Perfect holiday gift ideas for tennis friends

Shower the people you love with love-40

Jeffrey Denny

Who’s the world’s richest tennis pro?

Roger Federer? Nope.

Serena Williams, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal? Sorry.

Try Ion Tiriac, worth $1.2 billion.

Who he?

Tiriac is a former Romanian tennis pro, nicknamed “The Brașov Bulldozer.”

He was a somewhat top international player when the Beatles ruled. His career peaked in 1970 when he won the French Open men’s doubles with fellow Romanian Ilie Năstase.

Tiriac made less than $200,000 in tennis prize money. But he went on to found the first private bank of Romania and then retail, insurance, auto leasing and airline firms.

For my part, after nearly a half-century of steady, obsessive, 3–5 day weekly tennis, I’ve racked up roughly $0.00 in tennis prize money while investing an estimated $2,000,000.00 to create jobs in the tennis economy.

This sum includes replacing countless costly rackets I smashed to express my agency and identity, which involves self-loathing, anger issues, and loser mentality. Also years of therapy where I blamed my parents for my tennis issues. Until my therapist cured me by asking, “Could your problem be that you stink at tennis and you’re a big loser?”

But I’ve also made priceless tennis friendships.

I know they’re priceless because they would render the courts unplayable with end-of-days tsunami waves of upchuck if I told them.

So if I had Tiriac’s money, here’s what I would gift them for the holidays instead of an awkward hug:

1. A new, $400,000 luxury RV motor coach to loan/give a certain U.S. Supreme Court Justice to influence his colleagues to take up the landmark case of Society v. Pickleball. And rig — sorry, rule — for the plaintiff and a death sentence for the defendant.
2. A $1 million donation/bribe in their name to Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, successor to the lying Tony Fauci as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to declare Pickleball a deadly pandemic. How many tennis players need to sicken and die from irritation before the government finally wakes up and protects us from this scourge?
3. A $10 million gift certificate for the surgery center of their choice to spend on knee, hip, shoulder, or backhand replacement. This also should cover the sides including: X-rays, MRIs, CT scans and anesthesia; bloodwork, injections and other doctor needling such as, “in my medical opinion, your body is a big figgy pudding”; IV bags of tap water drawn from ancient hospital hallway drinking fountains; Medieval Rack® hospital beds and Dollar Store Luxury Collection® two thread-count linens; Torquemada-certified physical therapy; a $75 Advil as needed; and $12/hour for overworked, overstressed and underpaid nurses who somehow deal with your big figgy pudding of a body. Most of all, to ensure the best possible care, a $100,000 pledge while under anesthesia to the hospital’s fundraising campaign for modern medicine and $420,000 for the surgeon’s new Bentley Continental GT convertible.
4. A $50 million investment to build my friends a private luxury tennis facility. A safe place where they’re not triggered and traumatized like white, wealthy, progressive Ivy college kids by the micro- and macro-aggressions of nasty hackers who disgrace the beautiful game by caring more about worthless “winning” than playing well.
5. A $100 million contribution in their name to Never Back Down, the super PAC not whatsoever supporting 2024 GOP presidential back-runner Ron DeSantis. This would be earmarked for Trump’s understudy to kidnap and bus Picklers to the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, in the heart of Trumpland, Fla., for racket sport reeducation camp, endorsed by Supreme Tennis Leader and forever #1-ranked ATP and WTA star, Kim Jong “Pyongyang Puncher” Un.
6. A $200 million contribution to recycleballs.org, motto, “Yellow is the New Green.” Like most Americans, my tennis friends care/don’t care deeply about the looming climate doom. Many worry/don’t worry that tennis balls are made from petroleum and how to appear climate woke by discarding them after a single use in a planet-friendly way. But most are concerned that global warming will make it harder to get a petroleum-surfaced hard court that hasn’t melted and twisted into imperfection because it would interfere with our perfect strokes. Plus, the highest SPF today is only 100 when we’ll need a basting of at least 1,000 to avoid looking like a deep-fried turkey or Nick Bollettieri.
7. Lose. Let my friends beat me all the time. Take a fall like Terry Malloy/Marlon Brando in “On the Waterfront.” I never coulda been a contender anyway. Why not give my tennis friends an ego snack to feel better about themselves? Priceless.

Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.