Riding Home with Dad

[GMann]

One day I stopped at the donut shop on my to work at the Ford Rouge Plant in the morning. I picked up my coffee and my cinnamon roll plus my copy of the Detroit Free Press and saw the headline. Something about a fire...about a shooting. People were dead. I didn't look at the details or the names. I had to get to work. Later on I read the article. I remembered the look on Thad's face when I spoke to him. There was something to say. But it wasn't said. Then one night...how can you explain such a thing?

:

Don Budge, I'm surprised and disappointed that you never finished the story. I also grew up in the Detroit area. In 1994, 24 year old Thad Angyal killed his father Ken Angyal who was a well known Gross Point area tennis coach who many people said had abused Thad and many other junior players. Thad shot his father, his mother and burned down the family house and then shot himself to death.

[don_budge]

Don Budge, I'm surprised and disappointed that you never finished the story. I also grew up in the Detroit area. In 1994, 24 year old Thad Angyal killed his father Ken Angyal who was a well known Gross Point area tennis coach who many people said had abused Thad and many other junior players. Thad shot his father, his mother and burned down the family house and then shot himself to death.

Finish the story? What a word salad I threw at the forum with the two posts...#13 and Tennisplayer I got such a kick reading them. Damn...I was good. Spontaneous to say the least. No wonder they gave me the cold shoulder in the end. I heard something to that effect...that Ken had been abusive. Some such thing. I knew him quite well. He was a good friend of one of my mentors at the Dearborn Indoor Racquet Club...a fellow by the name of Ted Jax. Ted may have been ex military. Both were definitely old school. What is called abuse today was merely hard nosed attitude yesterday. But what happened was just so horrific. I'll never forget picking up that newspaper in the morning and glancing at the headlines without reading further. What a jolt when later on I read the article. I felt a little sick. I'll never forget. Sort of like I'll never forget where I was when I heard Elvis died. Or when the planes hit the World Trade Centre. It leaves it's mark on you.

But thanks GMann for bringing that up. I wrote that nine years ago. What the heck...shoot me a private message about your Michigan background. I wonder if we crossed paths...or tennis racquets. Take care.

[don_budge]

Thanks for the great responses..

Well done all. Maybe I should have a mole come in to every debate and call me some form of bad name to fire up the discussion some. To the physician, no offense taken. Obviously my writing hit a sensitive nerve with you and I apologize for that. But the reality of the world we live in is not every family is The Walton's and there are no style points when confronting abuse in all its various manifestations...as a helpless young kid stuck in a car on a long drive home or even as a middle aged adult trying to communicate an experience in words in the hopes of a better understanding of some complex issues.

A special thanks to John and Tennisplayer and all of you who have shared your insights and thoughts about some pretty tough issues (stick around, there's a little happy coming next month). For those who have not been in the trenches with the sport from your earliest memories, tennis can be portrayed as one big red carpet event where everyone is happy and healthy and loves kids and puppies and can't wait to show you what's in their bag. The harsh reality for so many of us is there is a dark undercurrent running through the junior development process that my work has taken from the dark and in to the light. The goal here is not to indict tennis culture or tennis parents or my parents for that matter; tennis is hard, parenting is hard, tennis parenting is pretty tough...the goal is to learn from our mistakes and to provide a healthier environment for the next generation of kids to come.

Re a couple of the critiques about my parents and having a fuller understanding of them and how they comported themselves. First, I appreciate your manners and thoughtful word choice in your critiques, but fire away. I've been putting myself out there for a bit now and the criticism is welcome. I have enough fans, if I want to improve as a writer and a communicator, it's going to come from thoughtful critiques, so don't be bashful.

One reason my work has resonated so throughout the tennis community is what I have tried to do is give voice to the voiceless in all this junior tennis stuff. All this talk about junior player development yet a disturbing lack of input from the juniors, past or present. And one of the reasons for that is we as kids in the thick of chasing greatness as young tennis phenoms don't really have our voices yet. We can't sit Mom and Dad down when we are twelve and say "Gee Dad, when you chastise me verbally for choking away a match, that hurts my feelings and could you not do that anymore" We lack the cognitive development and the emotional maturity to put in to language how we are feeling to the experiences we are having. But don't think for one second you're not going to know how I feel about things. You just have to have your translator working in high gear.

For when I cheated, or freaked out on the court snapping rackets, or folded under the pressure, or just flat out tanked a match, or as I got a little older, starting drinking and doing what not at night in direct contrast to my desires to be a successful young tennis player, I am communicating with you loud and clear that something just ain't right with how this whole tennis thing is going.

In the nebulous world of cause and effect, we're dealing with human behavior here and it's never that cut and dry. What part was mine, what part was his...if we were a boxing match, some judges may score a round my way, others his way. What I do know is that our dynamic was very unhealthy and my peers from my era who had front row seats to much of our dysfunction have been encouraging to write my story for many many years now.

Cathartic? Sure. Difficult to write? Incredibly hard. Had to write it fast for to swim in these waters too long I would have emotionally drowned. Did I turn out alright? Hey, the physician isn't all that far off, I've had to do a lot of work trying to make sense of things that happened that just don't make a lot of sense. What does one do with such an experience? Well before the book I had committed my professional coaching life to troubleshooting the similar toxic dynamics I saw in the kids and families I taught. I would love to tell you my story is the exception in the tennis world. Disturbingly far from it. But helping save some of these kids and families from potentially harmful outcomes is some of the most gratifying work I've ever done and likely ever will. Not exactly something I wanted to be an expert at, but when you're able to effect the quality and direction of a young mans life, it makes all the struggles worthwhile.

Again, thanks for all the thoughtful responses. Much more to come in the months ahead.

Peace,

Barry Buss

This is a great example of how the forum used to be. What a wonderful thread that morphed from an article written by Barry Buss. A wonderful post here from the author. Putting it out there. 1,300 views on 16 or 17 posts. Make the Forum Great Again. MFGA!!! You can do it!

[tenniscoach1]

Everyone is in big extreme rush. Insane.

[barrybuss]

So true. In just a decade, so hard to keep up.. Appreciate you guys still trying!