My First Tennis Research Paper

I was five years old when I hit my first tennis ball. My parents thought little of it; I too didn't think much of it, but the coaches at Eastside Tennis Academy did. After my first tennis lesson, a coach approached my parents and explained that I was naturally talented for my age –– whether they really saw this in a five-year-old or whether they wanted to fill their lesson schedules eludes me. My parents decided to run with it. They enrolled me in private lessons, group clinics, and summer camps. I began to play several hours each day. My game quickly improved, and I enjoyed nearly every moment of practice, but most importantly, I also learned. The best summers of my life, to this day, were those throughout which my mother would drop my brothers

That journey would create some of my most profound memories to date. It wasn’t always a smooth ride; during my early teenage years, I began to slump. My tournament results were subpar, I wasn’t enjoying myself on the court, and consequently my ranking was on the decline. We tried changing to several different coaches who all said the same thing, my on-court patience wasn’t developed, and I had to be willing to "suffer” more during matches. The problem, we were told, was that because of my innate talent, I wasn't motivated to push myself the extra mile. Instead, I relied almost entirely on my talent to get the job done for me. We finally landed on a coach, Adrian Chirici, whose experience with and passion for the game of tennis is nearly unparalleled. He has become the person I turn to very often, probably too often for his liking, when I am in need of advice, whether it be tennis-related or otherwise. He has drastically expanded my knowledge of the game, and led me to challenge certain mental aspects of tennis I took for granted. Most importantly, Adrian has taught me how to be a competitor on the