45 Mariam Bolkvadze – The Professional Tennis Discourse Community: Finding Community in an Individual Sport

Mariam Bolkvadze is a Freshman from Batumi, Georgia and is honored to be included in this year’s Pressbook.  Mariam is a professional tennis player from the country of Georgia, who is trying to earn a university degree alongside of her professional career.  Mariam’s Discourse Community Research Project was prepared for in English W131.  Professor Jackie Kauza, notes, “Mariam had a wealth of experience as a professional tennis player that she incorporated into her project to explore how community was an important part of an individual sport like tennis. It was strongly written and full of detail.”

The Professional Tennis Discourse Community: Finding Community in an Individual Sport

Introduction

A “discourse community” is not something that many people have heard of, but it is something that mostly everyone is part of. Think about any hobby that you have. Now think about the community that your hobby involves. For example, if you like video games, your discourse community would be other gamers that you play with.

Not every community can count as discourse community so to make it clearer I will introduce you to John Swales’s take on it. Swales (1990) wrote that for a community to count as a discourse community it has to have a certain set of rules in place. To be precise, he provided us with six main rules:

• A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.
• A discourse community has a mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.
• A discourse community uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback.
• A discourse community utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims.
• In addition to owning genres, a discourse community has acquired some specific lexis.
• A discourse community has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.” (Swales, 1990, p.471-473)

I am a professional tennis player, therefore it is only natural for me to talk about my discourse community which is the professional tennis tour. Tennis is mostly an individual sport. Sure, there is a part where we play doubles but mainly the idea is very much ‘each to their own’. This is exactly why it is unique and interesting to talk about what it is like being a discourse community member in an individual sport like tennis.

Tennis as a Discourse Community

On the tour, as we call it, you get various types of players. Some like to keep to themselves and their teams, while some are more outgoing and social with others. I certainly fit more into the outgoing part of the tour. I have many friends with whom I compete, and the competition doesn’t get in the way of my forming deep connections and friendships. My psychologist Dr. Josephine Perry always told me that it is really important to have a sense of belonging in whatever we do, so she kept encouraging me to not only be a tennis player but to also be part of something bigger. I have been reading her book recently in which she reminds us that, “As humans, we have a fundamental need to feel connected and to relate to others. Evolution shows the way in which being part of something bigger is beneficial” (Perry, 2024, p.8). Perry (2024) also mentioned that the feeling of belonging makes the whole process of whatever we do more enjoyable and fun, as we have people to share our successes and failures with so we never feel alone. Once I formed a small community of my close tennis friends within the tour, I realised how much more enjoyable my professional life became. We share many of the same values and goals, like getting into the top 100 players in the world, and we support each other along the way through good times and bad times.

In an interview with my friend and fellow professional tennis player Maia Lumsden (2024) we talked about the meaning of being part of the discourse community in tennis. She mentioned how it is very difficult to be alone all the time, traveling as well as staying in hotels. So it is very important to have a community that she can be part of on the tournaments. She even went as far as saying that it helps her perform better if she has her community members playing the same events as her. Lumsden said: “It makes me happier and makes it more fun to play when I’m not alone on the tournaments. It means I can have someone to lean on through bad times as well”  (Lumsden, 2024).

Now to come back to the complicated dynamics of being a community member of an individual sport, I will give you a simple thing all the players do which you might find a little bit odd. Before the tournament starts, most of the players practice with each other. We play practice sets as well as practice matches. In 2021 I was playing one of the Grand Slam tournaments called Roland Garros, one of the biggest tournaments throughout the year. I was in qualifying, of which the draw was 128 people. This means that I was competing against 127 other players for a spot in the main draw. So, as normal, I had my practice organised against one of the girls from the qualifying draw. Just before we started practicing the draw came out and we were scheduled to play against each other the next day! Out of one hundred and twenty eight people I was somehow set to practice with my opponent. If we did not practice with each other, it would be too late to find someone else. I did not know if she knew that I was her opponent, so I ended up not saying anything and proceeded with the training. We even played a practice set and I beat her very comfortably. The next day we played each other, and she played amazing! She beat me 6-4 6-3. To this day I still do not know whether she knew that we were playing each other and did not show her strengths on the practice court or if she just had a bad day. I might ask her one day.

The example of me accidentally organising practice with my opponent is not uncommon in my sport. But to put that aside, we also have to warm up with each other right before the matches. So on the match day everyone gets a half an hour warm up on court and we all try to organise it based on the order of play. One the schedule comes out, the chaos begins. The schedule is normally ready in the evening, around 7 or 8 PM, sometimes even later depending on how busy the tournament supervisor is. On this schedule we will see what order the matches will happen the next day. For example: The schedule is out and I am playing in the first match at 10 AM tomorrow. I then look at other courts and see who else is playing ‘first on’, other than my opponent. Once I see the name of the player that I know of, I will send them a WhatsApp text. If I don’t have their number, I will send them a message on social media. Normally, everyone is doing the exact same thing so they will be checking their social media accounts to make sure they do not miss a text. The communication approach varies based on the player. For example, if I know them well, I would just send a casual message asking if they want to warm up tomorrow. However, if I do not know them, I would make it a little bit more formal and mention that we are both playing around the same time tomorrow and if it would be ok to warm up together. Generally, because we are all in the same boat and desperate to find warm ups, the communication runs much easier than expected. Some tournaments provide hitting partners in case you could not find a warm up, but on smaller tournaments that is not the case.

In 2019, I was playing a lower tier tournament in Portugal. I was sharing a house with a few other players. We would cook together, drive to the supermarket together, we were all really good friends. Within this house, I was even sharing a room with one of the girls. Throughout the week, other housemates lost so they all had to leave back to their homes, only me and my room mate were left in the draw. We both got to the finals, and there was no one else we could have warmed up with but each other, so we spoke about it and neither of us minded as we were good friends. So the night before my finals, I was sharing a room with my opponent with whom I warmed up with and had breakfast with on the finals day. I ended up winning the match, and I could tell she was upset by the defeat but we put that aside and kept being good friends with each other.

Tennis Lexis

Like in any discourse community, we have our unique lexis. In the medical world, according to Klass (2004) medical staff learn a completely new language with the lexis that they end up using. Sometimes it makes them feel guilty and inhumane but they understand that it’s necessary for their own mental health and well-being (Klass, 2004). Of course, in tennis our lexis doesn’t necessarily make us feel guilty or inhumane, but it does form a special bond between players, knowing that we all speak the same language.

Here is a small dictionary of words and phrases used by players on tour:

• “She/he tanked”: She/he stopped trying in their match or practice.
• “I got robbed in my last match”: I got a bad call from an umpire or an opponent (my ball was in and it was called out, or my opponent’s ball was out and it got called in).
• “She’s/he’s a joke”: She/he is very good.
• “Should we bag it?”: Should we just not do it? (Example: I really don’t want to go to the players’ party. Should we bag it?)
• “A moonballer”: Someone who plays high balls most of the time.
• “A dirtballer”: Someone who plays on clay court a lot.
• “She’s/he’s got good hands”: She/he has good touch or feel when they play. They are very talented and can do a lot of things with the ball without trying too hard.

Genre of Communication

The genre that is commonly used by the professional tennis community is the website called: IPIN. IPIN is the website from where we decide which tournaments to go to and when. On every Tuesday there is a withdrawal deadline, therefore on every Tuesday most of the members of the community will be thinking about where do they want to be going in two weeks’ time. IPIN is a big part of the communication. This is how we communicate with each other as well as the tournaments and let everyone know if and when are we going to be playing. See the examples below.

Example 1: The IPIN home screen.

Example 2: The list of accepted singles players for a tournament.

On example 1, as you can see I have chosen the tournament in Nottingham for the week of 22.04.2024. Once you click on “Entries” it will take you to the example 2 where you can see all the other players that have signed up to play this tournament. There are also a couple of lexis I’d like to point out from the example number 1.

The first one would be “singles freeze deadline”, which is how much time there is left until you can withdraw from the tournament, but it’s different from just a normal withdrawal deadline. With freeze deadline you will get a fine depending on how early or late you withdraw from a tournament. The other lexis that is noticeable is “Factsheet”. On the factsheet page we get all the necessary information in terms of travel and tournament. We can see how much the hotel costs, the deadline to book a hotel room, or how to get from the airport to the accommodation or the tennis club.

Conclusion

Hopefully, by reading about the specifics of how we tennis players communicate with each other, you now have a good understanding of what a discourse community can look like, as well as what it’s like being a member of a community in a very individual sport like tennis. Tennis, unlike any other sport, has a specific way of forming certain connections between players. There is an element of freedom in not having to depend on a team or a coach. and you are your own boss in a way. But somehow, you end up forming deep connections between your competitors, who will most probably face you from the other side of the net throughout the season. This is exactly why it’s important to feel like you are part of a community. Being able to rely on your friends when times are tough is very important because only a very small percentage of players are winning every single tournament. Therefore, everyone is going through something difficult at any given time of the season.

The principles of communication between the players and the tournament are also unique. The website called IPIN certainly makes everyone’s life easier as it provides us with some structure that everyone has to follow. Organising practices and warm ups is certainly a very difficult part of being on tour. This is especially hard to deal with if you are not part of the community, as no one will do you any favours if they do not know you or even like you.

Being part of a discourse community in a sport like tennis will teach you some unique lexis. And you will find yourself using them in your everyday life too. People will most certainly have no clue about what you just said. But hey, that’s all part of the game.

References

Lumsden, M. (2024, April 19). Personal communication

Perry, J. (2023). The Ten Pillars of Success [Paperback]. Allen & Unwin.

Klass, P. (2017). Learning the language. In E. Wardle and D. Downs (Eds), Writing about writing:A college reader (3rd edition, pp. 343–346). Bedford/St. Martin’s.

Swales, John. “The concept of Discourse Community.” Genre Analysis: English in Academic Research Settings. Boston: Cambridge UP, 1990. 21-32. (p.471-473) Print.)