&gt; It&#x27;s not about being elite. I know a ton of guys in the bodybuilding community, and they basically say &quot;if I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;m going to WIN, I&#x27;m not even going to start.&quot;<p>Yeah, this is a trap. I actually enjoy the training, as long as I&#x27;m seeing some progress.<p>&gt; When I compete in sports, I compete to have fun, make friends, and compete to NOT GET LAST PLACE.<p>I&#x27;m not interested in the social aspect at all, for better or worse. In part this is because I&#x27;ve seen social &#x2F; club players fail to improve because of bad habits they pick up and reinforce during social play. My parents spent a bunch of money on training, but I also picked up a lot of bad habits due to incorrect technique from parental coaching.<p>I should say that for me the sweetest moment is after hitting an ace, a winner, or running down a ball I didn&#x27;t think I could get. It&#x27;s not necessarily about the win, but about the perfect shot, the sweet feeling of it, the sound of it, the smell of the ball, etc. So, that&#x27;s definitely something I can still enjoy.<p>I spent some time this fall solo-practicing against a ball-machine and watching Roger Federer videos on Youtube. My backhand is better than it&#x27;s been at any point in my development.<p>I think it&#x27;s important to aim for excellence, not just competence, because I see many players&#x27; development limited by basically not taking the sport seriously.<p>But of course, what ever makes you happy. My cruel task-master is that excellence makes me happy.<p>So overall, very positive. The core of the regret is more like -- huh, if I had realized how to study &#x2F; train systematically ten-twenty years ago I could be on a different trajectory.