LEADERSHIP MADE HARD
Everything You Need to Know to Captain a Tennis Team…
…You learned as a kindergartener
It seemed like a small ask.
“Would you be willing to captain our tennis team?” Tom, the tennis pro at my country club, asked.
“What’s involved?” I asked.
The response I got back was not honest.
“Not much. Manage the calendar. Figure out who partners with who. Make sure there are good snacks at the end. The women like scones, maybe some banana bread, cheese with crackers, nuts…simple stuff…oh, and always dark chocolate, which they’ve convinced themselves is healthy.”
That all seemed very doable.
So I said yes.
I didn’t know that on almost every middle-aged women's tennis team, there will be a set of divas who believe they’ll make the circuit. These are the women who will make sure to hit their groundstrokes extra hard or slam an overhead right near the net person.
They seem to forget this is club play — that is until they mistakenly hit someone and then will quietly mutter, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.”
Except I’m never convinced.
