Haters, I've got a USTA League match tonight. Only lima beans provoke a greater gag reflex.

Put me in a tennis clinic for 5 hours at noon in the Florida heat, and I am happy. But tell me I am playing "for real" and I find myself thinking of ways to pull my own hamstring.

I doff my flop sweat-stained cap to the pros who put themselves through this every week.

Crying over unspilt milk: Thomas Drouet says John Tomic head-butted him. Courtesy AFP/Getty Images.

John Tomic, father and coach of Aussie up-and-comer Bernard Tomic, has been barred from future ATP tournaments pending the outcome of an inquiry into whether he assaulted the 20-year-old's hitting partner, Thomas Drouet, last Saturday outside a Madrid hotel.

Drouet says Tomic head-butted him in the nose, breaking it, in an argument that began when Drouet refused to buy milk for the Tomics prior to their flight to Spain for the Mutua Madrid Open.

Tomic, the Herald Sun's "Poster Boy of the Mad Tennis Parents Club,"is claiming it was in self-defense.

It seems the head is a favored target of Coach Tomic.  According to the New York Times, Drouet told the French sports paper, L'Equipe, that Tomic punched his son in the head during a training session, hard enough that Bernie's mouth was bleeding.  

“All that because Bernard had told him that he had had enough of hearing his criticism. I didn’t intervene as I have read I did other places. Afterward, John took Bernard’s three rackets and destroyed them. Bam. Bam. Bam. A half hour later, he was joking with Bernard."

Ha, ha, my boy, better the Yonex than you.  

Sadly, the apple hasn't fallen very far from the tree.  Bernie has had his own I Hate Tennis moments, most notably when he was accused of tanking in a lackluster US Open loss last year to Andy Roddick.  He got surly with a reporter from Reuters and said, darkly, "I'll remember you." 

Maybe this is why I haven't seen any quotations yet from Bernie.  Reporters are too busy ordering face masks first.

Tomic needs a new coach.  Currently 53rd in the world, he was as high as 27th last June.  His 2013 season has been spotty.  He won his first ATP Tour title in Sydney last January, but has played little, and done little, since then, except rack up a notably I Hate Tennis moment: Tomic failed to convert 5 match points against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in Marseille.  

He huffed and puffed and blew Tsonga's surge down. Rafa and his "champion luck" escape a 3rd set against Tsonga. Courtesy Getty Images.

It will be their 34th meeting (Nadal leads 19-14) and a re-match of last year's final, which Nadal won handily in straight sets.  

Fed and Nadal have played fewer matches, just 29, but they're the stuff of awe and history.  Nineteen of those matches were finals, including the epic, twice-rain delayed 2008 Wimbledon championship match that Nadal won in the dark.  

But those legendary Rafa-Rog moments appear to be waning.

Courtesy Getty Images/Matthew Stockman.

Ferrer suffered a brain fart during championship point, 5-4, against Murray's serve

It may look like a tennis ball, but it's really a hand grenade when Tam Thompson volleys it at you."You can thank us later," we were thinking to ourselves as we made our intention to play together known to Tam and Surinder.

But here's an Easter miracle: We beat them in a tiebreak.

And yet, it was what allowed Wozniaki to eventually triumph over Kerber for the first time in their last four meetings and to advance to the Indian Wells 2013 final.

Caroline was ahead in the third and decisive set, up 3-1, but it was a pressure point, 30-all.  Kerber returned with a deep backhand right at Wozniaki's feet, prompting her to react defensively with a moonball.  Kerber took the high ball out of the air with her leftie forehand, hitting a sharp, cross-court angle that got yet another moonball response from Caro.

Two can play at that game, thought Kerber, and she joined in.  A murmur starts to swell through the crowd: "Hey, are we watching pro tennis, or a USTA 3.0 women's league?"

Yet no 3.0 player I know, including myself, could have kept it up for a 38-shot rally.  Most of the time, those high bouncers have me flailing helplessly deep behind the baseline, as I fall back into the cold embrace of the bubble.  

About 20 shots into the rally, Wozniacki goes for a hard, flat cross-court backhand, but Kerber's been knocked senseless by the lack of oxygen in outer space.  She replies with a moonball, setting up another rally that Kevin Ford, Evgeny Terelkin and Oleg Novitskiy might have enjoyed on the International Space Station, had they not been preparing to come back to earth today.

On center court at Indian Wells, the tennis ball's space mission finally ended when Wozniaki came up to a short sitter from Kerber and hit a flat, hard backhand deep into the deuce court to end the point.  

"I think she was moving better and hit the ball a little bit higher," Kerber said after Wozniaki defeated her, 2-6, 6-4, 7-5.  She admitted it changed the momentum of the match.  "I was not expect these balls."

Neither did anyone else.  A journalist asked her what she was thinking during the moonball rally.  Was it, "I haven't played this way since I was 5"?  Or, "I'm going to kill myself if I end up being out-moonballed"?  Or, "God, I hope Tennis Channel took a commercial break!"

"What I'm thinking... I don't know. I try to play the point. Doesn't matter if it's high or if it's flat. It's a different style of game, but it's tennis," said Kerber.

Yes, Haters, it's tennis.  Moonballs are a legitimate shot.  

Or, as Caroline Wozniaki put it afterwards, "I was trying to figure out a way to win. And it doesn't really matter how."

Let's go to the (physio) tape: Azarenka throws in the towel after crying into it over injury withdrawal.

It's the latest weirdness to happen in a tournament that saw aging Aussie Lleyton Hewitt oust last year's finalist and 15th seed, American John Isner, and South African Kevin Anderson taking an hour and 55 minutes to kick the Spanish Bulldog and 4th seed David Ferrer to the curb.  Or to the cactus.  After all, it IS the California desert.

Azarenka was set to meet Caroline Wozniaki before she pulled out of the tournament with tendinitis and inflammation in her right foot and ankle.  It's a holdover from an injury she sustained in Dubai.  According to Sports Illustrated.com, the feisty, competitive Belarussian was seen hobbling around during her practice session and crying into a towel.

"I tried absolutely everything I could to do, but I have been advised by the doctor, by my own team, that it's just a very, very high risk already," she said.  

Wozniaki will face Angelique Kerber, who's beaten her in their last three meet-ups.

Stosur pulls calf, pulls out of Indian Wells. Sports Illustrated says it's only the second withdrawal in her career. Photo courtesy Getty Images.Stosur's withdrawal handed Maria Kirilenko a walkover and sets up a Kirilenko/Maria Sharapova semifinal.

If Sharapova wins, she bumps Azarenka out of the world number 2 position.  

It's a shame.  Azarenka is unbeaten on the court so far this season, with a 17-0 streak that includes her second Grand Slam title at the Australian Open.

Stosur also realized the extent of her injury during practice.  In a statement, she said she "felt something go" in her right calf muscle while serving for the match against Mona Barthel.  

"I had a bit of a rough start to the year and I feel like now my tennis has really picked up, and I've been playing really quite well these last few days," she said in a statement.  "I don't know if you can get any more unlucky than that."

It FELT like a walkover: Nadal breezes past Federer in quarters, 63, 62. Photo courtesy of Getty Images.Unlucky is not the word to use for defending champ Roger Federer, who was felled by long-time rival Rafael Nadal in straight sets.  The word of the match, instead, is sloppy.  They say the most telling statistic in the men's game is the second serve percentage.  Federer won the point on his second serve a measly 29% of the time, compared to 52% for Rafa.  Mr. Bad Knees now has a 19-10 record against Mr. Bad Back.

My Worthy Opponent, ready and waiting at the corner of Greene and Waverly Avenues.

They're talking about a form of practice that doesn't need a court or another tennis player.

When I Hate Tennis talks about hitting the wall, it's about both.  Because when I've tried to hit against a wall, I've developed such a mental weariness that it's made me want to chuck the racquet and eat a box of donuts.

My Worthy Opponent, Marcy Rosewater, was singing the praises of wall-hitting.  "It really helps me focus on my strokes.  I can feel what I'm doing wrong and correct it."

"Not me," I moaned.  "I hit the ball, it hits the wall and then dies in front of me, or sails above my head."  Oh, yeah, I failed to mention that often, I hit the ball over the wall itself. This is quite a feat, Haters.  Take a look at that handball wall above.  It's, like, 20 feet high.  

I sighed.  "The only thing I seem to get to work on is being a better ball retriever."

"You just have to keep at it.  You get into a rhythm," said Marcy.  

Well, YOU do, I said to myself.  I could feel Tennis Hate blooming like a black rose in my chest. Where were those donuts??  

Now, I'm a True Grit kind of athlete.  I've taken 2-hour spin classes. I've been on century bicycle rides.  I've been to Saddlebrook's grueling, 5-hour tennis clinics in Florida, and have relished them.  Eventually, after rolling my eyes and whining, I suit up and show up.  I'll take Marcy's suggestion and try once again to put some time in front of the wall.  But I'm stunned by the knowledge that my default setting is, I can't do this!  It's not fair!

I'm inclined to think something is wrong with me.  I need to change my mindset, reduce my frustration, BE POSITIVE, visualize happy hitting.  Sports psychologists encourage this.  

But I'm intrigued by Oliver Burkeman's book, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking, who surveyed psychologists and philosophers working in the field of happiness and found this:

The startling conclusion at which they had all arrived, in different ways, was this: that the effort to try to feel happy is often precisely the thing that makes us miserable.  And that it is our constant efforts to eliminate the negative -- insecurity, uncertainty, failure, or sadness -- that is what causes us to feel so insecure, anxious, uncertain, or unhappy.

The solution, what Burkeman calls the "negative path" to peace of mind, involves "learning to enjoy uncertainty, embracing insecurity, stopping trying to think positively, becoming familiar with failure, even learning to value death."

I got familiarity with failure down, no problem.  Value death?  Got to work on that one.

I've been in a funk about my game.  In the middle of a lesson or a game, I can feel myself pushing the ball, swinging from my wrist, not my shoulder, leaning toward the ball from my waist rather than bending my knees, all the bad habits I've been told not to do.  I've taken thousands of dollars' worth of lessons, have spent 10 years on the court trying to develop a forehand drive and a finishing volley. Why do I keep reverting to my old, tentative, pushy ways?  I can't do this!  It's not fair!

I have toyed with the idea that tennis isn't for me, and I should take up something more immediately gratifying and endorphin-producing.  Like baking donuts.

I've been asking myself: If this is the best that I'll ever be, is that okay?

But I don't really want to give up.  That's not the True Grit creedo.  I really love tennis.  I enjoy the camaraderie, the warm-up rituals, the courtesy and sportsmanship embedded in its rules.  I love how physical it is, and mental, too, how it requires total and absolute focus from moment to moment, much like meditation. When I achive those precious seconds of concentration, everything dissolves -- the court, my opponent, Tennis Hate and the infernal chatter of what W. Timothy Gallwey calls Self 1.  I feel free and powerful and alive, even if I lose the point.  

So, I've been playing with my Tennis Hate rather than against it.  It's okay that it's there.  I'm not, as Burkeman describes in his book, "trying to drown negativity out with relentless good cheer."  I'm trying to seek "the happiness that arises through negativity."  

I've been asking myself: If this is the best that I'll ever be, is that okay?  What does it mean to have limits? What happens when I reach mine?  Will anybody kick me off the court?  Will no one want to play with me ever again if they don't see continued improvement toward a kick serve like Samantha Stosur's?  No, really: Will others love me less?  Will I have less value if I don't get a good, strong forehand approach shot?

That's the mental part.  Technically, I've been following what my Saintly Pros, Anne Hobbs and Al Johnson, have been telling me, and that is to simplify what I do, narrow my focus.  I think of two things while I hit a groundstroke: turn sideways to the approaching ball and extend through the shot, "swing to catch."  At the net, I think of getting my racquet out in front of me for my volley.  That's it.  I practice leaving all the running commentary on the sidelines, in a messy pile with my warmup pants and coat.

When I expose the lies my Tennis Hate tells me, I start to find some peace -- even joy -- on the court.  When I put my focus on simple tasks, like turning my body sideways to the ball, I experience the sweetness that comes with executing something you intended to do.  It's easier to just turn sideways and swing through the ball than it is to follow a ten-point checklist: "Racquet back? Check! Body sideways? Check! Left hand extended out to the point of contact? Check! Butt of the racquet toward the ball? Check!" Ad nauseum.

Forget those donuts.  Where's my racquet?