First in a Field of Two
A Junior Tennis Memoir
By Barry Buss
If you thought tennis was a dainty game then you don’t know tournament tennis. It’s a shark tank where only the winner survives. If you want to put your child into junior tennis tournaments then make sure he or she has a very strong self-esteem. The game only rewards the winner. But this memoir is about much more than junior tennis; it’s also about parental mistakes and teen drug and alcohol abuse.
At times this book is difficult to read. Mr. Buss takes the reader into his childhood home where we meet a family that is beyond dysfunctional. It is a home and a family without love. A place where husband and wife appear to have no emotional connection with each other. A place where three siblings compete for their father’s exclusive attention, and I say exclusive, because father seems capable of giving attention to only one child at a time.
Mr. Buss ultimately wins the intra-family battle for dad’s attention when he begins to excel at tennis. It will be a hollow victory, one that will subject him to unimaginable verbal abuse. We’ve become familiar with the recent term “helicopter parent” but what went on in Mr. Buss’ early tennis career gives a totally different meaning to the term. To say this book offers a guide on how not to support your child’s athletic endeavors is an understatement.
We watch as the 14 year-old Mr. Buss experiences his first introduction to alcohol and we want to cry when by age 15 he is a full-blown alcoholic and drug addict. We follow him on an amazing path through high school and into UCLA as he moves up the tennis ladder of success. All the while alcohol and drugs course through his system providing the reader with insight to the term “functioning alcoholic/addict”.
The book’s title First in a Field of Two is explained as Man versus himself and that is what Mr. Buss comes to realize. It’s easy to blame bad parenting or a dysfunctional family for the mistakes in our lives but in the end we alone are accountable for our own actions.
