My mother, an avid follower of the New York Open and other world class
tennis events, has been reading a blog written by New York Times’ art
critic, Michael Kimmelman called,  The Art of Tennis. I, too, found it
very interesting.

I bumped into the New York artist Holly Hughes at the Open. Many
artists are obsessed with tennis. Holly, a painter, is one of them. She
spent the day scouring the grounds, dashing between matches. She had
that glazed look fans get here in the early rounds, the look of a
glutton mid-banquet.

Tennis points, she said, are problem-solving equations for line drawings in space.

Translation: the beauty of the game is seeing, then trying to
remember, the way a ball travels around the court during a point. Its
path makes lines that arch, zig, move diagonally, straight, back and
forth. The court is like a sheet of paper, with its own lines already
drawn on it. Strategy entails mapping out and resolving combinations of
lines — patterns — just as an artist maps a drawing.

Picture
Federer. He hits a sliced serve to the deuce court. The ball makes a
curving line down the middle that jogs at impact from left to right.
His opponent’s return arches toward Federer’s backhand (the line now
goes back, from right to left, but differently). Federer, charging the
net, volleys cross court (left to right, again differently). Point
Federer.

The fan’s pleasure comes in redrawing the lines as a
memory. Every point, like every mark drawn on a page, is a little
different. Topspin makes a line different from a slice. A smart,
strategic, virtuosic player (Federer) conceives more varied and elegant
points, whose resolution, like the resolution of a particularly complex
drawing, can be profoundly satisfying.

This is why sitting at
a certain height behind either baseline is better than sitting in the
middle of the court or courtside. From the side, the game is a jumble
of movements. From higher up and behind the baseline (where the
television cameras like to be), the court is easier to read as a page,
and the lines are clear to follow. Patterns present themselves.

Within sameness there can be endless variety. Artists have proved this
over centuries. It’s the art of tennis, too — or part of the art,
because there is beauty to the sound of the game and to its passage
through time. Call it the music of the sport. Which is to say nothing
of its drama, offcourt and on, or of the ballet of Federer’s footwork
…