The politics of tennis

Philosophers say that human beings are political animals, suggesting that politics is inevitable. I can only confirm this, but we need to come off the academic pedestal and see what is really going on.

Politics needs a definition, but, in practical terms,  it means that all people affiliate themselves, to ideas, to groups, to other people, or things created by people. Very infrequently do humans live outside the machinations of human dialogue and influence.

Responsible Parents

The beginnings of this can be seen in our parents. Humans look after their offspring until at least puberty in most societies, and in modern Western societies this commonly stretches to 25 years old. Young people will hate to say that they are dependant on their parents, God forbid, influenced by their parents, but that is the reality. In some parts of the animal kingdom the parental role lasts little more than a blink - everything else is instinctual - the parents put the offspring down in an environment, and let the offspring decide how to survive using his instincts.

Humans are instinctual too, but their instincts lead them to look for parental roles all around them. Even the most rebellious of humans who reject their clans and peer groups, often try to find alternative clans before any original ideas surface.

Human lookout

All these politics mean that humans are forever on the lookout for other humans entering and disappearing from their lives. They simply cannot live alone.

Why do we need people? The first pressure is surely emotional. We need support, reassurance, and instruction for all of our our moves. By cutting ourselves off from this we will quickly lose our raison d'être. True, there are some people who are amazingly independant, furrowing their own way through life. But curiously these people survive exactly because they have modelised thier lives on someone, often with immense discipline, and are able to sustain this copying process at great prolonged distances from their models.

Politics of money

The second reason is money. Money and politics are inextricably linked. Humans can't survive without a money source, or, to put it in its purest form, without a complete support environment around them. Where is the source of this money? First it's the parents, and then it might be sponsors or federations. All the time this is other people being essential for an individual to survive. Sometimes the connections are not totally clear. For example, a young tennis player in a club may not realise the depth of the interlinking that goes on that gets him to the courts, gives him tennis equipment and lessons.

My real reason for mentioning politics in the tennis context, is to demonstrate the amount of awareness that a player should demonstrate in order to keep his tennis machine running. If he's disrespectful towards his coach, just see how quickly his world is disturbed. If he abuses the money that is available to him, just see how quickly the decision-makers around him withdraw their support.

So, a politically-aware tennis player carries out much in the way of compromise - making sure that his structure remains in place means molly-coddling all of those elements around him, even though he may not agree with much of it. The quicker a player learns this, the better. He needs "friends". He won't get anywhere unless he learns to please those around him. And so often it's just the little things - saying Thank You to Grandma for the new tracksuit you don't really like; to agreeing to go on a training course with your group which you don't really think will help you much. You must conform. Mostly.