One of my favorite childhood memories involves hours and hours of tennis lessons. It started when I was four and I didn’t really stop playing until after high school. Growing up on the Peninsula, everyone plays tennis. If baseball is America’s past time, then someone should tell Monterey because here, it is all about the courts.

I remember a specific conversation with my mom, wherein she explained that if I was to ever be a proper woman, I should know these few things:

- how to correctly match my shoes and belt

- how to sprinkle my conversation with impressive vocabulary

- how to kick an opponents’ ass in a friendly game of tennis

Her quest to make me a real girl started with group tennis lessons and quickly moved to private lessons as finances provided. So, at the tender age of 8 I would walk from Carmel River School to Mission Ranch next door and have private lessons twice a week. I absolutely loved the freedom of walking from point A to point B and I especially loved the individual attention of the lesson.  

The lessons were scheduled for twice a week and on those days I would cut through the back of the school, where there was a hole in the fence and make the treck across a field to Mission Ranch. Before I hit the courts, I would stop in at the front desk. The office had a candy vending machine with what I thought was the best candy bar known to man, the Violet Crumble. My mom was a bit restrictive on the sugar front at home so this stolen chocolate treasure was usually the highlight of my day. 

After my candy break I would head to the court to meet my instructor. He was tall and tan and he wore the typical short white tennis shorts of the early 80’s nature. He had the perfect sandy blonde hair and a really cool accent. Even at 8 years old, I was aware of my good fortune in tennis coaches. The best part about him though was his name, Chic. He had no last name of record but does it really matter when your first name is Chic? Chic was from Australia and he moved to the Peninsula with the sole purpose of teaching tennis, I think. For this I am sure that every well kept wife, with a sudden interest in tennis, was thankful for his voyage from Down Under to the West Coast.

So, as Chic moved about the court teaching me proper forehand and backhands, serves and volleys I took it all in. I just knew that one day I would be a tennis star and Chic would be in the stands cheering me on. After my lesson was over, I would head back over the school and wait for my mom to pick me up. She would come racing in after a long day at work and ask how my day was and if I enjoyed my lessons. I would of course answer that my day was fine and lessons were okay, I couldn’t let on that I had a big 8 year old crush on Chic, lest she decide to tease me or find a less intriguing coach so that I would pay more attention to the game.

As time went on, I began to loose interest in tennis and began to flirt with other sports. Tennis went from first love to an old mistress, thought of fondly but no longer properly nurtured. Because of this, my game never really went to the level I would’ve liked but I still managed to make Varsity in high school, where a small and spry female coach would scream at me from the sidelines of practice about my form and concentration.

The disenchantment came fast a furious during my years on Varsity because how exactly does a girl go from playing tennis at Mission Ranch in Carmel with Chic to a high school court in Turlock in 106 degree weather? For this reason, I still have a love hate relationship with the game, but many fond memories to keep me going.

Yesterday my four year old had his first private tennis lesson at Carmel Valley Ranch. When I asked him how it went, he said “Good.” He was very non committal about it, which made me wonder if maybe Chic now has a daughter and she is a tennis instructor at Carmel Valley Ranch.

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