I Feel Victorious Just Because I Got To Play

Sets 58-59 (of 365):

Stuart vs. M. at Northwest Park. Winner: Stuart 6-2, 6-2.

My Mojo: Above-Average, Weakened to Average Briefly, Then Back to Above-Average

Dang, it has been a long time since the weather let up enough to play tennis. I haven't been able to play since the Wednesday before last, or nine days ago. The weather has simply not let up since then. It has either been raining, or flooding torrentially, or completely iced up since the 10th of January. That is the longest that anybody in my family has nott been able to play tennis in Austin in the whole time that my kids and I have been playing tennis in Austin, probably in the last eight or nine years.

I feel fortunate that a window of dryness opened up today. I sensed it happening at around noon today and I emailed a bunch of people to see if they wanted to try to play tennis tonight. I got two takers, and one of them was M., who agreed to meet me at 5:00 p.m. at Northwest Park.

M. had a really fast serve with a good amount of spin and a very compact motion. I admire people who have really good fast serves that come from not much motion. I think to myself how fantastic their serves would be if they used more motion, but maybe it doesn't work that way. I was serving really well and held all or most of the games that I served in both sets. So I had a feeling that if I broke any of his serves that I would win. My serves were not the usual mix of styles that I usually throw in. My first serves were almost all heavy spin serves that fell deep and close to either the middle or the sideline. On my second serves, I let up on the spin and power just enough to ensure accuracy, and I think I only double-faulted twice (enough to annoy me, but acceptable, especially since I was ahead in games). The serves that I hit seemed to give me a good physical advantage and a solid offense, and on the few points when I didn't have a physical advantage, after a while I felt like I had at least a psychological advantage.

In the first set, I was pretty far ahead. I got to 5-1, and then he won a game to make it 5-2, and then I won the next game to win the set. When he won that second game, I started feeling a little insecure about my play, and my mojo dipped a little. He was ahead in the next game and I thought he was going to win it to make it 5-3. But I came back at the last minute after he had gotten to game point and I won the set.

The second set was a little tougher starting out. He served the first game and won it easily. Then we each won the games we served in the next three games to make the score 2-2. Then I broke his serve in the fifth game and was up 3-2. I won all of the games after that. I was serving with a high amount of spin consistently throughout the match. In the last game, I was up 40-15, and decided to try a hard, flat serve with just about everything I could put into it. Pow! I slammed it down the center and won the match with an ace.

The second match ended just about in the nick of time. It had started misting toward the end of the second set. It was happening in about the last three games of the second set, but was getting steadily more intense. It didn't seem to be raining, or falling out of the sky; it was as if little droplets were forming in the atmosphere around us. It was really hard on me as my glasses were getting coated with not only the mist, but also fogging up, and it was hard for me to see in the last few games. I kept trying to wipe off my glasses almost every point, but my clothing was damp, and I couldn't find dry spots to wipe them off on. Also, I had left my towel outside of my tennis backpack, and it was damp too. The mist was getting thicker and thicker. So I wouldn't have been able to see much longer, and the courts got too wet to play about a minute after our match ended. It doesn't look like the next match that I scheduled for tonight will take place, as even if it stops misting, it looks too wet outside. The sun has gone down, so there's not much potential for the courts to dry, but it looked like the mist was not going to go away anyway. Maybe a miracle will happen; we'll see.