[bruce511]

Having played both tennis and golf, I agree. It's a lot harder to play social tennis than social golf.

Two nice things about golf - the handicap system let's two players of different level engage in fun competition. (Yes, handicaps can be manipulated, but for the most part aren't. )

Second a very good player can play with a bad player, and both can have fun. The social factor is more important to the fun, and I've enjoyed tight games with people with hugely disparate handicaps.

With tennis I always want to play either someone just a little bit better than me. Someone who can help me get a bit better all the time. My enjoyment of the game depends a lot on their performance.

Both are enjoyable in their own right.

[wink]

How do you overcome a wrong observation of a local maximum though (e.g. in your club maybe)?

I only experienced something like this once, late 90s. We thought of ourselves as pretty ok StarCraft players until we got some visitor to a lan party who basically demolished everyone. This was pre-ladder iirc so you only played a handful of games online.

[bruce511]

In golf the handicap system is "global". Each player has a handicap index, which then translates into a course handicap. It's not perfect (different players have different strengths and weaknesses, which means some courses "suit" a game more than others) but generally the system is at least reasonably accurate.

Tennis of course is harder. You can only be as good as the people you are playing with.