Squeezing in a Speed Set

Sets 55-57 (of 365):

E. vs. Stuart at South Austin. Winner: Stuart 6-4, 6-0, 6-1

My Mojo: Steady to Steadier

I was getting a bit annoyed for arriving late. I had given myself what I thought was more than enough time to get there, but the traffic on the freeway was really bad. We were stuck behind an accident and the road was barely creeping along. The ride on the freeway, probably only about six miles, took over half an hour. Luckily it started clearing up right before the exit I had to take and I was at the tennis center within five minutes of getting off the freeway.

E. was very gracious about my lateness and accepting of my apologies. I was only about eight minutes late, but I usually am early or right on time, so it was really out of character for me. The first set was the toughest one for me as my shots were a little bit jerky and stiff. I got trapped by a lot of angle shots and winners. His serve throughout the match was a really good mix of shots. I never knew exactly what was coming at me. I think he was really good at reading my stance too, because if I would ease back, it seemed like I got serves that were close to the net with a lot of spin, but if I would move in, then I would get really hard serves to the back of the box an the end that I was least prepared to return from. He won the first game of the first set, then I won the next two, then he won the next one, and we tracked each other pretty well until the end, when I broke out. And it wasn't just each of us holding serve either, it seemed like there was a good mix of winning by holding serve and by breaking the other's serve from each of us.

But in the second set, I loosened up a lot, and started moving more fluidly, both in my footwork and my strokes. This made me more accurate and made it easier for me to play offense. I won the second set a lot easier than I had the first and won all of the games, though some of them were close.

We only had twenty minutes left, and I asked him if he wanted to hit some more or play another set. Of course, I wanted to play another set so I could count it toward my goal. Luckily, he was hot to play another set too. I think we both knew we would have to have a pretty speedy pace if we were going to squeeze a set into twenty minutes. I was also trying to win as many points as possible so we could get done with the set and I could count it. We played at a pretty fast pace, serving second serves right after first serves, though it seemed like we got a higher percentage of first serves in. And we were both trying to cut off points rather than keep them going. I was still playing very fluidly, maybe even more so than in the second match. After five games, I was up 4-1. I called the ball out on one that I thought was barely outside the line on the point that would have made it 5-1 for me. He said if the set wasn't over (a mistake, it would have only been 5-1, not 6-1), he would challenge it. I said, what the heck, I'd give him the point. He put up a weak protest, but I insisted. I just wanted to play some more and bring it in closer to the timeline. So it was deuce instead of my game. We played a lot of points after that, and I squeaked out winning the game. The last game was very back-and-forth too, and went back and forth from deuce to ad a lot. The last three ads were mine, and I finally won match point. I looked at my watch and it was 6:59--we had the court until 7! We had barely squeaked in another set. Yee-haw!