Don’t Shrink: Claim Your Place Without Apologizing

My son, Ben, and I walked to the neighborhood tennis courts to play pickleball.  We are not serious players.  It is just about the only way that I can pull my son outside with me.

I was nervous that there were four men playing doubles tennis in the other court.  They were playing a serious game.  I mean, they were actually keeping score…and grunting.  

Ben and I warmed up by hitting the ball back and forth.  Pretty soon, he hit the ball into the other court.  I asked Ben to try to stay in our court - which was silly considering that he obviously knows that and he wasn’t trying to hit into the other court.  If he had perfect control of a ball and racket, he would be a professional player.  And I sheepishly said ‘Sorry’ to the tennis player while I waited for him to hit back the ball.  

To minimize the risk of hitting the ball into the other court, we modified our play so we would only serve on the side of the court towards the fence.  So if the ball is wide or long, it would hit the fence and not roll into the other court.

The tennis players inevitably hit their ball into our court.  We would hit their ball back and they would say ‘thanks.’  Over the next hour, our ball would go into their court and theirs into ours.  

On our walk back home, I realized that the male tennis players never apologized for hitting the ball in our court nor were they bothered that they (minimally) interrupted our play.  They also played their game as usual, without modifying it to minimize the risk of hitting a ball in our court.  It is a shared neighborhood tennis court so it is expected by everyone that we will occasionally hit the ball into each other's court.

So why was my first instinct to apologize when we did nothing wrong?  Why was I afraid to take up space that I was just as entitled to as the four men playing tennis?