Dealing with Überjerks and Some Games with a Nice Guy

I have always wondered what the best strategy is for dealing with an überjerk (that's uberjerk with an umlaut over the u, I have noticed that on Macs it comes out as something weird). You know,the kind of person that goes beyond just being a jerk to trying to mess with you with almost every little micro-interaction they have with you. You see them a lot in chat rooms. There they are probably just trying to get attention, using the old adage that "any publicity is good publicity." In a chat room, it's easy. You just put them on iggy. I see people all the time engaging with these people, getting madder and madder, either not realizing that they are falling into the precise trap that is being set for them, or realizing it full well but not backing down on "principle." I love principles. The cool thing about them is, they can be anything you want them to be (pretty much by definition).

Most people who play tennis are fairly courteous and not trying at all to mess with you. Sometimes you play someone who is a little passive-aggressive. That's not too bad, you just move on. Every once in a while, you meet someone who uses an antisocial personality as a tennis strategy. Maybe it's a justifiable strategy; it is definitely possible to piss somebody off so bad that you win the match if your opponent lets it get under his skin. But then nobody wants to play you. Sometimes they have to. So if you have this as your style, maybe you just enter tournaments and laugh at all the weak-minded jackasses who seethe at having to be paired with you.

Maybe the überjerks can even be divided into two categories (probably more than two, but let's oversimplify for now, since I'm not writing a master's thesis). The cheating überjerks, and the non-cheating überjerks. The cheaters don't care about anything. They will do anything to win. They will make bad line calls, fudge the score as often as possible (of course, always "accidentally" in their favor, never making mistakes in your favor), and slip in whatever they can to mess with the rules of tennis. The non-cheating überjerks simply want to mess with you, not with the rules of tennis. They want to get in your head and make you so furious that you mess up stuff that you usually nail.

So how do I usually deal with people that rub me the wrong way? Usually, I try to bend over backwards to be super-nice to them. I'll deflect all the crap and just return saccharine. Every once in a while, it does get to me, and I respond somewhat in kind, but like I said, this seems to play right into their endgame. This is the game they are trying to play. One of the best things you can do in tennis, and in life, I believe, is to mix it up.

I only bring this up because a guy I set up a match with didn't show up. Not really jerky, necessarily, but it just got me thinking about dealing with jerks, and I had wanted to put up a post about it for a while. So there you have it.

Planned match against Stuart and C. at Westlake High. Winner: Stuart (by default).

Now something really weird happened. Another guy with the same name as the guy I was supposed to play shows up at the same spot at the same time. I saw him come up and asked him if he was [first name, last name], and he says yes, but he is there to play with these three other guys who were starting to warm up for doubles on the next court over. I told him that I thought we had confirmed something by email. He says "You must be mistaken, it's a very common name." Now at first, I thought that he was just not telling the truth. But then later, I met the other guy with the same name. Bizarre.

Anyway, a nice guy shows up, asks if I want to hit some, and we commence hitting. We got some great practice in, and I asked him if he wants to play some games. We don't play a full set (so I can't count it toward my goal), but:

Stuart vs. M. at Westlake High. Winner: M 3-2

My Mojo: Average to Above-Average

M. was a good player, and probably better than me with his shots, though I had better court coverage, I think. We hit for a while and then played five games. He wins the first two handily, I come back to win the next two, and he wins the last one. In the first and last game, I didn't get any points. I tell him about how I'm trying to play 365 sets, we exchange cards, and maybe I'll play him again.

Well, got to run for my next match. I bet the guy will show up.