It's National Bagel Day

Thoughts on tennis' most humiliating of scores...

It started innocently enough. Former tour player Harold Solomon, interviewed by the inimitable Bud Collins, described a 6-0 set as a bagel. Makes sense. Though more elliptical than the traditional doughnut, bagels are also roundish baked goods with holes in the center shaped similarly to the number zero. Little could Solomon have envisioned the serendipity of the moment, that calling a 6-0 set a bagel would become tennis lingo royalty. Solomon coined it; Collins ran with it. And here we are, 50 years later, with the double bagel still the most ominous score of all tennis lore.

Like history, tennis scores are reported by the winners; the conquered and vanquished have little input, especially the bageled. In the zero-sum world of tennis scoring, winners advance, losers go home, with the final score not always telling the whole story. There’s no special notation for fighting hard, no partial credit for playing great, no asterisk for having chances or keeping it respectable. And when you get dropped double bagel style, there's no spinning it. It’s scoreboard, baby, and you failed to hit the board. Saying every game went to deuce will be met by a well-deserved eye-roll.

Losing in tennis already sucks, conjuring all sorts of emotions, few of them empowering. The one-on-one nature of tennis competition can feel so personal. But being on the wrong side of a double bagel is a whole other experience. The shock, the desperation of the last few games, your worst nightmare, your most primal fear, it’s happening. Full tennis breakdown. It can feel feverish, trying to process something as it's happening to you! The last couple of points, you go out meekly, head down, on the verge of tears. You've broken tennis’ unwritten code; the at-the-net handshake, one of the sport’s great traditions, two warriors at the end of a hard-fought fight representing respect has now turned awkward. You’re embarrassed, possibly humiliated, and your opponent, so consumed by feeling sorry for you, only feels pity, barely able to enjoy the win.

Artwork by @JeffreyMSparr Insta and X @Jeffsparr

Late-career double bagels can be the beginning of the end of things. It’s a sign you don't belong or that you've fallen terribly behind or completely lost your way, and maybe it’s time to reconsider what you're doing, not just with your training but your life. The opportunity costs of chasing tennis accomplishments are actual; tennis sacrifice is real. The return on your vast investment has to be something higher than the embarrassment of getting double-bagled by a peer before your peers.

I say double-bagel for a slow start, a hot opponent, a couple of bad breaks, and a set can get away from you 6-0, bagel-style before you've had to use your towel. In one of my biggest matches as a junior, the Finals of California’s most prestigious event, I got crushed 6-0 in the first set by one of my arch-rivals, bringing back all those youthful fears of utter public humiliation. On life support, I woke up, finally winning a game, the second set, and eventually the championship, earning me a spot on Stevie Johnson's Wikipedia Page. Apparently, turning an ugly bagel into a lox and caper delicacy are wins worthy of notation.

As a youngster, I remember the fear well. Initially, it’s easy to be outclassed—your first tourney. You can barely see over the net; you're a good head shorter than your early-developing opponent. Someone thought this was a great idea (your Dad). You're ready, son; I like that new serve grip you learned Wednesday. Let's enter you in one of those tournaments this weekend. You arrive to play with your Dad's racket as a spare; it looks like you got dressed at the lost and found, playing a guy with three rackets (all the same!!) with a matching sweatsuit. Nothing about this appears to be a fair fight; a crushing defeat hovers in the air.

Every tourney was like D-Day. Parents and their children storm the tournament site—the terror of arriving. Find the site, park the car, pop the trunk, pull out the racket bag. Honestly, you'd just assume stay in the car. But you comply, joining your band of brothers in the slow, hushed walk to the club entrance, up the stairs, and into the lobby, where a taped sign points to the tournament desk. Enter the upstairs lounge, like bees to a hive, the buzz by the poster-board-sized draws palpable. You weave through the crowd, passing parents and peers alike. You feel watched, observed, getting sized up. It’s a room of alphas; you feel a zeta, lacking the ego to share the room. They all look so much better than you. Again, comparing how you feel inside to their outside appearance, a never-win dynamic. But you're young, and your youthful sense of self is still a work in progress. The fact a kid’s older brother is highly ranked, or his Dad played the tour, or they have a court at their house, those are the things that matter to an 11-year-old, putting us down a set and a break before we even crack open the balls.

Get to the draw. You don't need a good one, just not a terrible one. You play games with yourself. Don't look at the top; that's where the top seed is. You start at the bottom. You don't see your name. Jump to the middle, still nothing. Your eyes slowly begin moving upward. Then, you see your name from the corner of your eye, line 2. You drew the top seed in the first round and are on center court in 10 minutes.

How do you not heave?

Taking the court, the warm-up begins. He's joking with kids on the next court. You can barely hold your racket.

Match starts. The first game, he’s dropping bombs, holding at love. Second game, three double faults, the new grip not exactly tournament ready yet. He keeps dropping bombs. You get broken again. Desperate look to the glass. Your parent there. You're in trouble, but nobody is coming to save you. It's junior tennis, baby, and you are all by your lonesome. This isn't going well. Another hold. Down 5-0 in a hurry. But you finally make a first serve. He overcooks a fh. You make a couple of balls. You have a game point. This is real. I need this point like I need oxygen. This may not happen again. He begins to mutter, looking annoyed. He can't believe he’s going to lose a game to me. Then it happens. His shot sails long. You want to rejoice. You call it out, loud and proud, firing the balls to his end. You're on the fucking board !! Disaster averted, the relief all-consuming, like hearing your tumor is benign. There will be no double bagel today!!

The pervasive low buzzing fear of the double bagel, the possibility of being publicly humiliated—but it’s more than that. It’s not just losing a match badly, it’s losing the respect of your peers. Tennis tourneys are your schoolyard; they’re your proving ground, the soundtrack to your young life. Your peers are your best childhood friends, but you must grow together. Will you still be allowed to sit with the cool kids with such a scoring blemish?

For tennis results create a permanent record, and getting double-bagled leaves a mark. It’s Tennis’ Scarlet Letter S, and it doesn’t mean Superman. No, you Suck.. at least you did that day. Is your suckiness a bug or a feature? Was it the imperfect storm of your worst day to their best? Any way we spin it, it can be the fatal wound to our fragile tennis psyche. It can make you persona non grata around the courts. You ain't getting asked to practice, you ain't getting asked to play doubles, and nobody wants to be on your court. We tennis folk seek our equals, and everybody wants to level up and losing 0,0… You may be a nice kid and all, but you're no longer one of us.

Why do we go there? It’s like a fear of flying. Your plane is not going to crash, but it could. And if it does, like getting double-bagged, it’s a huge problem. Every player has a confidence spectrum. Unbreakable belief on one end/Full-Metal Catastrophe on the other, both in their ways, self-fulfilling prophecies. We've all had those days in practice where nothing we try works. Fortunately, it’s only practice, but what if that happened in a match? It won't often happen, maybe not at all. But man, when it does...You remember the place, the court, who you played, who was there, with all those youthful feelings of shame firing back up. You feel so small you want to crawl into an empty can of balls and hide.

But what’s most damaging to our tennis egos is we lose control of the narrative. Others define us in our image is everything times. You don't want to be thought a cheater, you don't want to be thought a choker, and you certainly don't want to be thought of as sucking from the players you look up to. You've worked so hard for their respect, to be a part of the in-crowd, to have all of that vanish in an instant with a double bagel trouncing.

Tough food for thought on this National Bagel Day…