Your usual Get Memphis Moving blog conductor, John Branston, is on vacation this week, and he’s asked me to sit in with the band while he’s gone. He will return next week.
I recently picked up my tennis racket for the first time in years. I like to think that I used to be decent at the game; I was at least mostly competitive. I lettered in varsity three of my years at Collierville High School in the early 1990s. And then I went to college, worked for a living, got married, had a kid, etc. Didn’t see many tennis courts for the last decade and a half.
When I picked up my racket again this June, it was Gabriela I pulled from the scabbard. Literally. That’s my racket’s name. Gabriela. I’m not joking.
I’ve had Gabriela — a Prince “Graphite COMP XB Oversize” — since 1993. I named her after Gabriela Sabatini, the Argentinean women’s tennis player, one of my favorite players ever.
In fact, while we’re talking about it: My three favorite players of all time are, in quite certain order: 1. Steffi Graf, 2. Michael Chang, and 3. Gabriela Sabatini. It’s no coincidence that all three were at their peak in the same era — the exact time I hit sports puberty. (It’s the same reason my favorite hockey team remains the Calgary Flames; right place, right time.)
