By Aaron Hamburger

I’m an avid tennis player, so last summer when one of my partners canceled our game at the last minute, I thought I would get some extra practice by hitting shots against the wall of a nearby handball court.  Yet, after a few minutes of hitting, I became frustrated.  The reason?  I couldn’t tell whether my shots were any good because there was no net.

While in the middle of a heated tennis match, I don’t exactly feel warmth for the net, particularly when it snags a ball that would have been a brilliant winning shot against my opponent.  In fact, in such cases, I have been known to give that net a good hard smack with my racquet.

And yet once the net was gone, I keenly felt its absence.