Sometimes when you lose, you win....

When my last shot clipped the top of the net chord and fell back on my side I had two divergent feelings overwhelm me: relief and despair. You see, my brother, Ettore, and I were attempting to break the World Record for the longest contrived tennis rally and that shot was the 19,491st shot after 10 hours and 38 minutes of hitting non-stop, which ended at 5:08 am on Sunday morning.

After giving my brother a hug, about the only thing I had energy to do at that point, I laid down on the tennis court. If my friend and tennis colleague Paul hadn't gotten me up I would have slept right there for a few hours.

The World Record was 24,696 strokes so we came short on strokes but broke the US record and broke the world record on time since ours was the longest. However, our intention was to break the stroke record as that is how Guinness recognizes the longest tennis rally record.

Now in life there is something called a silver lining. I remember the next morning at my keynote presentation at the Pilot Pen Tennis Tournament my topic was integrating the Internet into your marketing mix. However, it was the first keynote that I did from a chair. I had spoken to upwards of 3,000 people in Gampel Pavilion at the podium, a place I am most comfortable with to inspire people to take action. I have spoken at hundreds of events but I asked permission from the attendees if I could make this presentation sitting down since my feet were still swollen and aching.

That's when my friend Jeff, who owns Milford Indoor Tennis, said "why don't you tell them why you are sitting." So, I had to let the cat out of the bag (not that I minded). I showed everyone (tennis club owners from CT) the tennis ball from the rally. It was much smaller than a new tennis ball and had such little fuzz it looked more like peach fuzz than tennis ball fuzz.

But seeing the front page of the New Haven Register with an article about us and me sprawled out on the tennis court I realized that we accomplished something special. Anne, the tournament chairman of the event, congratulated me on what we had done but that was only the beginning. The rest of the day at the event I felt like a celebrity. People were handing me checks for the charities that we were raising money for. It was truly a special few days.

In talking with James Blake (top 10 ATP Tour professional tennis player), Thomas Blake (James' brother and former pro) and Brian Barker (James' coach) at Milford Indoor Tennis where I am the head tennis professional, I was excited by their utter astonishment of what we had done.

It was funny because the first thing James asked was "do you get bathroom breaks," the answer being no of course (thus the Depends - thankfully gone unused). His second question was "well who missed." At that point I had to share in a chuckle with them because Brian was reading the article intently and exclaimed...'you know, after spending over 10 hours on the court hitting 20,000 balls and raising money for charity everyone asks ... "who missed"'.

I took it in stride since I knew that I was the one who missed but confidently stated that we will break the record next year. We have scheduled it for Saturday August 9th, but this time starting at 9 am rather than 4:30 pm.

It was such a unique bonding experience for our family, who came throughout the evening, counters, who stayed with us the entire night and supporters who pledged money for charity. My 4-year old nephew, Adam, even was inspired to do his first tennis drawing of my brother and me.

The Hartford Courant newspaper mentioned our record on the blog and a old college friend of mine, Matt, read the story and commented about it and said that we are "good guys." It ended up being a way to keep in touch with past friends and business colleagues.

To top it off we had a radio interview on WELI that was awesome. They were so pumped about our record attempt that they said they want to broadcast it next year. Who knows, perhaps we will have on blue tooth headsets and give followers of the story a play-by-play. After all, it's tough to watch something for over 10 hours!

I had the honor of presenting the checks for the Tim and Tom Gullikson Foundation to Tom himself at the US Open this year thanks to my good friend Todd. His first words were "better you than me." Tom is such a quality person in every way. He is involved in tennis and has an identical twin so we have a lot in common. Tim, his twin, was Pete Sampras' coach and passed away of Brain cancer. The other charity we raised money for was the ALS Association in honor of Scott Wilson who passed away of Lou Gherig's disease. He was one of my tennis mentors who I learned a lot of my teaching techniques from. In catching up with a mutual friend Betsy, she said she was proud to have known Scott and so glad that my brother and I kept his legacy alive with remembering him through this event.

Suffice is to say that sometimes when you think you've lost it's just a matter of perspective to recognize that you haven't lost at all.

Inspirational song by my good friend Linda:
The Way It is

World Record Press
New Haven Register
CT Post

Event Photos

WELI Radio interview