I was sitting in the bar and talking with the lovely Stephanie about sports interests.

She’s into kick boxing and, of course, mixed martial arts.

“Why kick boxing?”

“Oh, well, the instructor was TOTALLY hot and I wanted to jump his bones.”

“Did that work out. No, he has a boyfriend.”

“Oops. So why did you stay with it?”

“I guess because I like being in shape and being able to kick someone’s ass if they get out of line. What’s with you and the tennis addiction?”

And that got me thinking…

Quite simply, tennis is probably the greatest game every developed and here is why: It is just like life.

Tennis is a marathon of little sprints and it combines brute strength with finesse and requires a serious amount of mental work.

Tennis is guaranteed to make you sweat your brains out. A buddy using his dork ass computer and something equally dorky he put in his shoe calculated that in 1.5 hours of playing doubles he sprinted the equivalent of 3.4 miles. That’s sprinting. In Houston. In June. On a surface that registered 110 degrees.

As a comparison, I once looked at game film from a football game with a stopwatch. The average starter on either offense or defense is only moving at football speed for a grand total of 10 minutes.

Other so-called running sports (basketball and soccer come to mind) feature and insane amount of non-running.

Tennis, more than other sports is fashion. Which is great because the girls look extra cute and it also allows someone like myself to dabble in anti-fashion. The cheesy clima cool shirts are what guys wear now in really unnatural colors. Me? I’m either in a beat-to-hell $5 dollar t-shirt or a white collared shirt. Natural fibers only.

You can either join in as a team in tennis or play like Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti western. Just roll in, kick some some gunslinger’s ass and then roll out.

It’s cheap and free courts are easy to find just about any where you go.

The scoring matches up to life:

Love equals zero

The first point is either called as “5″ – when most toddlers cross from babbling shit bags into more sensible children – or “15″ – when most people cross from children into young adults.

Second point is “30″ and that’s when most people finally gel into who they are for life.

The third point is “40″ and we all know that’s when you finally freak out that you’ve wasted your youth doing shit you don’t care about.

“That’s great Lazlo, but why do YOU play tennis?” Stephanie asked once my rant hit a pause.

“Uh, hot girls in short skirts. Beer between games and smokes between sets. You can lose the match but still hit some memorable winning shots. What’s not to love?”

“I think I’ll get a racket.”

“Hey, start with the short skirts. You’ve got thighs that the world needs to see.”

And then she started blushing…