Letting Go

On Friday I made a significant donation for my brother and I. I gifted 3 tennis balls. It doesn’t sound too impressive but the key was that they weren’t just any three tennis balls and they weren’t donated to any old place.

I donated our world record tennis balls to the International Tennis Hall of Fame for their museum in Newport, Rhode Island. It’s one of those times where you have mixed feelings but we did the right thing. Two years ago, when we cracked open the USPTA ProPenn 1 tennis balls to try to break the Guinness Book of Worlds Records™ for the longest tennis rally. In so doing, when knew we had some special tennis balls. When you compare the ball that has been rallied continuously for almost 15 hours and 26,000 strokes to an unused ball it is not only completely worn of all of its yellow fuzz but it is much smaller, more like a racquetball.

I know that the balls are in very good hands. Not just the fact that they are in a historic museum with other items from many tennis greats but that they aren’t around my house any longer where my almost 3-year old daughter Madison can play with them or lose them. You see, I had kept the world record balls in my Prince racquet bag for a while now and just the other day I noticed Madison playing with a USPTA ball that looked awfully similar to the unused ball from the original can we opened for the record. Come to find out…it was!

I swiftly took the ball away from her although I felt badly because she got upset so I tried to give her one of the hundred other random tennis balls lying around the house of a full-time tennis teaching professional. But why is it that children display random acts of stubbornness? It’s not that she knew it was a special ball or anything it’s just that she knew she wanted that ball and not the one that I replaced it with.

Suffice is to say that I distracted enough to calm her down (and myself knowing that that ball has its place in tennis history). That prompted me to load my tennis bag in the trunk of my car for my journey to the tennis hall of fame Friday.

It was a unique experience. I had to sign a gift agreement from which transferred ownership to the hall of fame of the three tennis balls. The original ball, the US record of 19,490 strokes that we set in August of 2007 and the world record ball of 25,944 strokes that we set in August of 2008.

I didn’t have much resistance being mindful of what had just happened with my wrestling match with Madison. So out of my hands and into the history of tennis.

If you have never been to the International Tennis Hall of Fame it is a must see for anyone interested in tennis or just history and sports. Monica Seles’ display is up now since she is being inducted this July. My brother and I are running tennis clinics during the July 4th holiday as part of family weekend. Our goal is to attract more than 1,000 kids to experience tennis that weekend. We will have the kids do Quickstart clinics, games, face painting, watch our 9-minute commemorative tennis movie and hear our goal setting inspirational presentation followed by an autograph session.

It should be a ton of fun!

Suggested Visiting:
http://www.tennisfame.org/
http://www.rally4charity.org/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rossetti-Rally-4-Charity/47968308132?ref=ts (Rally 4 Charity world record fan page on Facebook - Aug 15th you can win $1M)