One day last winter, Senior Editor Timothy Foote found himself playing mixed doubles with a new partner. "She was a really strong and steady player," he recalls, "but well along in the match, she began going to pieces." Foote was puzzled by her collapsing performance until she whispered to him, looking at their male opponent on the other side of the net, "He frightens me."

Fascinated by that episode of psyching, Foote began to muse on the emotional pitfalls that can undo even the steadiest of players, and decided that the subject was ripe for investigation. Since then, with the help of tennis-conscious TIME correspondents across the nation, he has been busy surveying the social phenomena of the tennis scene. The result: this week's cover story, which Foote wrote. He tries to play tennis twice a week and describes himself as "an occasional shotmaker with an indomitable will to lose."

Foote, naturally, is not the only TIME staffer to go for the net in his off-hours. New York Bureau Chief Laurence Barrett and Correspondent James Willwerth, both racquet zealots, competed in this year's press tournament at Forest Hills--though neither made the finals. Correspondent Arthur White runs and wins the annual fall tournament of TIME'S Washington bureau --with stiff competition from players like Diplomatic Editor Jerrold Schecter, who manages to get in winter practice during lulls while accompanying Henry Kissinger on trips to sunny climates. Senior Editor Leon Jaroff and International Editor Jesse Birnbaum, who celebrated their 25th anniversaries with TIME in July, both requested memberships in a tennis club instead of the traditional watch mementos. Jaroff, 49, took up tennis only six years ago, after pedaling his bicycle through Manhattan's Central Park and observing players in their 60s and 70s on the courts. "They all looked in such good shape," he explains, "that I took it up for exercise. Now it's a burning passion."

Reporter-Researcher Janice Castro, who interviewed more than 150 players, pros and psychologists for the cover story, was surprised to find that "everyone I talked with instantly recognized the sexual tensions that can occur on the tennis court." Castro, who learned the game at De Anza High School in El Sobrante, Calif., has been able to play only sporadically since moving to New York. "It's hard to find both time and money to play tennis in Manhattan," she says.

Other New York staffers have forsaken tennis for the more convenient indoor pursuits of squash, pelota or Ping Pong. But World Writer George Russell, a former Calgary, Alberta, high school badminton doubles champion, cannot convince his colleagues of the exciting nature of that sport. Says he: "Unfortunately, people consider it a pastime for the back lawn. No one believes how cutthroat it can be."

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