I’m not really a sports fan. I rarely if ever have the desire to go outside and play a sport. I frankly couldn’t care less who won the game last night or who got traded to which team. It’s cool if you do; some people enjoy watching sports and tracking statistics and other people enjoy watching award shows and taking bets on who is going to win the Oscar. The only sport that I know anything about is tennis. The other night at rehearsal some of the guys were discussing sports and steroids. I crack a joke relating that “that’s why tennis is superior sport because taking steroids will not make you a better tennis player”.  They look over and flippantly remark that tennis is not an actual sport and give me this condescending disdainful look at my futile attempts to discuss sports with a bunch of straight men. So … you make these judgments that gay men – and especially drag queens – don’t know anything about sports. In your eyes, our area of knowledge is sadly limited to Miley Cyrus, makeup, musicals, and GLEE. However, the times that we do try to contribute you refute and mock our efforts by stating that tennis is not an actual sport.

 Obviously! Obviously tennis is an “activity” that stuffy, preppy, sexually-repressed, country-club-goers do in between cocktails and verbally abusing their staff. Allow me to outline for you all the reasons why not only tennis IS a sport, but in some respects a far superior sport to others.

-          Usually there is no team in tennis. Unless you play doubles – which is rare - there is you, your opponent, and a mother fucking court and that is it. If you don’t feel like running down the ball because you are tired, well then you lose the point.  

-          Along the same lines, you are truly alone on the court. You do not have a defensive coach, an offensive coach, and a special teams coach at your disposal telling you how to think and which plays seem the most logical. Your coach is sequestered to the stands where both you and your coach could get into loads of trouble if they attempt to coach from the bench.

-          Tennis a rarity in the sporting world for a match has no pre-assigned time limit. While other sports and sports teams enjoy the benefits of a game clock – tennis players are afforded no courtesy. In tennis, players win a match when they win a certain amount of sets – typically women need to win two, and men three – and to win a set one must win six games, winning by two. I have seen tennis matches be over in as little as 40 minutes and sometimes have them take 5 or 6 hours. Wow, to have the stamina and mental dexterity to play a game for 6 hours, must mean that you are an incredible athlete.

-          Tennis is one of the few sports that has both a men’s and women’s division where attention is shared equally. However, tennis goes one step further in that men and women have the opportunity to compete against one another in mixed doubles tennis.

-          Let’s not forget that the whole point of tennis is for one person to hit this tiny little rubber ball with a small racquet and make sure that it not only goes over the net but then that ball must fall within a certain area of the court otherwise it is out and you will lose the point.

-          The Williams Sisters – Enough said, I would not fuck with them.

These are but a few of the many glaringly obvious reasons why tennis is an actual sport – contrary to straight men world. Perhaps tennis would be viewed as a more legitimate sport if its members beat the crap out of each other on the court, or better yet members of their own family. Perhaps tennis players would be considered true athletes if they did any number of illegal drugs, or punch hookers in motel rooms, or trash their own hotel rooms. Perhaps tennis would gain more airtime if each player had a mascot or better yet they all smacked each other’s asses at the end of each game. So in the future, try not to cast judgment upon something that you are blithely unaware of as I often chose to restrain myself from stating judgmental comments upon your tastes and interests.

Love Ginger