Played from the age of 12 to the age of 50. Then decided it was time to hang up my racquet. I was always very lazy – never bothered with a warm-up or muscle stretching session before going on court, nor a warm-down. Never. Just went out on court, and bang. Hell-for-leather stuff. Now you can get away with that when you're fifteen, twenty. Thirty. Maybe even forty. But fifty's a stretch. I was going out and pulling a muscle straight away, in the first game.
I was an o.k. player, but never had any coaching whatsoever, so I developed bad habits early on which I never got out of my game. Poor positioning, not disguising my shot well enough, that sort of thing. I miss it, though.
In my early thirties, I had a ding-dong year regularly playing an opponent who was 19, and was junior vice-champion of France's national cross-country championships. By God, but he ran me all over the court. I'd play a good boast, catch him on the wrong foot, I'd think, “Right, give me that, that point's mine, come on mate, give up, that's mine…!" and fuck me if he doesn't go and dig it out!! And the rally's got to go on! We'd end up every session on our knees.
He won some, I won some, we ended the year about even. Very, very satisfying.
There's a weird sport called Racquets which, so far as I know, is mainly played in public schools and nowhere else. It's played in a very big indoor court which, where I played, was entirely black. The ball was white, of course, and was solid like a golf ball. I only played it a few times, because the two courts were permanently occupied by seriously good players. As you can imagine, the etiquette of the game was vital. You didn't get right in front of that ball, ever. A shot right to the head could kill you, no problem.
