tennis match drama and soft skills

Scandalous Tennis Players

Yesterday, we had a tennis competition against another club, and my partner from Norway and I played two matches.

We unfortunately lost the first match, despite leading in both sets. In the second match, we faced an interesting pair—a father and daughter of Indian descent from Britain. It was amusing how perfectly our ages matched: the daughter was in her late twenties, and the father was in his early fifties.

While we were playing our first match, I noticed the father and daughter were playing against another pair from our club, and I started to feel a little nervous. They played exceptionally well!

As the new set began, to our surprise, we were leading. I sprinted over to flip the score on the board from 2:1 to 3:1 in our favor. Suddenly, the father started yelling that this didn’t make sense, insisting we had been losing, not leading 2:1, so the score should be 2:2. His daughter nodded along.

But I had been flipping the score after each game right in front of them—why hadn’t they said anything before? And yes, we broke both of their serves, so the score is definitely 3:1!

In moments like these, I find it astonishing to see a 50-year-old man behaving like a petulant teenager. It really highlights how much in life depends on soft skills. It’s funny to think that this guy probably has a respected, well-paying job, while I’m still working on finding mine!

To be honest, I was ready to argue for fairness too, but my incredibly calm and composed Norwegian partner suggested we just concede.

You might say, “So what good are your compromises and soft skills? That guy threw a tantrum, and the score changed to 2:2 instead of 3:1.”

But here’s the twist: I got so fired up that I ended up playing three times better, and we won the match 6:4, 6:1!

Take that! 🎾