{"id":4195,"date":"2026-07-11T11:17:46","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T11:17:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/?p=4195"},"modified":"2026-07-12T13:34:34","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T13:34:34","slug":"sunday-verses-tennis-man-7-12-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/?p=4195","title":{"rendered":"SUNDAY VERSES: &#8216;Tennis Man&#8217; (7\/12\/2026)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>By RAHN ADAMS<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For better than seven years, \/ he was a tennis man \/ through thirteen seasons \/ in spring and fall.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_4196\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4196\" style=\"width: 92px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/tennisman.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-4196\" src=\"http:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/tennisman-254x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"92\" height=\"109\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/tennisman-254x300.jpg 254w, https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/tennisman-868x1024.jpg 868w, https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/tennisman-768x906.jpg 768w, https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/tennisman-1303x1536.jpg 1303w, https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/tennisman.jpg 1346w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 92px) 100vw, 92px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-4196\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#8216;TENNIS MAN&#8217; (1995), acrylic, by T. G. Adams<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>He fairly lived at the courts \/ and behind the wheel \/ that turned on the chances \/ of a fortunate draw.<\/p>\n<p>It wasn&#8217;t about who they played; \/ it was who they were \/ as players, as people, \/ whether good or bad.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI&#8217;m just the bus driver,\u201d \/ he\u2019d always say \/ when they won their matches \/ and grabbed some glory.<\/p>\n<p>But he was more than that; \/ he knew it in spirit \/ and so did they all, \/ getting where they needed to go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By RAHN ADAMS For better than seven years, \/ he was a tennis man \/ through thirteen seasons \/ in spring and fall. He fairly lived at the courts \/ and behind the wheel \/ that turned on the chances \/ of a fortunate draw. It wasn&#8217;t about who they played; \/ it was who &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/?p=4195\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">SUNDAY VERSES: &#8216;Tennis Man&#8217; (7\/12\/2026)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4195"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4213,"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4195\/revisions\/4213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}