No Longer On My Own
Barry Buss
Junior Davis Cup Camp (Click Here) completed, I returned home to my club and my friends with the great news. When I excitedly explained I'd made Junior Davis Cup, few had any idea what I was talking about, and even after explaining JDC, heads nodded in approval if not understanding. And why would they? Elite junior tennis was a niche thing. But my club couldn't be happier for me and that felt good.
Yet my last conversation with Dad lingered. What was that about? I'd let my guard down again, pining one more time for his approval. Charlie Brown with the football. Though it all made no sense. I just couldn't imagine after all we'd been through how he wouldn't have been thrilled with my good fortunes. But that's not how it went. And here we were, pulling back, digging in, wary and mistrustful once again, adjusting to what our latest terms of endearment would be.
Only 17 and still wildly immature, I needed something from him, something to help me feel whole. But that was the trap in our unhealthy dynamic, me needing him to act differently so I could feel safe and complete. I was already discovering how hard it was to change my own behavior, let alone will somebody else to change theirs.
So much of my emotional life was about managing our frayed connection, yet for all my efforts, I often landed in a dark defeated place. I wasn't overtly asking for anything. Just act like a normal Dad, be supportive, be happy for my successes and stop being so damn erratic. Why was that so hard for him? But on a deeper level, it was the connection I missed. I saw it all around me. Parents right there with their kids, morning noon and night. Hugs and affection, no matter the activity or outcome.
It Wasn’t Us
But that wasn't us. Occasionally we'd get it together, only to revert back to our odd mean. Maybe it was never going to be like that for us, that we didn't have what it took for that special father-son bond. But was it wrong to want it? And all my effort and energy toward achievement, thinking success would bring us closer. And sometimes it would, yet it would never last.
And with each time I'd get knocked down, I'd emotionally stay down a little longer, and not get up quite as straight as before, for our connection was eroding before my very eyes and that sense of loss hurt. I was in a constant state of low grade grieving, with no resolution in sight. And I began to wonder why keep trying, why keep getting back up at all, for the whole enterprise was futile if feeling discarded and abandoned was the inevitable outcome.
And the tennis player in me kept fighting, trying to win back something that was already lost. Yet I didn't know where else to turn, or how to stop wanting him to be the Dad I always wanted, for in the end, there was a lost little child within me living scared in the world, screaming for his Dad to help him. Yet when I would reach toward him, to have someone to lean on, he so frequently leaned away. A child in distress, a Father nowhere emotionally to be found. And I hadn't quite figured out how to replace him yet or if that was even possible.
And with all that jazz swirling about me, my endless summer of tennis began. Excitement and fear. The belief, the doubt. What if my tennis clock struck twelve, reverting me back to my old playing ways? So much to learn, so much growing up to do, yet so little time. How was I going to manage being on a team, being coached, being teachable. Were they going to change my game? And should I let them? I was deeply ensconced in teenage rebelliousness, would I be able to deal with authority figures with huge sway over my life? And would I be able to follow the rules of others when I was so used to doing my own thing? For as I would soon learn, there were rules with JDC, and I was no longer on my own.
I joined the team back at camp for a week, preparing us for the summer tournament grind. Taking inventory, I always thought I wanted a coach I mean, how could one not help? But now I had one crawling up my ass about everything, giving me second thoughts about the whole mentoring thing.
Monomaniacal Peers
On the court, I always wanted to work harder and be more disciplined, but now that I was around my monomaniacal peers, I immediately felt the downside. I always wanted to be among the elite of junior tennis, be a professional mini-me, a tour playing apprentice, but I was also a teenager who liked to have fun. I'd made some great friends from my SoCal tennis world, but sadly, none of them were on the team with me. I was now fully immersed with everything I always thought I wanted, a team of hyper-disciplined athletes being led by the ultimate disciplinarians. But if this was how it was to be all summer, I was going to struggle, for my new friends' idea of fun was a bucket of serves or some soul crushing cross courts and before the first week was half over I was already haunted by the imbalance.
We were all very young, chasing a dream, the same dream, fame and fortune in the sport of tennis. The guidebook to such achievements had yet to be published, but an early draft could be titled 'All Tennis All The Time.' Becoming a well rounded young adult would have to wait, there were more pressing matters at hand. For we weren't far from the big time. Kids our age were already breaking through at the professional level.
Yet two weeks around the team and I was finding out why these guys were more accomplished players than myself. There appeared an irreducible difference in our natures. Their lives were all tennis all the time. Eat it, sleep it, breathe it, morning, noon and night. That's all they did. That's all they talked about. Not that I in any way was some sort of renaissance man, but I had a little something going for me off the court. But that would do me little good with my new traveling crew.
No longer on my own, I was now part of a team and there were rules. Lots of them. Conduct clauses, curfews, dress codes, punctuality, meetings, team dinners, behavior contracts, team functions, no girls in the rooms, and absolutely no partying would be tolerated in any form. For my uber-disciplined teammates this was everyday. For myself, it was complete madness.
I'd been doing tennis my own way for some time, and I'd be lying if I didn't take a perverse pleasure at reaching this lofty level on my own. My own way was nothing to brag about. It was nameless, formless, lacking in method and plan. No coach, self-taught, unorthodox technique, never done a drill in my life, still had no nutrition or conditioning program, but I was possessed with an insatiable desire to compete, hitting every ball as hard as I humanly could, treating every practice set like my life depended on it, more a prescription for burnout than anything resembling long term healthy development. But it had gotten me this far and though it was a seriously out of balance way, it was my way. But now under the watchful eye of the USTA I was going to have to learn a new way. And I worried. Would I be able to adjust?
And as we set forth for our first event, I had no idea how I was going to pull off being this disciplined for a whole week, let alone an entire summer.
Back to Burlingame, California, home of The National Hardcourts, the same event a year prior I lost to Todd Witsken. So much had happened since then, hard to believe that was only a year ago. But this year I set foot at the event representing my country as a member of the United States Junior Davis Cup Team. A whole different vibe, strutting around the site like a big dog for once, wearing my USA jacket with barely containable pride.
Yet I started the event pretty tapped, exhausted from the two weeks of camp and our week of pre-tournament training that bordered on the ridiculous. Combined with all the angst of the year, my struggling with the drugs, the break downs and come backs, the college carousel, and the never ending clusterfuck dealing with my Dad had become, I could have easily gone for a light summer at the beach. But JDC was junior tennis' version of Spinal Tap. Lets turn it up to eleven.
Rolling But…
In spite of all my angst, I was playing with an on court confidence foreign and unfamiliar. I rolled through my first few rounds of singles and doubles comfortably, yet being on the team, there was always more to do. A not so light run up some hills or some hearty drilling taking every last bit of life from the legs. With a long hot summer ahead, I knew the fitness was good for me, but it’s impossible to see it that way when all you want to do is heave.
What was being confirmed this first week was I no longer had a say when quitting time was. First couple days of the tourney, no big deal. But by day four of the first week of the first tourney, I was about done. Starting to stress. A free spirit in a cage on a strict regiment. An addict confined. Grind over here, yet the fun was over there. For all my SoCal friends had lost early and were doing what 18 year old boys and girls do when on vacation with no responsibilities. (Angel picture)
The party was on. Convertible rabbits, California girls and Reo Speedwagon, the soundtrack to the summer of 1982. And the fun was going on all around me and in front of me, yet I abstained, for I'd made a promise, signed a conduct contract, yet all my SoCal friends were having a time, yet I had a team meeting and after the meeting the girl I liked and her crew went for pizza and beers and she asked me to come. But I had to go for a run and then had a team dinner to attend, followed by a team function to talk about tennis some more.
And after all that, I returned late to my housing where all my friends had met up. And the party was on, them all playing quarters and getting stupid drunk right in the kitchen, slugging beers and having fun, and they were all about to head out on the town and they asked me to come along, but I had a huge match the next morning and had a curfew and I hadn't had a drink in a couple weeks now and was playing really well and had a great draw with a real good chance to go all the way and win my first ever National title and a coveted gold ball.
The Party Was On
But my friends weren't hearing it. They were heading in to the city, everyone cajoling me to come along. But again I said I couldn't. Yet they were all having fun. And I wasn't. And then they asked again if I wanted to join them on the town and this shouldn't have been a hard decision, to stay in and not go out, but making good decisions wasn't always my thing. Yet I held strong in the moment as my friends got in their cars to take the party on the road. Friends beer music fun. And as I walked to my room upstairs in my vast empty housing, alone and exhausted from a ballbreaker day, I paused, trying to come up with some form of rationalization to justify going out with them. And as steadfast as I had been in saying no to their offers, I paused once more before throwing down my gear, running back down the stairs and outside to their departing cars, yelling wait wait shotgun shotgun, to which I was handed a cold beer that I threw back in one long lascivious slug, earning me the front seat of the party car and the night was on, me and my friends and beer and all the fun I wasn't having.
And I had another beer and then another in quick succession, desperate to chase back the flood of thoughts that I was royally fucking up and I knew it.
For I had made a promise, to my coaches and myself, that I wouldn't be partying and so much was at stake and I really wanted to make this work and this shouldn't have been a hard decision, to say no to the party, but as our car sped out in to the San Francisco night, I had a belly full of beer and a head full of guilt and anxiety. It was day four of the opportunity of a lifetime, something I worked so hard for and had dreamed about for years, yet there I was, in the midst of breaking every single rule I had just agreed to mere days prior.
The party spilled over in to the late hours back to my housing. By now the life of the party, I led everyone back to my room, drunk, loud, and completely oblivious, oblivious to our gracious housing hosts, oblivious to all the trouble I was inviting, oblivious to my own tennis and the fact that in mere hours I had a huge match and oblivious to the driving forces within me that drove me to go out on the town and party the night away, knowing full well that was so the wrong thing to do on every level.
And as the oblivious fun raged late in to the night, the daughter of our housing barged in to my room, demanding everyone not staying there get out right then and there and that the two of us who were staying there were going to be reported the next day to the tournament directors and oh boy, I remember thinking I am in huge trouble now.
Honesty Years Away
Later that night, head spinning hard, trying to get some rest, knowing the two big showdowns I had tomorrow was about to become three when my housing informed the Coaching Staff. I tried to concoct a story, anything to get out ahead of my impending confrontation with the coaches. But what if I just owned up to the harsh reality that I'd lost control over my ability to make good decisions, that at age 17 I was having struggling mightily with alcohol and drugs? And again, this shouldn't have been a hard decision, to tell the truth and own up to my problems. People could and would have tried to help me. But rigorous honesty was still many years away for me, with self-deception and fear running my show. And it was with all this going on I arrived for the quarterfinals of the National Hard Courts, hungover and way stressed out. And with my head hanging low at my impending doom, I played horribly, succumbing badly to the moment, where mere seconds after shaking hands, I was immediately cornered by the coaching staff.
My housing had turned me in and my coaching staff was having nothing to do with my concocted version of the prior evening's events. The conversation was short and to the point. I had the semis of the doubles in half an hour and they didn't care. I was to get back to my housing immediately, get my stuff out of there and if I didn't make it back in time for my match I'd be defaulted and every minute I felt compelled to plead my case was another minute I was wasting.
So scramble I did, making it back to the tournament site just in time to make my doubles match, which I also played horribly in and acted worse. By now, the coaching staff had a much clearer picture of the night before and that I had broken every single rule I had agreed to less than a week ago.
And then the lecture began. And to those who much is given, much is expected and with responsibility came accountability, and for coming up short, there were to be consequences. I was giving a reprieve, but barely. I was to be suspended from the team for two weeks and if I wanted to play the next two events, I would have to pay for them myself and I was to not wear my JDC uniforms at either event.
Quick, to the point, and fair. The message was clear. My way of doing things wasn't going to fly at this level and if I wanted to continue to be a part of JDC, I needed to get my act together and quickly.
