In heaven we shall play tennis

Yes, surprisingly, Vladimir Nabokov was a serious tennis enthusiast. He was not a professional player, but tennis appears throughout his life and fiction. He played regularly, especially in Europe and later in America, and several biographers note that he continued playing well into middle age. Tennis scenes and imagery appear in works such as Lolita, where courts, matches, and tennis culture are recurring motifs.

As for the line:

“In heaven we shall be playing ball”

that is usually associated not with Nabokov but with the American poet and essayist John Berryman. The fuller quotation often appears as:

“In heaven we shall be playing tennis.”

or in some versions,

“In heaven we shall be playing baseball.”

Berryman used the image as a metaphor for an afterlife where the joys of earthly play continue. The exact wording varies because it has been quoted and paraphrased many times.

There is an interesting Nabokov connection, though. Nabokov believed deeply in play—not merely games, but artistic play, puzzles, patterns, and sport. In a 1925 speech he remarked that “everything in the world plays.”   So the sentiment “in heaven we shall be playing ball” feels very Nabokovian even if it is not his quotation.

Given your interest in tennis, you might appreciate that Nabokov often treated tennis as more than a sport. In his writing it can symbolize grace, timing, geometry, and the strange combination of competition and beauty—qualities he also valued in literature.

Are you perhaps thinking of the famous Berryman line:

“The point of life is the enjoyment of exquisite emotions. To play tennis in heaven.”

Or the more commonly quoted:

“In heaven we shall play tennis”?

Those are the phrases most often connected to literature and tennis.