Two perfectly good lighted courts tucked away within a low-key but full-service park.
400 West Beach Ave Inglewood, California 90302
From my diary
December 20, 2022
There were two guys playing on one court at Rogers Park in Inglewood, a fine-looking park with families roaming around getting fresh air. Those guys looked like pretty heavy hitters. I didn't know them, not that I know every tennis player in Inglewood, but I have been playing there regularly at Ladera or Ed Vincent for the past 20 years so I thought, maybe I will see someone I know.
Fortunately, someone had left a soccer ball on the empty court, which made me think PERFECT because I needed a target for practicing serves. Practicing serves really is the essence of sports loneliness, but I think it's time we made a distinction here between loneliness, which is sad, and solitude, which can be sublime, enabling you to appreciate things like the steam billowing up from the Don Lee Farms veggie-burger factory across from the Downtown Inglewood station.
Or the lonely underinflated soccer ball on the unused tennis court, which I set up as a target near the T. I was happily konking practice serves when one of the guys who had been playing on the other court decided I needed coaching.
"Keep your head up," he told me.
It is not like I was glancing longingly in their direction hoping they would play with me or give me useful tips. But I decided on the spot that this was an excellent opportunity to remain calm and cordial. He just had extra tell-other-people-what-to-do energy, which you occasionally find among tennis players. "Keep your eye on the ball," he also told me.
Both of these tips are sound fundamentals, but -- did I ask? Oh, I am glad you could not see my thought bubble as this guy came over and actually started giving me a whole drill I could do about keeping my head up and eye on the ball. I was just like [unintelligible] the whole time, but nodding a lot in the positive up and down direction. I like to think the vibe I was giving off was marveling at how strange and wonderful people are and even though we have our differences what we really have so much more of is what we have in common. That's a lot to give off in a vibe but it seemed like our interaction concluded satisfyingly enough for him to depart on friendly or at least neutral terms.
And then I hit the soccer ball with a serve and vaporized.
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