On “Tennis Elbow” by Jim Hall
Over the past five years, I’ve had an on-and-off relationship with tennis. It’s the only sport I’ve ever played competitively and I was playing tennis the only time I’ve ever been injured. Despite my lack of a regular presence on the court, I’ve always kept up with the major competitions and notable news within the sport.
At its surface, Tennis Elbow is about the physical toll that playing tennis can take on an athlete. Because of the repetitive motion with one arm, tennis is a sport where over many years, cartilage can thin, and bones can grind at a much faster rate than they might on a player’s non-dominant arm. I believe that what Hall is really saying in this poem is that although it is a physically taxing sport, one continues to play for the love of the process; serve, bounce, return, bounce, return. A good match can go on for a while. The grooves that form in your bones from constant grinding in the same path, can be used as an analogy for the fact that success requires a process. Although the poem is about the deterioration of the body, it is also about the building of skill through constant practice and motion.
The ending of the poem really emphasizes that winning in the game is worth the pain. Using tennis to represent a hobby, Hall makes one realize that enjoying an activity and striving to be good at it without the need to monetize it is important. I think that it’s a particularly important realization to make today, in which everyone tries to turn a profit out of something they would otherwise do for fun, not realizing that once it becomes a job, it no longer nourishes their soul the way it once did.
