laughing between themselves when they made mistakes.

Then I realized that they were not laughing at me. They are not targeting me. It is just their habit, they just laughed if any of us made a mistake!

Oh My! It took almost three hours to realize that the mental approach to a sporting competition between friends is just different from what I was used to: those two guys always bore in mind that this was a friendly match and that there was no reason to be too competitive and get angry and so they kept on laughing!

At the end we won and I was pleased because I had finally played tennis with some people who were pretty good. But the most important thing that I learnt was something really cool and useful - to keep smiling even when facing "hard times". In fact at the end of the match we shook hands and laughed a lot together in a very happy and friendly way. However, I cannot hide from you, my dear reader, that it is much easier for me, a westerner, to laugh after a victory! How silly we are sometimes!

Alessandro "Alex" Anrtonicelli is Italian. He is Associate Professor at Raffles C.U. International College in Changchun, capital of Jilin province and he is the Program Director of the Visual Communication Department cum Director of Center for International Relationships.

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