AJ O'Leary

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My Second Day with World TeamTennis: WTF I Think I Like Tennis Now

In which writing about my first pro tennis experience gets me a ticket to my second one

It’s now been about two weeks since my first ever World TeamTennis experience, where I saw the Vegas Rollers drop a hard-fought match to the Springfield Lasers amidst two hours’ worth of dance-offs, Redfoo-led call-and-response chants and a tennis-themed Elvis impersonator. I got my 17 dollars’ worth and, as fate would have it, a ticket to the World TeamTennis Finals (also held in Vegas) courtesy of an ex-coworker and her husband who found my first piece hilarious. Writing pays, kids!

The Finals were, in contrast to the first game I’d been to, packed — as packed as you could imagine a pro tennis match to be, anyway. I arrived half an hour before the first set and still managed to get tangled up in a crush of fellow white people aged 15 to 55 riding an escalator up to the Orleans Arena, nearly all rocking khaki-colored shorts and Adidas tracksuit jackets better than I could ever hope to.

One German-sounding couple within earshot of me remarked that the fifty foot-plus staircase beside us was empty because “Americans don’t exercise”, which seemed strange for a crowd of people who looked like they kept a jug of water on hand at all times just in case they felt like spontaneously running several miles.

I got to skip the will-call line of ungodly length for a shorter one reserved for United States Tennis Association “friends and family”. I’m USTA-certified!

From there, it was a trip past metal detectors and into the concourse I’d been through two weeks earlier. “NO PROGRAMS!”, the same security guard from last time bellowed, instead motioning over to a table with a stack of gigantic World TeamTennis posters. I took one, because I’d take anything advertised as free up to and including a rusty nail, but it didn’t seem to be a huge hit with anyone else present.

I arrived at my seat to find it occupied by someone attending the game with their family, plus a seat evidently reserved for their tote bag. Maybe it’s a WTT thing to take seating arrangements as mere suggestions, since someone was sitting in my seat on July 20, too. No matter, since neither game was a sellout.

Today’s match-up: The Bronx-based New York Empire versus WTT’s actual empire, the Springfield Lasers. I guess Springfield is just destined to follow me for the rest of my life now, like It Follows but with obscure tennis team-hosting Midwestern metropolises. As before, it was a battle of upstarts (the Empire have been around since 2016) versus juggernauts (some rich family donated the Lasers to the city of Springfield, Missouri in 1996).

The Empire, coached by an energetic and extremely bald former pro, featured a gaggle of pre-teens waving blue and orange pom-poms on the sidelines while the Lasers went about their business with all the joy of the Swiss bobsledders in Cool Runnings. I’m not sure if it’s typical for the Lasers to go up against teams who approach sportsmanship from the opposite direction, but it’d be pretty funny to see them constantly showing joylessness in the face of defeat if I ever felt like rooting for them.

Speaking of which: the entire Orleans Arena save for myself and one old guy a few rows behind me in a Yankees cap were rooting for the Lasers, possibly because a Vegas native was a last-minute injury substitution. I have never felt so alone in a crowd of several hundred people.

Though the Rollers fell on the outside of the playoff bubble looking in this year, that didn’t stop our fair championship-hosting city from doing the most. “YOU HAVE TERRIBLE RHYTHM!”-shouting sax guy returned, demanding this time that we pay attention to him belting out select lines from Uptown Funk. Our fearless tennis mascots were in peak form. Billie Jean King herself even attended, table drumming to Pitbull during one break in the action.

The game itself was quite good. Tensions ran high for the first four sets of the game. The Lasers came dangerously close to showing emotion as the Empire clung to their lead through men’s singles, mixed doubles, women’s doubles, several inspired musical interludes, and the person who stole my seat’s phone going off and earning quiet, disappointed stares from what felt like a good third of my section.

Unfortunately for me but, evidently, not the rest of Las Vegas, the Lasers absolutely crushed it in the last set, smacking tennis balls with such vigor that several went flying into my section and another smacked a dude on the sidelines in the back on their way to a squeaker of a win.

Billie Jean King came out to present the repeat champions with the King Trophy (naturally), joined by Sax Man, Elvis Tennis Dude, the WTT’s equivalent of trophy girls, and WTT leadership. I fumbled the big-ass poster precariously wedged between my knees as I got up to be a good sport and clap for the champs. Levels (RIP to a real one) played. Confetti fell. Sparklers sparked.

It honestly felt like the end of one of those “anthology”-type films where all the characters’ storylines intersect at the end and they come together just in time for the finale. A family who’d caught two tennis balls launched into the stands gave me one as they left, making me the proud forever owner of a World TeamTennis logo-adorned tennis ball.

I am officially a World TeamTennis convert, and cannot wait to be bored and looking for something to do within a weirdly small window of time next summer. 🎾

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