All the women in my (tennis) life

Part II: Barbara, the mentor

I met Barbara in my German hometown of Darmstadt which is bizarre because Darmstadt is not exactly a tennis city. Barbara was dating a police officer from Darmstadt which is, dare I say, somehow even more bizarre. God and love work in mysterious ways and normally none of those ways lead to Darmstadt.

She needed someone to hit with and people told her about a 15-year-old girl, tall and lanky and full of rage, and that girl was me. A few days later, I got to hit with a real professional tennis player for the first time in my life. I slept badly the night before, having sweaty dreams about showing up to practice with broken strings and no tennis shoes. Despite the lankiness and the dreams, practice went well and Barbara asked me to hit with her a few more times.

Eventually, Barbara broke up with the police officer and retired from professional tennis – not necessarily in this order – and I thought we would never see each other again. As it so happened though, it seemed more and more inevitable for me to escape the life of a professional tennis player myself and Barbara, shortly after her retirement, became the national team captain for Germany. Our paths had crossed again and this time for good.

The mentor/protégé relationship is a complicated construct and Barbara’s and my relationship became a complex one, too.

Normally in tennis, the complicating factor in a coach/player relationship is the fact that the player pays the coach to be the authority over their game. Telling your player the truth (YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH) is much harder when you know your livelihood depends on them.

you really can’t

This circumstance was not an issue with Barbara and me so the complications were purely human. Barbara was not paid by me so telling the truth came easily to her. Most times, I hated the truth. Teaching adolescents is challenging because one rather important component of youth is thinking you know it all. I was particularly certain in knowing it all. I didn’t.

So, most of the complications came from my side. As one expects. Sometimes, however, it was just a difference in temperament. Barbara has great instincts and is used to trusting them. Giving into your impulses because you were lead well by them was the most foreign possible thing to me. The one true way for me was to analyse thoroughly, think about it further, turn it on its head and go through it once more. I didn’t have instincts, I had my brain. Her honest moods and my cautiously built façade collided numerous times. But we were always connected, no matter what.

For years, Barbara wavered between most trusted advisor and friend and Andrea’s state enemy number one. She guided me safely around most of the tennis world’s pitfalls with its shady agents and wannabe coaches. She restlessly advocated for more money with sponsors and federations trying to ease the constant money problems we all had at the very beginning of our careers. It’s rarely talked about how much hustling money is part of being a professional tennis player when you start out. It was Barbara who connected me to the coach I had one of my best seasons with. Every decision I made in my professional life whether I had specifically called her or not was accompanied by a whispering voice that sounded a lot like hers.

a mentor, a protégé

The problem with any coach, teacher or mentor is that by being the most successful they can be they technically make themselves obsolete. If they teach well, well in the sense of empowering one to make one’s own choice, they will no longer be needed in the end. Not everyone’s ego is okay with that. You see these types of relationships everywhere, private and professional, where behaviour is modelled in a way to have the other rely on one in unhealthy amounts. I think codependency is what the Instagram kids call it nowadays. The danger with a coach/player relationship is that a seemingly inherent power dynamic is built into it. Yet, if we look more closely – who really has the power? The one who pays or the one who teaches? They say money is power but they also say knowledge is power and whoever they are I feel like they owe us less confusing statements about the world. You can’t have it both ways.

When earlier this year Barbara and the German tennis federation parted ways I was shocked and more emotionally stirred than I had expected. Sitting in yet another hotel room, trying to stomach the news, a frantic Angie Kerber called me. Another one of Barbara’s once adolescent protégé who had grown into one of the most successful tennis players of the last decade, an adult woman now and a mother. She is raising a daughter and she, too, will have to make decisions along the way of when to tell the truth and when to hold it back.

Teaching is hard. But so is being taught.

Things that make me happy:

The New Yorker podcast Critics at Large is the best thing that happened to me in a long time. Hyperbole, yes, but also shows you how little it takes to make happy. Pop culture phenomenons like Britney Spears or Kate Middleton are being discussed in the most pretentious way possible. It’s basically like hanging out with yours truly. A dream come true. LOL.

Things that make me unhappy:

Driving to Munich yesterday saw me run into not one, not two but THREE (3!!) complete road blockages and wasted a good four hours of my life. Now listen, I’m not saying I would have done anything meaningful with these extra four hours in my life. But something meaningless would have at least been on my terms.

I will see you all next week with part 3 of this mini series All the Women in my (tennis) Life. Who were the people who guided you through life? I hope they were kind and knowledgable in wasting hours on meaningless stuff like whether Bobby De Niro or Al Pacino are more important to American cinema. Al Pacino all the way.

Yours truly, Andrea