So there I was, facing Roger Federer on the clay courts of Roland Garros as he prepared to shoot a volley down my way…or maybe it was Venus Williams and the central court at Wimbledon, I can’t be sure. Come to think of it, I was actually on a court somewhere in the vicinity of a local state park whose name shall remain unknown because my sister didn’t pay at the toll to get in. And judging from my sister’s demeanor whenever I got off a serve, either I wasn’t playing the game of tennis properly or it was her time of the month.

I have never been what one might call “athletic” or even, when more charitable, “healthy.” My hand-to-eye coordination is pretty good on the hand part, not so much the eye. Having a ball thrown in my direction (usually under the pretext of playing baseball) has led me to watch the ball and keep watching it until it’s right there upon me, at which point I confidently swing away and find that the ball already passed me by before I could get my bat off my shoulder. But enough about my T-ball experiences, I will say that what I lack in talent to play the game I make up for in my enthusiasm to play anyway, no matter how many people get hurt or how much property damage is inflicted.

Tennis, of course, is a lot like baseball, except that it’s not. Both sports have in common the idea of striking a ball or spherical-shaped object with a large stick of some sort, but a tennis racket has the distinct advantage over a baseball bat in that it’s got more width and also because it’s usually not wielded by a steroid-enhanced muscleman. Think how much more peaceful urban riots might be if looters were armed with tennis rackets instead of bats; they’d get so exhausted trying to break through windows with those flimsy nets that they’d have no energy for burning down city blocks.

I have played tennis a total of four times now, as of this writing, and as often happens when I first start doing something, I think I know everything there is to know about it. In my heart, I know of course that this is not the case. But will I tell my sister that? No, she looks up to me (she has to, she’s a little shorter than I am).

If the actual ability to play tennis effectively eludes me, the scoring system is even more obscure and out of reach. It took me forever to work out the scoring system of football, where a touchdown and successful extra point kick equal a grand slam and a triple in baseball terms. Tennis, with its terms like “match point,” “love,” and “Kournikova,” is hard to follow at best and really sexy and fun to look at but not much of an opponent at worst.

Our most recent match proved that, while I have the basic concept of tennis down (hit the ball to the other person, let them hit it back, rinse and repeat), my ability to follow that concept is lacking. More than once, my serves went straight into the net on my side, causing exasperation on my sister’s part. When I did get it over the line, there was a good chance that while I’d succeeded in the first part of the equation, I was lacking in the second part (that is, hitting the ball towards my opponent and at a height where she could return it). Two times I hit it so hard it went over the chain-length fence of the court. In returning volleys, I sometimes hit it so hard and so close by that for a moment I lost sight of the ball only to realize that it was flying some distance above me, a fact confirmed when the ball landed in exactly the same spot from where I’d hit it. Finally, on the last of what were many serves which went over to the other court instead of the one we were on (there were multiple courts within the same fenced-in area), my sister and I jokingly ran a lap like they make you do in tennis camp when you screw up. Well, my sister says that’s what the instructors make you do, but it’s likely that she just wanted to see me make a fool of myself trying to run.

We laughed, she cried when my volleys went over her head, and I went shirtless because I wanted to work on my farmer’s tan (apparently it didn’t work too well; I still look like I’m wearing a pale, hairy shirt over my tanned arms and neck). We might not be ready to take on the Williams sisters, but we might be able to confuse them long enough with our strategy of hitting it over into the crowds. You can’t win a tennis match without any balls, right?