Wimbledon Centre Court. A place all kids dream to play at. You bounce the ball up and down soundlessly. You feel the fresh turf pressed up against the soles of your shoes. The grass is trimmed perfectly by a machine that spent thousands of hours under construction. The rich history all combined creates an aura in the stadium. The all-white outfits, the fans wearing their fedoras, and the green, and purple flowers as you walk in all combined create a cushion that separates you from the outside of the world. The journey that you have to take to get to this stage has so much sweat, blood, and tears. The intensity in the locker room sitting across from your opponent in silence; the adrenaline firing through your whole body but you have to keep your cool or your enemy will see right through you. Someone steps into the locker room and breaks the silence to tell you to start walking on the court, you stand up and it feels like you haven’t moved in an eternity. You start walking to the court, and all the staff freeze and look at you like their your best friend. They get both you and your opponent fired up with their good lucks and claps. You smile and nod your head and don’t let anything distract you from your plan.

You arrived at your pre-match press conference right before the match. Your voice is smooth and relaxed just like water in a glass. You try to trick your brain so that you have no pressure. You hear your opponents whisper from feet away answering the questions from the reporter. The reporter is a former tennis great John McEnroe so you get nervous. You hear nothing that he says. You hear your name come through the speakers that are so big they can break glass. The crowd irrupts and you applaud everyone. You see your bench with your water bottles and towels already out for you. You approach it with a calm but also with rage. This is your home for the next couple of hours. It’s where you will think, calm down, and get angry. It will be a rain of emotions in your home. You run up and take pictures with the ball boys. The chair umpire flips the coin toss to serve or return. You win the toss and select to serve. You warm up with your opponent; you hit some groundstrokes, some volleys, smashes, then finally finish off with the serve. At that moment you are trying to find your opponent's weakness, maybe they try to run around their backhand to hit a forehand. How high over the net do they hit the ball when they are on the run? Usually, you already know their weakness before entering the match from all the footage you have watched of them. Before you play you try to know your opponent inside and out. But you always notice things differently when you watch them from above vs when you see them across the net. You get your towels ready, make sure your shoes are tied, and do your best to avoid any external reason to avoid losing a point. You have your mind clear, all the preparations are ready. 

The match has already begun days before. Luckily, you have had the wisdom and discipline to see your future from so far away. You hydrate, eat, and sleep correctly to give yourself the best chance against your opponent. Your bag has everything you need to give you the best chance of winning. If you lose it’s not going to be because of the lack of equipment. In that bag, you know exactly what you need and exactly what you don’t need. You know exactly how much your bag weighs. Even when your phone is in the wrong pocket you feel the weight is wrong and get nervous that you may have forgotten something. 

You hit your first serve and hear the echo of the ball striking the center of the racket. ACE!!! The crowd stands up and applauds. You look at your ball options and choose carefully. You devise a plan to attack your opponent's weakness. You get handed a perfectly white towel from the ball boy and see you are already in a full sweat. You move the towel deliberately and wipe down your face, hands, and arms. You now have developed a routine that you will use to relax and think. You walk back up to the line to serve again.

For a moment you pause to wait for the chair umpire to tell the crowd to be respectful and quiet down. The crowd silences. Once again you serve and put your plan into action. You feel your lungs pumping up and down, breathe in and breathe out. Your mouth is dry and you lick your cracked lips. You feel the sweat falling from your hair to the freshly cut grass. You only allow positive things to enter your mind. You have trained very hard to have the correct mindset of a professional athlete. You have zero doubt about your ability to win this match. You have constructed the perfect balance between ego and confidence. If my opponent beats me it’s because they went to war with a demon and won. I want them to know that I’m someone that is going to fight for every single point. That I’ll hustle for every single ball no matter where it goes. They are going to have to play smarter and harder than me if they want this. 

If they want something in this match it will be earned, there will be no gifts. Bouncing over and over again even when the point is over to get into the opponent's head, you send a message to him. No matter how far you go I can go further. Patiently you are waiting for your opponent to lose hope but you see him doing the same thing to you. This has become a chess match on the court. Sometimes you both have the same strategy and you have to adjust. You make eye contact with your opponent on opposite ends of the court. It becomes a stare-down, who has more guts? Who will dig the deepest for this victory? The crowd only sees what is on the surface, you have signed up for an exceptional life that none of these people have in the crowd. You have to be humble enough and realize how lucky you are to be in the situation that you are in. 

Your mind is pure, you have accepted all of the bad decisions you have made and you have forgiven yourself. You have nothing on your shoulders but the skin that hugs you tightly. You think about how many people have dreamt about being in your position and you thank god for this life. Nobody knows how many extra tears and skin you have given up but you know that you will put in all the work again to get to where you are again. All the sacrifices you’ve made got you to where you are, you didn't spend as much time with your friends because you had to train or go to sleep early. You missed a couple of movies, you sacrificed not going to the high school football games because you had to go to the gym and train. 

You sacrificed not playing video games late at night when you had a tournament the next day. From all of this you realize who your true friends are. The ones that want you to go to sleep and pray that you do well in your match because they know that it means more to you than anybody could imagine. They know that you would give up anything to be at the top of the game. Many people will call it cringy to work hard and say that you are on a diet because you don’t want to eat the free donut at lunch. But you know that if you would eat the donut you wouldn’t feel good and lack discipline in your life. 

You hold the first game of the match cleanly. You take a pitstop at your bench. You aren’t thirsty but drink water because you know that if you do get thirsty you are in great jeopardy of making bad decisions. You come up with a plan to break serve. You read their toss and predict the best you can to get the point to neutral and if you get lucky you might be able to get on the offensive right away. You get flooded with a bunch of questions after you hit the ball and realize your position. You see your opportunity to go in so you follow the ball and put the volley away. A stroke of luck to win that point, a dumb error by my opponent. So many decisions to be made in a split second, but your mind is clear from all the hours of meditation and focus drills.

You have zero hesitation when you go to hit the ball because you know how many times and hours have been spent hitting the same shot. Unfortunately for you the opponent rains down three huge serves that you have no control over. You get a racket on two of them but they are too big that you are unable to put one of them into the court. For the other one, the most you could do was hit it short and then he just put it away into the open court. You go back to your towel and look at your box, they all have their serious and focused faces on you and start fist-pumping and pumping you up. You towel off again repeating the same motions and strokes over your arms and face to get the sweat off. You think of how you want to play the point and forget the rest of the points that your opponent just won because you have zero control over losing the points. You collect yourself and know that you are going to have to get lucky on both of these points. 

You notice the wind picks up and you adjust your position. Your shirt is gliding through the air like a superhero. You remind yourself to over-spin this shot or it’s going to go long. You have had this conversation with yourself thousands of times before already from your experience on the court. You execute your plan and over-spin the ball and the ball drops 2 feet before the baseline. You find yourself in a position to expose your opponent's weakness and act on it. You win the point by their error. You walk back to the fence and look at your strings. You see your strings are about to break so you quickly sprint to your bag and change rackets. You get a little chill from the wind and the combination of sweat. You adjust your plan a bit according to the wind and you both hold your service to 6 all in the first set. Your clothes are completely soaked in sweat but you want to change clothes because right now you are feeling good and it makes affects the way you are feeling. You don’t want to change clothes when you are playing well because you will start to feel fresh and will get out of the zone that you just were in. 

You get down a mini break but know that you can break right back because you see that even though your opponent is in peak shape you can see that he is tired from the last point because of how long it was. You say that if you can get him on the run to a forehand he will hit it short because of how tired he is and you can then hit the ball to the open court. You have to get a little luck first and home and don’t bring too much heat on one of his serves. Your plan works and you drill back and second serve. You see your opportunity and find a way to roll a backhand crosscourt and then run him 40 feet to the additional side and realize the short ball. You move in quickly and hit the next ball for a winner by taking lots of time away from him. You are back into the break and are up 6-5 but your opponent is on serve. The wind stopped and the dome is closed because there is going to be rain. You quickly adjust to playing on an indoor court and you see your opponent is under pressure to hold serve because if he doesn’t the first set will be yours. He faults on the first serve and now you scoot in, you know that there is no way he can hit a big second serve under that much pressure and you hit a big return down the line. It comes off the racket better than you expected. You hit a clean winner and scream, “COMMMOOONNNN!!!!”

You take the first set and see all the fans out of their seats and their hands are together. You nod your head to keep yourself fired up. This is Wimbledon though, the first set means nothing when it's best 3 out of 5. You throw the towel over your head and close your eyes to refocus and get your thoughts together. Your legs and shaking and your hands are on your neys. You feel the leg sweat drip into your sock. You decide to go change close to freshen up for the next set and ask the chair umpire to go to the toilet. You look at your eyes through the mirror and fire yourself up with some words of encouragement. You are very positive and now feel fresh with a piece of ice in your mouth that you are chewing on. You have fresh clothes on and have the crowd on your side. You take one last look in the mirror then walk back onto the court.