Consistency Wins It For Me

Sets 126-127 (of 365):

Stuart vs. M. at Northwest Park. Winner: Stuart 6-4, 7-5.

My Mojo: Steady

I was not too unhappy with my performance today. I still was not playing with the greatest form, but it was hugely improved from the past few days in which I was moderately disgusted with myself. My strategy was good and my placement was above average but my anticipation could have been a little better. All in all, it wasn't too bad.

M. was a pretty good player. I think he was a little bit better technician than me, but my level of conditioning is probably a little bit better. So it made for a good match in which each of us had different strengths and weaknesses. In both sets, he started out ahead, but I crept up steadily. One difference for me in this match was that I ended up leaning on my old serve to bring me ahead instead of bringing out the new serve. It wasn't that I didn't play the new serve, it was just that he seemed to have an easier time dealing with it than with my old serve. My old serve is like a trick, whereas the new serve is solid. The only thing is, if a player doesn't know how to deal with that particular trick, it works well. So he had a little bit of a hard time dealing with my tricky little gunpowder flash serve, and it was enough to give me momentum during a lot of the points I served.

He hit his ground strokes with solidity and topspin, and seemed to have a knack for breaking out with winners right when Iwas badly positioned, especially when he was at the net. But I just stayed consistent. Toward the end, his body language was telling me that he was tired, and so I just tried to keep consistent and minimize errors. I think he was trying for the same strategy, since he stopped whizzing fast topspin shots across the net as often as he had been previously. But in the end, I think I just made less errors than he did in the last few games, and I won the match.

"Actually, as a kid I wanted to be a tennis player, but I wasn't good enough, so I became an actor. Since then, I've just been lip-locking with gorgeous babes. So, let that be a lesson to all you little tennis players out there." --Matthew Perry

Drifting Into Tentative Times

Sets 124-125 (of 365):

Stuart vs. S. Winner: Stuart 6-2, 6-1.

My Mojo: Below-Average to Average

I was getting the ball over, and I was placing it acceptably sometimes, but I was really unhappy with my form, and I was hitting the ball really tentatively. I shouldn't complain, because I did well enough to win, but I didn't step into the ball, didn't hit with topspin, didn't get placed well enough, and was completely unsatisfied with how I was playing. I seem to drift it and out of good form over time. It's not really like I'm plateauing, it's more like I'm oscillating. I think I need to work on getting my mental state more focused and work also on not tightening up too much during the game. Maybe, though, working on both of those things is an oxymoron; I need to relax into them instead.

S. had a really hard serve that utilized the right form, but his energy was directed toward trying to hit the ball as hard as he could on the serve, and it seemed like he didn't exert as much energy toward placement as toward power, so his first serve was very low-percentage. But when it went in, it was definitely a point-shaping force. He made a lot of errors whereby he hit the ball long trying to hit the back line. We had a lot of good rallies, but I think I just made less errors. Even though I was unhappy with my form, I was only making a few more errors than usual. I just was not placing well or hitting confidently like I usually do. I definitely need to get it together soon because against a better opponent this type of play will just kill me.

"An otherwise happily married couple may turn a mixed doubles game into a scene from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." --Rod Laver

Ugly And Pitiful

Group Lesson at Pharr (8 of 10):

My Mojo: Crap

I felt like burnt weenie tonight. I don't think I hit hardly anything right. It's hard to predict when I'm going to be feeling great and when I'm going to be feeling crappy. Sometimes I play two matches in one day and wish I had scheduled a third right afterwards because I feel invulnerable. And other times I can barely get through one match and I still have one or two left to drag my crippled body through. Today my game was rhinoceros diarrhea. 'Nuff said. I'm going to bed.

Moving Around A Lot, But Playing A Successful Offense

Sets 122-123 (of 365):

Stuart vs. D. at Hill Country Middle School. Winner: Stuart 6-1, 6-2.
Ladder Match #11

My Mojo: Average to Above-Average

We tried to play at Westlake High School, but their team was playing there, so we could not get on the courts. Man, those kids are good. I hear Westlake High has one of the best tennis teams in the country, if not the best. I'm sure they are better than some college teams. Those tennis balls were just burning across the net on those courts. And the courts are really nice too, though I am somewhat surprised that they don't have lights there.

So when we realized there was no way we were going to get a court, we headed down the street to Hill Country Middle School. They have two pretty nice courts there. Both of them were in use when we drove up, but we were in luck; one pair of players was just finishing up as we got out of our cars and walked down to the courts.

The weather was just gorgeous. It was probably high 60s or low 70s with just a hint of a breeze every once in a while. D. came on strong at first, but he seemed to have some trouble with his serve that allowed me to play offensively to my advantage. Also, I was able reliably to place my serve almost every time according to where he was standing. Some of the time he decided to stand right behind the service line to receive my serve. I had never seen anyone do that before. That just seems too close to me. So when he started doing that, I just started serving my new serve really hard and flat. After a few of those, he moved back to near the base line again. But then I was surprised to see him move back to mid-court again toward the end of the second set.

He varied the pace a lot, but I was able to keep up with his variations. It also seemed like he had me running more than most players do. I was winded and hardly able to catch my breath between points, as he was moving me around the court a lot, both from side to side and in and out. Though he was hitting to places that I had to travel to, I was able to get there most of the time and get the shots back, usually with pretty good placement. Of course, there were certainly some points that he dominated on, but it seemed like I took the lead on most of them. I felt like I was able to get more offense in than I have been getting lately. I was never in much danger in either set and won handily.

After we finished our match, we ran into a tennis friend of my daughter, M., and her mother. She had played several matches with my daughter in tournaments a couple of summers ago, and also went to a birthday party sleepover my daughter had at Barton Creek Resort. I hadn't seen them in a while, and they sent their regards to my daughter. And later that day, I ran into my friend K. at a bookstore. It was good to see her also as I had not seen her in a really long time. We chatted for a little while to catch up, and then exchanged our latest info.

And, woo-hoo! I've gotten past one-third of my goal of 365 sets...I am way ahead of schedule, but I'll probably need to be ahead to cope with unanticipated tragic events up the river.

"Why has slamming a ball with a racquet become so obsessive a pleasure for so many of us? It seems clear to me that a primary attraction of the sport is the opportunity it gives to release aggression physically without being arrested for felonious assault." --Nat Hentoff

An Implosion Before My Match (Literally)

Sets 120-121 (of 365):

Stuart vs. D. at Connally High. Winner: Stuart 6-2, 6-3.

My Mojo: Average

I'm doing pretty well toward my goal, I think. I thought I would get 100 sets by the end of this month for sure and maybe 110 if I pushed it, but I'm past 120 now, and I just set another match for later today.

This morning my daughter and I got up early to watch them blow up the Intel building. My daughter said the night before that she wanted to see it, so I said I would get her up early to go there. I had a match set for 9 a.m., and with the demolition set for 7, I figured we'd be able to make it. When we got downtown, it seemed that just about all the parking close by was taken, so we had to park about a mile away. We barely got there before 7, but it worked out OK, because they didn't end up imploding it until around 7:45 anyway. There were a huge amount of people down there checking it out. Since it happened so late, and since I told her we would get bagels afterward, I barely had time to get her back home, get my wallet (which I had forgotten, and I had been driving around without my license), and get to the north end of town to play tennis.

I got there with about five minutes to spare, and my opponent was there just a couple minutes after me. Most of the courts were taken, but I was able to grab one. In the first set, he took an early lead, winning the first two games, but I won all six after that. I was throwing in the new serve occasionally (at least some of the components of it that I could handle--I'm trying to ease in parts of it at a time), but falling back on Old Reliable when I got behind. I am starting to understand that while my old serve is a nice trick against those who are not prepared for it, when I play a really good player, it is totally inadequate and I do better with the new one. But right now, my old serve gets in the box more often, so I fall back on it when I feel I need to.

In the second set, he seemed to put up more of a fight, and he came to the net more successfully. He was up for the first part of the set, but after I brought it up to 3-3, I won the rest of the games after that and took the match.

"When I was 40, my doctor advised me that a man in his 40s shouldn't play tennis. I heeded his advice carefully and could hardly wait until I reached 50 to start again." --Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black

In With The Wind

Sets 118-119 (of 365):

Stuart vs. A. at Northwest Park. Winner: Stuart 6-2, 6-1
Alternate Ladder Match #2

My Mojo: Fighting The Wind, Doing OK

It was incredibly windy today. A. won the first two games and then didn't win any more in the first set and only one in the second set. It seemed like he was having a harder time with the wind than I was, even though I was getting frustrated with what seemed like a third player in our match. He got in a few winners on me, though, when he was able to cut through the wind, and he had this serve that I had a hard time dealing with. It wasn't especially hard or tricky, it just seemed to pop right into my body every time, so I ended up returning it from really awkward positions every time. I was just trying to stay afloat and hit shots that made it within the lines, which was hard enough in the wind. On one side, I had to tap it lightly to avoid sending the ball long, and on the other, I had to hit it high enough to not go into the net. It was a delicate balancing act, but I ended up able to read the wind well enough to get on top for most of the match.

"But that [a two-handed backhand shot] won't give me a free hand to hold the beer!" --Billy Carter

I Played OK, But Couldn't Break Through

Sets 116-117 (of 365):

Stuart vs. S. at Harris Branch. Winner: S. 6-0, 7-6(5).

My Mojo: Average to Above-Average

I felt like I played pretty well, but I just got badly outplayed. In the first set it was not even a contest. I was just playing in an average fashion, and was not able to get any shots in that would advance my strategy. I was just getting walloped in point after point. Then in the second set, I started concentrating on eliminating my errors and hitting strategically. This worked a lot better for me, but was not enough to win the set. I was hoping to squeak by in the second set and get to a third, but that just didn't come to pass. His shots were not terribly hard, but were very accurate and executed with good strategy in mind. Also, the power of his serve varied a lot so I never knew what was coming at me. I tried the new serve that I had been working on and in many cases it worked well, blazing across the net, but he was able to return most of them. In a few points I was able to get control of the point through my serve, but on the whole, I was playing defensively.

"You know you are playing too much tennis when there are holes in your walls from hitting tennis balls in your house."--Anonymous

Can't Get It Together

Sets 114-115 (of 365):

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

My Mojo: Below-Average

I have not been able to get it together for the past few matches. My focus has been dissipating and my concentration has not been good. In this match, I didn't feel like anything I did was working. I have to give opponent credit also for playing really well. He rarely failed to anticipate, set up and return just about any shot that I hit to him. His net game was not just a wall, it was an army garrison. I could not get anything happening at all and simply got outplayed both matches. He was tremendously effective with his lobs when I came up to net also. But I kept coming up to net when it was not justified--many times I had hit him high shots that he had plenty of time to respond to. At one point I ran into the fence trying to get a high lob and ended up with blood blisters below the nails on two fingers as a result. I also suspect that he was being quite generous on some of his line calls--I saw some that I thought for sure had gone out but that he did not call out. It made me feel almost guilty when I saw some balls go out by less than half an inch and I called them out, but I definitely saw space between the balls and the lines on any that I called, and tried to make the fairest calls I could. Also, my ear infections seem to be continuing in both ears, even though I keep working on my ears with hydrogen peroxide and alcohol.

"The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how good I get, I'll never be as good as a wall." --Mitch Hedberg

Nausea Takes Over

Sets 112-113 (of 365):

Stuart vs. D. at Northwest Park. Winner: Stuart 6-3, 6-2.

My Mojo: Sideways, Ready To Barf At The End

It was really windy today. We played at Northwest Park, and I told D. about the high net on the third court. He pointed out that the second court was even higher than the third court, though it did have a restraint in the middle. Heck, I don't know, and I don't care. I just play and don't think much about the net height. We started out playing on the first court, but moved to the fourth court because the wind was blowing so hard, it was blowing all the balls that fell on the ground to the fourth court anyway. And nobody was playing on any of the other courts at first, except for a guy and girl on the fourth court who were just leaving when we got there.

In the first set, we kept pace until one game in which I broke his serve, and then I broke it again to win the set. There was not much room for strategy other than to try to keep the ball in the court. On one side, it was really easy to hit it long, so I was trying to soft-pedal the ball and put more spin on it. But it kept going out anyway. On the other side, it was easier to control the rallies and wait for the opponent to hit it out.

Geez, I don't know what it is about me and getting nauseated during tennis matches. In the middle of the second set, I felt like my stomach was about to empty its contents. We got to 2-2, and then I started feeling sick, but I won all the rest of the games. I don't know if I could have played another game. My opponent started coming to net more in the second set, and it seemed like that helped him some, although the wind was making both of us have a lot of errors. I was too sick to try coming to net much, but I did do it a few times, and some of them were successful. In the last game, I got to match point twice, and both times, I just felt sicker than I had felt up to those points, and barely able to stand. It consumed me during the first match point, and I could not make it through the point. My opponent made an error on the second match point, and if I had to keep going, I don't know if I would have been able to summon up the strength, or if I just would have thrown up on the court.

I came home and did some bentonite, activated charcoal and psyllium, and drank a bunch of water. I hope it helps. Also, I'm starting to get an ear infection again--this time in my right ear. It seems to keep creeping back in my left ear, but this is the first time it has hit my right ear. Ugh. More alcohol and hydrogen peroxide. And I should probably ice down some soreness too. I'm just a complete medical case right now. Maybe I'll skip the group lessons at Pharr tonight.

Playing With A High Net?

Sets 110-111 (of 365):

Stuart vs. R. at Northwest Park. Winner: Stuart 6-2, 6-0.

My Mojo: Average

We played on the third court at Northwest Park, and the thing that holds the center of the net down seemed to be pulled out of the ground, so the net may have been a little high. My opponent seemed agitated by this though I didn't even notice it until he brought it to my attention. I figure I just play with whatever conditions are there; if the net is seven feet high, then I'll figure out a way to serve, and at least we have equal disadvantages. Well, seven feet high is probably an exaggeration, but I have dealt with much crappier courts. So the net was probably a couple of inches high, and all of the other courts were taken the who time we were playing, which is unusual.

So neither of us really blasted our serves in. Maybe it was psychological for me once he had brought it up, but my serves didn't seem to do what I wanted when I put power on them, so I quit trying to power serve. Still, it was a good exercise for me, because it meant that the game almost completely was dependent on ground strokes. R. told me later that he usually tried to set the tone with his serves, and it really threw his game off not being able to rely on his usual serve. I felt like my serve was reliably in for the most part, but still felt a little bit of the unfocused game that I have been feeling the last few days. It didn't seem as bad during this match, though. I did notice that I was hitting a lot of shots long, but my errors didn't seem too bad.

Another Three-Setter Hard Fought

Sets 107-109 (of 365):

Stuart vs. S. at His Apartments. Winner: S. 6-2, 6-7(8), 6-4.

My Mojo: Scattered

I simply feel like I have not been able to get it together mentally for the last few days. Maybe I'm getting to "tennis burnout." For now, I think I'll try to play through it, but if it gets really bad, I might take a break.

In this match, I had a hard time pulling together my mental state to get any kind of planning done during points. I was mostly reacting rather than calling the shots, but then again, playing defensively is something I do well, though I'm not particularly happy with it. There were a lot of games that he won without me getting a point in, and it didn't seem like I did the same thing. It seemed like both of us got un-calibrated at times, that is, our bodies would get changing circumstances, and then it would take some time to re-tune to those circumstances. He said that he had hurt his back a little bit so his shots were a little different, so he was readjusting to deal with that. And I seemed to get my muscles moving around in ways that changed my shots too, and then I would re-tune as well. So it seemed that then each of us would re-calibrate, and get a few games in a row in.

I noticed also that I was calling a lot of shots just a tiny bit early, and I was having to change calls from "out" to "in" because of this. This was bugging me and I was trying not to do it, but I did eventually make the fairest calls that I could, and it didn't seem like he missed hitting any because of my calls. I would have probably given him the chance to play the point over on a let or hindrance if he did mishit because he thought I had called a shot out. I don't seem to do this with other people, but S. seems to get a lot of shots that just go seriously close to the lines and look like they will be out for sure, both back and wide, but then float down right on the line. Maybe I do call other people's shots early too but it doesn't make a difference, because they are closer to being out.

For the first set, I was not focused at all. I just got a lot of passing shots that came by me, and it was frustrating me a lot. I did manage to get a couple of games in, and I thought that if the whole match went like this, I would just lose in a really lopsided fashion.

But I managed to hang on by the skin of my teeth in the second set. We kept pace with each other through the set to get to a tiebreak, and I just barely whistled by in the tiebreak. He wasn't getting me on as many down-the-line shots as the last time I played him, but he was still getting a few in.

In the last set, he seemed to hit a lot of slice shots that looked like they were going to be drop shots, but then sailed longer than I thought they would to land in the back of the court. These shots usually came right at me so I had trouble judging the depth. I would run up for them thinking that they would fall right over the net, and then by the time I realized that they were going longer than that, it was too late, and they would either fall at my feet where I would be out of position, or behind me. I was getting nailed on a lot of these. Though I kept pace with him for the first part of the set and got to 4-4, he won the next two games to bring it to 6-4 and I lost the match.

Finally, A Win

Sets 105-106 (of 365):

Stuart vs. A. at Pharr. Winner: Stuart 6-4, 6-0.
Alternate Ladder Match #1

My Mojo: Decent, But Nothing Special

I found another ladder on the web. This one doesn't seem to be as popular locally as the other one, but there are a few players there. It is also national, whereby the other one is just confined to Austin.

We had agreed to meet in Patterson Park, and I was waiting there, but he called and said he would be about ten minutes late. Then he called again and said he was stuck in traffic. He ended up getting there about thirty minutes late and going to Pharr instead, which was across the street from Patterson. I could have considered the match forfeited under the rules of the ladder, but I wanted to play, so I just forgave the lateness. But he didn't want to play at Patterson; he didn't like the courts there. I told him we would have to pay to play at Pharr and he hadn't been aware of that. Luckily, Pharr was about to close, so A. (not the A. I was playing, but the A. who worked at Pharr) let us play for free. Since we had limited time, we agreed to play no-ad scoring.

A. had a great serve with a lot of power and kick, and hit most of his shots with a lot of topspin. But he didn't score the games in the conventional way. Instead of saying "forty-love," he would say "three to zero." I was standing about five feet behind the baseline just to be able to return his serve, and I missed a lot of them at first. And he didn't vary them, but just put a lot of punch into them, because if he had thrown in some soft ones, I would have been screwed standing that far back. But that was the only way I could figure out to get them. So he hits great serves, and good topspin groundshots, but doesn't score the game right, and doesn't qute know how to changeover at the end of sets. And he doesn't know that the local tennis centers usually charge money to play. I'm thinking, where did this guy come from?

We had a tough first set that I won 6-4. Each of us won the games we served up to 4-4, and then I broke his serve toward the end and won. I think I figured out how to deal with his power game a little better in the second set, plus he started making a few more errors. I won the next set 6-0, even though we did have some hard-fought games. Since we were playing no-ad, we didn't have games that went back and forth from deuce to ad, but I bet we would have if we had been playing conventional scoring.

Not Good Enough

Sets 102-104 (of 365):

Stuart vs. G. at Travis Country. Winner: G. 2-6, 6-3, 6-4.
Ladder Match #10

My Mojo: Struggling

Today I felt like I had to fight really hard to get any points at all. Though the score was lopsided in the first set, it was still a tough contest. The difference was that my serve was working for me. In the next couple of sets, I think he got more used to my serve and my game and was able to edge me out.

Also, whenever I moved to the sunny side of the court, I could not see at all when I was serving, especially on the deuce side, because the sun was right in my eyes. I ended up serving from the far side of the court on the deuce side, like a doubles serve, just to try to get an angle where I was out of the sun. And on the ad side, I just served weakly. I won very few of these points on the sunny side.

I have noticed that sometimes when the sun is in my eyes, it really bothers me, and sometimes I hardly notice it. But when it is bothering me, I can hardly figure out what to do about it, and I usually lose. I haven't figured out the cause-and-effect direction yet, though; I don't know whether I get bothered because my game is struggling, or my game is struggling because I get bothered. Either way, it sucks when it doesn't work. I can't put all the fault on my inability to deal with the sun, though, as my strokes were tentative and my placement was not good. An a lot of my edge shots seemed to be going out, which is a sign of a lost cause unless I can figure out how to pull it together. So I lost my second match in a row, after having that hot streak.

A New Group Lesson

Group Lesson with K. at Pharr:

My Mojo: Below-Average

I was really filled with malaise today. Nothing seemed to work right for me at all. At the beginning of the lesson, I wasn't hitting anything right and nothing seemed to be working for me. Plus, that serve that I've been practicing (I practiced it for an hour before this lesson) seemed to just bomb every time I tried it. As the lesson progressed, I was hitting a little better but still just barely getting to everything and hitting weak returns. I was just bottomed-out by the end.

Deconstructing My Serve

Private Lesson with K. at Pharr:

My Mojo: Eyes Wide Open, Soaking It All In

Today we worked on my serve and basically rebuilding it from the ground up. K. is trying to get me to use what he calls a "pro serve." So I am working on getting my legs to give me more power on the ball when I serve, and changing some of the motions I do when I am serving. I practiced this over and over until it started feeling a little more natural. I can tell I am going to have to practice this a lot to get it down, but I think I have the mechanics of the basic movements down. Toward the end of the lesson, I was a little burned out on practicing this one thing over and over again, so we worked on ground strokes for the last few minutes. He gave me some minor adjustments to my grip and follow-through that I felt immediately.

My Streak Is Broken

Sets 99-101 (of 365):

Stuart vs. S. at His Apartments. Winner: S. 4-6, 6-3, 6-0.

My Mojo: Fighting Hard, Deflating Toward The End

Well, this guy finally broke my streak. I think that I had won twelve matches in a row before this one. I started out pretty good. In the first set, I was anticipating well, I was placing well, my serves were really on (though he was returning them fairly consistently), and was doing what I needed to do to win the set. There were some alarm bells for me, though. Like I said, he was returning my serves with good placement almost every time. And he had this killer down-the-line backhand from his add court to my deuce court that nailed me almost every time and hit right in the corner just on the inside of the line. And his strokes were powerful and consistent. Of course, I allowed my overconfidence to just ignore these warning signals. After all, I had just won the first set. I got ahead 4-2 and then just had to make par to win, which I did.

The second set started getting a little more difficult. He told me later that he started reading my game and started adjusting his play to my style, which at the time (and throughout the match) was to vary the pace and hit to different areas of the court. He said he had a hard time with me because I did not keep pace like most players do. Most players will try to keep a powerful cross-court rally going and then look for opportunities for approach shots, drop shots and down-the-line surprises. In this match, I was constantly just trying to put the ball in a surprising place, and then get the opponent off-balance so I can take control of the point. Worked great the first set. But after that, he started varying to try for placement rather than power; in other words, he started doing more of what I had been doing.

I got down 4-2 in the second set and was not able after that to focus enough to win. Also, after this I started having to play defense more than offense, which I am normally pretty good at. But it didn't seem to work out as well for me this time. I only won one game in the match from then on, though we did have a few games in which we went from deuce to ad several times.

In the third set, his backhand down-the-line zinger was coming more and more often as he got more confident with his game and his risks could pay off for him. This was such an effective shot because his body gave me almost no clue it was coming. Usually I can read cues in a player's body to who me where they are going to hit. In this case, his positioning looked about the same for the down-the-line shot as it did for the cross-court shot. He also occasionally had a pretty effective long pop-up slice that looked, when he hit it, like it would be a drop shot. I ran up for a couple of those only to have to backpedal rapidly and have the ball drop right at my feet in no-man's-land. Perhaps it would have been more effective for me to try to take those as midcourt volleys. As his game consolidated, mine fell apart. All my money shots were hitting just out. All my winners and offensive lobs were going a little long or wide. And that was the linchpin of how my game just fell apart. If they had been going in, I could have possibly built a more confident structure around that. But since I couldn't rely on my money shots, I didn't pull a coherent plan together. And my anticipation and positioning were not coming together as well and my timing seemed to be a little off. I just could not get it together for a single game in that last set, and lost 6-0.

On Trying To Find Other Tennis Blogs, and Attention Flowing Upstream

I have been looking for other blogs that are similar to mine. That is, where people are chronicling their play as they muddle through games that are...well, let's say...less than professional quality. And they are awfully hard to find. I'm sure they are out there, but I don't know how to find them. Every time I search for "tennis blog," I find tons of blogs in which people talk about professional tennis players, but no amateurs and hardly any philosophy. And I can find an occasional blog in which there may be a post about someone's amateur tennis experiences, but the blog itself is more general. And then there's the video about how to unlock your car using a tennis ball. That seems to pop up everywhere.

I can't even find my own blog in searches unless I put in a term that will guarantee I find it, like "irreverent," "frivolous" or "Stuart," which are all in the title and unique enough to bring up my blog in a search. This seems to be a symptom of a bigger problem on the Internet, and our society in general. Everything is geared around making a buck. It doesn't matter how heinous or offensive whatever is done is, as long as it brings in cash, it's valid. So porn and big-box retailers are the ideal. Drug dealers are kings (and in some countries, have even replaced social welfare programs). Politics is not about what benefits the people, it is about where the waterfalls of moolah lead the current of the river.

The way it looks to me, society is built on enormous rivers of cash. If someone builds a canal on the side to divert this river, the cash flows their way. Nothing else matters, not integrity, or human relationships, or a sense of historical community, or anything else that has traditionally been important among people. Our mythologies have all been replaced by television and Disneyland, in other words, fed to us by large corporate entities. Nobody has any sense of kinship with anyone else in this society, we are all just Mouseketeers on a real-life version of the Mickey Mouse Club. Try this. I dare you to try to find a radio station where the DJ says things like, "Hey, Sarah down the street brought in this CD of her song, and we all thought it sounded pretty good, so here it is--hope you all like it too." Yeah, right. Not even on public or community radio. Maybe in some corners of the Internet that hardly anyone looks at.

And as there are rivers of cash, there are rivers of attention. And these have all been diverted in ways that are exceedingly more and more perverse. The attention is all running uphill. We as a people are all giving our attention to movie stars, to sports figures, to pop icons and even celebrities who are celebrated for nothing else other than being celebrities. And in the background, the rich get richer, the middle class evaporates, the homeless and hungry grow but must be hidden out of sight, and nobody cares. It's all because the rivers of attention have been diverted. We are all sending our cash and attention to the people who need it the least, and building bigger castles for those who already have castles. And at the same time, the people at the bottom can just sort of die and/or disappear. But please be sure to make it pleasant for the rest of us. Because we won't do anything about anything unless it involves our cable TV being turned off. Then we just might open our eyes.

OK, so I got a little off track. I was just talking about my difficulties in finding other blogs run by the little guy. I have a hard time because the money and attention runs the other way. Maybe I can't swim fast enough to beat the current, so I'll just have to find massive flippers. So I'll keep on wading through hundreds of misfires to find one or two voices crying out in the wilderness. I'll keep panning the acres of sand to find tiny nuggets of gold.

My Opponents Are Lucky, And I Passed A Milestone

I was just thinking about how lucky any opponent who plays me is. Usually, when you are playing someone, you have no idea about their mental state, the kinds of things they think about, and how they usually feel when they are playing. If you haven't played someone before, you probably know nothing about their style of play or the habits they tend to fall back on. And even if you have, you usually don't have the benefit of seeing your opponent play hundreds of games, unless you know them REALLY well.

But that's exactly what my opponents have here. I write down everything I can think about that I think was important about every match. They can come here and find out about my style, how I mix things up, what I think about, and everything about me when I play tennis. Does that give them an advantage that I don't have for them? Maybe. But that's the boat I've put myself in--at least through the end of the year.

And, I just passed a milestone. I've passed more than one-fourth of my goal. Already. And it's not even the end of February yet. Of course, I did start a little early. Maybe I'll actually do it in 365 days,which means that I would finish by mid-November rather than the end of the year. But that's a long way off. A lot could happen between now and then. So I'll just focus on what I am trying to accomplish, and leave it in the hands of fate.

Unflappable and Unassailable

Sets 97-98 (of 365):

Stuart vs. C. at Northwest Park. Winner: Stuart 6-1, 6-0.
Ladder Match #9

My Mojo: Confident and Serene

This weekend, I was so frazzled when I was playing. I was tense, angry and tentative. So today I decided to try something a little different.

I remember reading about experiments with meditation in which they sent people to different cities to meditate, and the crime rate went down. Just because there were people who raised the serenity level in their surroundings, the behavior of other people was affected in a positive way, supposedly. Now these are anectodal studies, and I am an eternal skeptic, but people who meditate have tons of stories like this to tell you. Proponents will be happy to tell you about how meditation will lower your blood pressure, help you meet goals in life, make you a happier person, etc.

Like I said, I take all of this with a grain of salt. So today, when I was looking for a different approach, I came home from work, turned off as much external stimulation as I could (no TV, no music, etc.), and just sat down and concentrated (if you can call it that, it was more relaxing) with my eyes shut. I tuned out everything around me and just tried to increase the peacefulness within me. After a while, I became vaguely conscious of my breathing, my heartbeat, and the ambient sounds around me, though I was not really focusing on them. I can't really say what I was focusing on, but it was tranquil.

After about twenty minutes of this, I got in my car and left for the site with enough time to get there early no matter what the traffic was like. I didn't feel rattled by little indignities in traffic, I just felt a vague sense of peace. I got to the site, started to play, and with the exception of an anomalous first game...

Wow.

First, the anomalous first game. Every single point in the game was a major error. For about the first ten points of the game, either my opponent double faulted, or I failed to return his serve. This didn't make me angry or anything, though, I just saw it as kind of goofy and I started laughing about it more and more as it went on. Then we got a couple of rallies going, but each point was still ended with an error. I don't even remember who won...it didn't really seem to matter to me much.

Then, after that, I was almost on top of everything. I felt completely calm and, excuse the cliche, "one with the tennis ball." I got to just about everything that he hit, and placed almost everything exactly where I wanted to put it. My anticipation was great and it was though the points were happening in slow motion. I got to almost everything except for a few absolute winners that he hit. He won only one game the whole match. Many of the games I won were shutouts where he didn't get any points. We did get to a few games where we went to deuce and ad, but I don't think there were any really long games where it went back and forth from deuce to ad a lot. He was playing really well at first but started making more and more errors as the match went on, and he seemed more and more frustrated by not being able to break through.

This was a ladder match and I have won both ladder matches for this round (other than the challenge match which I still have ahead of me) so I should move up on the ladder. The match ended really quickly and I wished I could play another match. Boy, was that a far cry from this weekend, where I had to work on myself really hard to get in shape and perspective to play again. It's hard to know ahead of time how you are going to feel, though...I'm hesitant to schedule a lot of matches in the evenings after work because I don't want to get into a mental state like I did this weekend.

Not Too Bad

Group Lesson at Pharr with R. and K. (7 of 10):

My Mojo: Above-Average

I felt like I was hitting pretty solidly today. One exception was my running backhand. I was landing all of those with weak placement for a while, and just when I felt like I was starting to get the form right, we stopped the exercise. Ugh. Later we played singles king of the court with the four best players in the class, and I did not do too bad. At first, I was a bit tensed up, but after a few points, I loosened up and made it to the king side a decent amount of the time and was able to hold for several points.

All Wins May Not Be The Same

A few weeks ago, I had told my coach, R., that I had beat a really good player but had barely squeaked it out. He told me that there is no such thing as barely winning and that a win is a win. I accepted that and it made me feel like I had accomplished a little more.

But since then, I have come to realize there are some differences between matches with close scores and matches with lopsided scores. Not only can there be a difference it how it affects your psychology, but there can be a difference in how it affects your body. After I won the match that I told R. about, it took so much out of me (it was the third match of four that I played in a tournament) that I was too exhausted and scattered to win my next match. If I had won easily, I might have had a different result in my next match. Or at least I would have had a better chance of winning if I didn’t feel as spent.

Also, on the ladder, matches with lopsided scores like 6-1, 6-0 will move you up much higher than matches with close scores or matches that go three sets. In the first round I played on the ladder, I won two matches, won a challenge against a player ten rungs higher than me, and won against a player who was a lot lower than me who challenged me. So I moved up ten rungs. In the second round, I once again beat both players on my rung, challenged a guy ten rungs up, and won all of them. So I expected to move up ten rungs. Another player on the ladder had told me that if I won both my regular matches and the challenge match, that I would move to the rung of the player I had challenged. So I expected to move up ten rungs again. But I didn’t; I only moved up one rung. When I asked the ladder coordinator why that happened, he told me that I had won with close scores rather than lopsided results so there was no blowout score that he could use to move me up higher. Also, he had mistakenly placed the guy I challenged about ten rungs too high.

Now, is that fair to consider a match with a lopsided score as qualitatively better than one that is close? Well, I’ve been told that the USTA does the same thing when evaluating whether a player in an NTRP leagues should be moved up. If a 4.0 player is beating other players easily, they will tell him he needs to move up to 4.5, or so I’ve been told. And now that I know that the ladder works that way, it’s hard for me to say it’s not fair because the results of the matches are being evaluated by the rules that are in place.

I do think it tends to work against players like me, though. I have noticed that I have a lot of close scores against players at my level, players lower than my level, and players higher than my level, but win a lot of those close scores. So what I probably tend to do is keep it close throughout a match, and pull it out at the end. I also am very ready to play long, grueling contests, and, in fact, expect that from the outset. This is a different style from someone who tends to dominate from the beginning and is ready for it to be over quickly. I think if you put a grinder against a dominator, the grinder will have the advantage, because he is ready for the long haul from the start.

So there are circumstances in which some wins are definitely different from others. Is it justifiable? I don’t know; there are arguments for and against. Is it fair? Arguably, it is as long as all players know that’s the way it will be before they agree to play under those rules. But then again, players may not have a substantially equal forum with different rules available to them.

A Day Of Grueling Combat And A Rain Cancellation

Sets 91-93 (of 365):

Stuart vs. Q. at Northwest Park. Winner: Stuart 7-6(8), 6-7(3), 6-4.
Ladder Match #8

Sets 94-96 (of 365):

Stuart vs. J. at Northwest Park. Winner: Stuart 6-7(5), 6-2, 6-1.

Barely alive. More later.

Stuart vs. S. at Northwest Park--postponed because of rain.

My Mojo: Error-Prone, Easily Frustrated, But Dug In For Tough Combat

I ended up playing two out of three matches that I had scheduled today. The first two were marked by similar attitudes on my part. I made a lot of errors and could not get it together throughout most of each of these matches until the very end, when I was able to pull out wins. I would get ahead, and then my opponents would catch up, and that was frustrating me greatly. The rallies were, for the most part, very long in both sets with lots of going back and forth from deuce to ad. Both matches ended up going three sets and had tiebreaks. I was easily irritable, and though I don't usually scream or throw my racquet, I was definitely doing feeling a lot of anger inside at times--almost enough to throw a racquet. I muttered several epithets under my breath or to myself at times and even screamed out a cuss word at the top of my lungs once, which is WAY out of character for me.

In the first match against Q., I felt like I was often outplaying him, and when I could get together enough focus, I could win games easily. But I could not keep the focus at all and I kept making error after error. And then he would come back and outplay me. Everything was really close all the way through the match. We were neck-and-neck in each of the three sets. And, to top it off, early on in the first set (I think it was in the third game), I had to change direction quickly to get one of his shots, and I felt my calf muscle pull. It was right near the end of the game, and I couldn't tell how bad it was at this point. At first I thought it might be bad enough that I would have to forfeit. On the next changeover, I stretched my calf a lot and decided to keep playing. Though it seemed bad for the next couple of games, it seemed to work itself out to where I regained mobility after a game or two. Whew. I have pulled or torn calf muscles before to the point that I was on crutches for weeks before, and I was glad that it was not that bad. But it did mean that I had to be careful not to aggravate it, and it also appeared that some other muscles in both of my legs were taking over some of the slack, so other muscles in my legs were rapidly getting sore as well.

We got to TWO tiebreaks in the first two sets. This was really hard-fought, and it seemed like we were mostly alternating wins in both sets. In the first set, I won the tiebreak, but we took it to 10-8.

In the second set, I had been ahead 4-0. Then, in the fifth game of the second set, J., who was playing on the next court from me, asked me, "Are you wearing him down, Stuart?" I answered, "Either that, or he's wearing me down." My attempt at self-deprecating humor seemed to jinx me. I was completely scattered after that, and he won the next five games. Then I won a game to bring it to 5-5, and we each won a game after that to end up in a tiebreak with the score at 6-6. I could not get it together in the tiebreak and lost 7-3.

I was not looking forward to a third set. I was extremely tired, irritable, and my legs felt like raw hamburger from the knees down. The third set was as tough as the first two. Luckily, after we got to 4-4, I was able to pull it out. I won the next game fairly easily, and though the game after that was much tougher, I pulled it out with two points in a row over deuce.

I could barely walk back to my car. I knew I only had a little time before my next match, and I would have to spend every minute in active recovery. I raced home and took a hot bath and then spent just about every minute left icing and stretching. My legs were really stiff and I could barely get up to tape up my calf muscle and leave for the next match.

I got to the site and, though I felt sore, I felt like another match was doable. The first match was more of the same--it was a really grueling fight all the way to another tiebreak. J. was getting to me with a really good net game that I had a terrible time breaking through, though I was a little more successful playing against it in the second and third sets. He was getting lots of angle shots and aggressive control from the net, and there were times where I just felt like there was nothing I could do. My offensive lobs against his net play seemed to go mostly out, though a couple of them worked. I would get ahead frequently, and then he would bear down and catch up. I was cussing under my breath and in my head a lot more this match, and was getting really frustrated.

In the tie-break, I was ahead by a large margin; I think it was 4-1 and then 5-2. Then he relentlessly caught up and I didn't win any more points. When he got to 5-5, I really lost my cool and got scattered. I cussed to myself, and could not get it together for the next two points, so I lost the set. I had thought that it was at that point that I screamed out the cuss word, but thinking about it again, I'm pretty sure it was in the second set.

In the second set, after completely losing my cool in the tiebreak, I was able to channel my anger into focus for the first two games. I was up 2-0, and then he mounted a comeback. He slowly outplayed me the next two games. I lost the last point of the fourth game of the set on an error where I didn't set up well, swung wildly, and hit a ball wide that I should have slammed down an area of the court that there was no way he could get to. This brought the score to 2-2, and I screamed "SHIT!" at the top of my lungs. I IMMEDIATELY (within less than a second) cooled off, chuckled sheepishly, and apologized to my opponent for my outburst. He was good-natured about it. I looked over at the other courts, and they were all empty except for a father teaching his very young daughter on the last court. Yikes! They left right after that.

But when I screamed out, it released all my anger. It made me completely calm for the rest of the set, and I won all the rest of the games in the set. And, though I did get a little impatient in the third set, it was not near as bad as it had been. Although the score was lopsided in the second and third sets, they were still really tough. I didn't win most of the games easily. There were a lot of long rallies and we went back and forth from deuce to ad in many of the games. But I was able to reach enough calmness to keep the pressure on and win the match, though I felt hungry and low on energy.

After this match, I was really sore and battered again. I went home and spent the whole time on recovery. I iced and stretched, and this time I ate a lot too as I was famished. Once again, I had barely enough time to prepare for the next one. I went out to my car to go to the next match, and when I went outside, I saw that it was misting. Not really raining, just forming light, tiny droplets of mist that looked like just enough to ruin tennis. The streets were definitely wet, and my car was covered with a fine pattern of droplets. But my driveway looked kind of dry. What the heck?! I decided to go ahead and go to the site, since it might just be dry enough to play, and maybe on that side of town, the conditions would be different.

As I drove to the site, I didn't know what to think about what to expect there. Sometimes, the streets looked soaked, and sometimes, they looked almost dry. The mist was relentless and constant, though, all the way there and once I got there. At this site, the streets and sidewalks were definitely wet. But the courts looked dry! And three of the four courts were occupied with people playing tennis.

I didn't know what to make of this. I was definitely ready to play another match, if the courts were dry enough. Sure, I was sore, but I felt about the same way I had felt before I started the second match. I had recovered enough to play and was ready to go. My opponent was not there yet, so I walked around to check it out. As I got close to the courts, I could see that they were almost imperceptibly damp, but maybe still playable? Shoot, there were three pairs of people who were playing on the courts. But they were finishing off what they had started earlier, not starting matches.

I went back to sit in my car and mull this over when my opponent called me on my cell phone. He said it was misting where he was and he thought it might be too wet. He asked me where I was and I told him I was at the site. I told him that it was wet, but the courts appeared, strangely enough, to be dry. I walked over to the courts again while I was on the phone to him and sort of slid my shoe on the court a little. Yeah, I could definitely feel some slippage. And I was definitely NOT in the mood to play on wet courts today. My sore legs could take the wear and tear of a normal (or even another grueling) match, but I could not handle having to slip around to rapidly change directions on a wet surface. I asked one of the players how the courts were and if they had been slipping around. He said it was not bad. My opponent and I talked about it on the phone for quite a while and finally decided not to play. First of all, the mist was not stopping and would only make the courts worse. Second of all, the sun had gone down, so there was going to be very little evaporation of what was already there. Third, the people who were there were motivated to finish what they had started and starting something right then was probably a worse prospect than finishing a match in progress. So we agreed to play again in a couple of weeks.

Steady And Solid Does It

Sets 88-90 (of 365):

Stuart vs. C. at Northwest Park. Winner: Stuart 6-4, 6-3, 6-4.

My Mojo: Steady

Well, I broke my record for the highest player on the ladder that I have beaten. This wasn't a ladder match, so it didn't advance me on the ladder, but I couldn't believe once again that I had beaten a player this good. And the last time I played him, he beat me pretty badly.

His strokes were really powerful and he had some monjo topspin. His game sort of ramped up, though. He started off with serves that were not too hard, and groundstrokes that were moderate. But as the first set got farther along, his shots started gaining in power. That seems to be a pretty effective strategy, not only to ease yourself into it, but to get your opponent to not expect a lot of power until it is coming at him. And that's what happened to me the last time I played him. I started out OK, and then just had no idea what was hitting me.

This time I seemed to hold up pretty well. He was not going to flame out on errors like some of the people I played so I really had to control my errors and keep my shots deep. Also, when he got to the net, he was lethal, except for one thing. Almost all of my offensive lobs worked against him at the net. And that may have been what made the difference. It neutralized a good deal of his net game against me. And my second strong point was my net game when I got to the net. I managed to put away most of the points I hit from the net, and when he tried to lob me, they fell short and I was able to smash them. He was a really good returner. My serve was not bad, but it didn't have much of an effect on him. There were a couple that he returned weakly, but most of them were pretty solid. I was impressed that he seemed to be one of the best returners of my serve that I had seen.

So the first two sets I was able to edge him out, and I was a little stronger in the second set. He asked me if I wanted to play a third set, and I agreed. When the third set started, I was on fire for a while. It was mostly because I relaxed, and didn't care how the set turned out. I kept telling myself that I had already won, no matter what, and if I won this last set, it would just be the cherry on top of the whipped cream. I got up 5-1, and then he came back with a fury for a while. The vast majority of points for the next three games were controlled by him. His strategy was really good and he played with very few errors. And also, I started caring. That is usually my downfall. So he got to the 5-4 point that I have always thought is a good psychological advantage for the player that is down after he has won several in a row. But I managed to come back and win the next game to get to 6-4, mostly by relaxing and telling myself once again that it didn't matter. I was able to relax, and follow through more naturally, rather than hitting with tight, jerky motions. Whew. I had visions of losing this set 7-5 and not winning a single game after being up 5-1. I hate that.

I also felt like I didn't necessarily play as defensively as I did the other day against the other really good player I beat, though I did spend a lot of time on defense. But this guy was even higher than the last guy that I was almost constantly on the defense with. I was able to get some offense in on this match.

A Brief Summary of Today's Lesson

Group Lesson at Pharr with K. (6 of 10):

My Mojo: Decent

Today I had another group lesson. This was fast-paced because we only had three players there. H. beat me in some of the games we played, though I thought I was playing pretty well. He got some really good shots in. We got to work on returns, which was good, because we never work on that. And I got to work on topspin serves more, which I needed.

Books I Am Reading

Here are some books that I have recently read (in the last couple months or so):

The Sun Also Rises--Ernest Hemingway (but the copy I bought at Half Price Books had the first seven pages missing, so I'll have to read them in a bookstore sometime)
Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them--Al Franken (which led me to:)
Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot--Al Franken
What's The Matter With Kansas?--Thomas Frank
Bushwhacked--Molly Ivins (R.I.P.)
The Zinn Reader--Howard Zinn
The Da Vinci Code--Dan Brown

Books that I am in the middle of reading:

Freakonomics--Levitt and Dunber
Getting To Know Athens County--Beatty and Stone
Guns, Germs And Steel--Jared Diamond
Writing For Screen And Television--Ronald Tobias
On Food And Cooking--Harold McGee

Books that I just bought in anticipation of starting soon:

One Hundred Years Of Solitude--Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Great Gatsby--F. Scott Fitzgerald

A No-Show

2/9/07:

Planned Match againd Stuart and J. at Northwest Park. Winner: Stuart (by forfeit).

I hate it when a player who schedules a match does not show up. I get ready, go out to the site, and just wait and wait. Nothing. I had a funny feeling this guy would not show up. I went to a party with my friend C. and he told me that his brother J. wanted to play tennis against me. I told him to give his brother my number and that I'm always up for a match. Didn't hear anything for a while, and then I get a call from J. about a week and a half later asking me some stuff on unemployment, and also, by the way, "C. told me I should play tennis with you." Red flag right there. Is this guy wanting to play or is his brother just setting him up on something that he thinks would be good for him? And does the guy even play tennis? But, despite my slight skepticism, I offer to set up a match with him. He says he's not available for a few days, and sounds hesitant. Another red flag. I suggest Friday night at Northwest Park, and he mumbles agreement.

So I'm getting ready to go, and I'm thinking that I bet this guy is not going to show up. I check my cell phone to try to find his number so I can call and confirm, but too many people have called me since and his number is gone. Rats. Well, all I can do is think the best about the guy, and try to not be negative, and hope he will be there, and we will get to play.

It's kinda cold, so I get all bundled up. I get my tennis gear together, and drive over to the park to play. I'm there about fifteen minutes early. I'm thinking, shoot, if he doesn't show up, that's even longer I have to wait. So I practice some serves and play against the backboard. Of course, I wait until he's about a half an hour late, and no dice. I'm not waiting any longer than that.

So now I have him pegged as an irresponsible flake, and he's on my no-fly list, unless something unavoidable happened. It's about respect, and I gave him some, but he didn't respond in kind. And it's partially my fault too; well, not really, but there are some things I could have done to determine whether or not it would happen before I showed up at the site and just waited. I should have determined if it was really something he wanted to do, and should have stored his phone number in my cell phone to confirm.

So now I've gone nearly a week without being able to set a match, which is the longest dry spell yet (other than the ones caused by prolonged rain and sleet). And I did contact a lot of people in the last week, too. But things are looking up for the next couple of weeks as I already am starting to get some responses filter back to me.

Trying To Find Players

It is getting really hard to schedule matches. Playing the matches is not much of a problem. But getting them scheduled seems to be most of the work. The other day I emailed about twenty people and only three of them responded, and I only set stuff up with one of them for sure. I threw some times out to the others and haven't heard anything back, so I have to hold those times open and can't really schedule other matches then. That seems to be the pattern. So it's hard to get stuff happening every night, but then at times, when it rains it pours. I'll get a bunch of people respond to play on a weekend. For instance, a couple of weekends ago, I managed to get in eleven sets. That was about a week and a half's worth of sets in two days! So days like that do me good, and when I can't set anything up for several days in a row, it makes up for it. But it seems like it is getting harder and harder.

I am running up against a finite number of players on the ladder, and some of them may be getting sick of hearing from me. Plus, some of them I would beat really easily, and some of them would beat me really easily. Ideally, I'd like to play mostly competitive matches, with some above my skill level and some below. I'm trying to reach more players that I think would be competitive in matches, but I've been having to adjust where that is upward a couple of times, so I'm still not quite sure where the ideal is. That's the downside of not having a lot of match experience.

When I try to get players off of the CATA player finder, hardly anyone ever responds, though I have found a few people there. I just don't know where else to go other than CATA and the ladder. I'll have to get creative. Also, I bet that I'll find some regulars who will play me once every couple of weeks or so. It's only been a couple of months, and really, that's all the match experience I have; there's really no history before that, unless I go back to high school. And I'm pretty sure I'm a much better player now than I was in high school.

So if any of you out there in Internetland (in and around Austin!) are reading this and want to play, get in touch! At this point, it's almost guaranteed that I'll be able to make time for you within at least the next week or two. And it makes my job of trying to hustle up lots of matches easier. Or send people my way to play. I think my goal for the end of February will be to get to at least 100 matches, maybe as many as 110. I'll be really happy if I get to 110. But I haven't played any matches since Sunday.

Energy Steadily Building

Group Lesson at Pharr (5 of 10):

My Mojo: Steadily Better

Tonight I started out hitting really badly but warmed up in about ten minutes and then was hitting well. My consistency was very good, but my power was a little bit tentative until the last twenty minutes or so of the lesson, when I was hitting much better. I like the drills that the new coach brought in because they were more fast-paced. I still was having a little bit of trouble putting my body into the shots, but was getting most of the balls in, just not with the power I would have liked.

After the lesson, A., A., H. and me all stayed to hit doubles. We had some good solid rallies and I was happy with my performance. I think my play was reaching a peak when we had to quit because the facility was closing. If only I could have played for another hour or two it would have been solid practice and beneficial because I felt like I was in a good place. I felt really energized by the end and not tired at all.

Better Sooner Than I Thought

I had been really sick last night, and then I took the bentonite, charcoal, and psyllium. When I woke up today, I felt just fine! I guess that stuff really worked to draw out whatever it was that was making me sick. Unfortunately, I canceled my matches for the next two days, thinking that I would be sick for a while. Oh, well, I could use a break anyway. It looks like no more matches until Friday night, and then maybe a few over the weekend, if weather allows.

Sick To My Stomach

Group Lesson at Pharr (4 of 10):

My Mojo: Sick And Awful

I am sickkkk...I think I am coming down with a stomach virus or something. I felt sluggish for a couple of hours before the lesson, but thought I could shake it off. It wasn't until I'd been there for about forty-five minutes that I realized that I was definitely getting sick. I tried to play but I just could not hit anything and felt worse and worse as the lesson went on. So I will take a few days off from playing. Gotta go to bed, but before I do, I'll take a bunch of activated charcoal, bentonite clay, and psyllium, and drink monjo water, and see if that helps any.

A Moment Of Synchronicity

This has nothing to do with tennis. But it was so weird that I had to write down something about it.

Tonight I was watching "The Green Mile," which is a prison movie with Tom Hanks (and it's still on). There is a scene with this guy who has a trained mouse in the prison, and he is being taken off to be executed in the electric chair. A sadistic guard tells him something terrible, and tries to mess up his execution to cause him pain while he is dying. As the prisoner is in the chair, they flip the switch for the electric chair...

And the electricity goes out in my house. There is no apparent cause for the outage, but it's really strange. Oh, well, back to the movie. Crap, the outage also messed up my recording of "Cinema Paradiso" on DVR. And it's not playing again anytime in the next week.

An Easy Win

Sets 86-87 (of 365):

Stuart vs. K at Northwest Park. Winner: Stuart 6-0, 6-0.

My Mojo: Steady

This was a pretty easy win. K. indicated that he hadn't really played many matches, and he just couldn't come up with the strategy to get a game in. He did get a few really good shots in, but he just was outplayed for the most part. I'm sure that once he gets some match experience, he will be a more formidable opponent. We did get to a couple of games that went to deuce, and went to a couple of ads. I played steadily though I had sporadic problems with me serve. My serve does seem to be coming back, and I was able to use it to good effect to get a few shut-out games.

Getting My Opponent Back Up To Speed

Sets 84-85 (of 365):

Stuart vs. Q. at Riata Park. Winner: Stuart 6-2, 6-4.

My Mojo: Average, With Slightly Damaged Service

Boy, this place was hard to find. I had never been there. I looked it up on Google maps, and I think it gave me the wrong exit. So I passed it, and had to double back around and go one exit back. Then I found the street it was on. I went down the street and didn't see it. So I did a U-turn and came back, and turned around again. Then I saw it, tucked way back among some trees, but couldn't figure out how to get there. So I doubled back again, saw it again, but still didn't see a place to park or stop. So I turned around AGAIN, and finally turned into the parking lot of an industrial park next to it that indicated that parking was only for "customers or tenants". Bingo. That was where the parking next to the courts was. Geez. Good thing I had the sense to leave early enough. And after all that, I got there about fifteen minutes early.

Q. had sent me an email saying he was rusty and hadn't played in a while. So I would be geting him back up to speed. In the first set, his serves were tentative, like he was just trying them out again. His shots were also peppered with errors, but he tightened this stuff up quick in time for the second set. I bet, though, that after playing five or six matches, his errors will decrease a lot because I could see some real good strategy and shot dynamics throughout the match that in some cases just didn't quite make it. But my serves were still not quite doing it for me in the first set. This was the same situation as yesterday. I think trying to practice topspin serves in the lesson yesterday really mangled up my serve, so I'll have to work on getting it back to snuff.

The second set was much more competitive. His serves were still mostly not very powerful, but he did throw a few suprisingly strong serves in to mix it up. I had a really hard time playing against him this set. My serves did seem to recover a little this set, though. We got to 4-4 with some really tough struggles and many long games that went backand forth from deuce to add and had long rallies, though there were a couple of easily won games for both of us sprinkled in. My perception was that he was getting a lot of angled winners in on me and shots that were to areas that I couldn't get to fast enough, but I think this was a skewed perception, because I was getting some in on him too; I was getting probably just as many or maybe even more. Then I rallied back in the last two games; the first one was my serve, and the last one was his. I won both of these games. The game that was my serve, I won with a lopsided score, and the one that was his serve, I won two points after deuce to win the match.

It's How You Play The Game

Set 83 (of 365): Stuart vs. T at Northwest Park. Winner: Stuart 6-2, 4-6 [these two sets played earlier at Pharr and also to 2-2 in the third set], 7-5.
Ladder Match #7

My Mojo: Overconfident Until I Dropped The Attitude, Though Serving Poorly, Then Steady Enough

When we last left our hero, he was tied to the railroad tracks...No, seriously...

Ever since we left this set where it was earlier, I had been thinking, "Man, I am going to WIN this match." Every day, when I thought about it, I just thought that winning was just a sure thing. I mean, I had challenged a guy 10 rungs up on the ladder and beat him pretty easily in this same round. And last night, I beat a guy who was more than 15 rungs higher than me, though just barely. But as I've been told, there is no barely. You either win or you don't. It feels more complicated than that to me, though. Sometimes I squeak out a win and it really takes a lot out of me. And sometimes I lose but still feel powerful.

So I had all this confidence coming into this match. It really didn't turn out as easy as I thought it was going to be, and I probably only won by dropping my misplaced overconfidence. Starting off the day, we were already at 2-2, and I won the next two games. So far, all was going according to my plan. One problem was that my serve was not working well, so I had to work around that. And that made everything a little harder. And it got worse as the games progressed.

Then, he came back and did just about everything right and won the next two games, to tie it at 4-4. I started getting really perturbed. What is going on? I'm supposed to win. Oh yeah, I have to earn it. But my serve was still not getting power or placement.

So I tried to back off of my frustration and just be in a calm space. Also, I just started hitting serves with the intention of getting them in rather than to gain an advantage. These things helped me win the next game to get to 5-4. Then I got back to misplaced thinking and fixated on how I just need to win the next game. But it didn't happen. I tightened up again, and flubbed most of the shots. So now it was 5-5.

At that point, I just kind of gave up on thinking that I would win, and just started accepting that if I lost, it wouldn't be the end of the world. That helped me get to the one-point-at-a-time calm demeanor that won me the next two games, and the match. Both games were terrifically close for a while, and then I just won the last two points. So how can I beat people way higher than me and then struggle like crazy against someone at my level? That's just life, baby. Ya wins some and ya loses some; I guess it really is how you play the game.

New Teacher For the Group

Group Lesson at Pharr (3 of 10):

My Mojo: Solid But Not Even Close Against The New Guy

Today we had a new teacher for the group, K. R. was not there, and he hired this new guy who was from Orange County. He told us that he had played professional tennis for a while. We started out with some regular drills, and I felt like I was hitting really totally bossa-nova solid. On most of the games we played, I was on the winning side. Then at the end, we played this kinda weird two-court king-of-the-court thing, and once again, I stayed an as the king on the top court for most of it. But he jumped in to play with us, since we only had five people on two courts and he made the sixth. I could tell he was only using about forty percent of his effort playing against us. But he was making me run all over the place, and he was making it look so effortless. I guess that's pro stuff for you. He beat me a few times, and H. beat me a few times, and I beat both of them too, and like I said, I stayed on the king side most of the time. But when he beat me it was like an adult was playing a five-year-old. I at least had my moment, when in the last point of the drill, I was on the challenger side on the top court, and the pro was on the king side, and I ended it by acing him twice, once on deuce court, and once on ad court. Woo-hoo.

Squeaking It Out On Defense

Sets 80-82 (of 365):

My Mojo: In The Doghouse At First, Then Calm and Defensive, Barely Holding

Stuart vs. T at Private Courts. Winner: Stuart 1-6, 7-5, 6-4.

Honestly, as I sit here in front of my computer, I am still amazed that I won this match, and I have no idea how I managed to pull together enough mojo to do it. This guy was really good, and seemed to be getting the best of me (at least to me). I was constantly on defense, and returning his shots seemed right on the cusp on my reaction time. I definitely feel like he is a better player than me; the last time we played, he beat me decisively, but I did give him a run for his money in the second set. He was the highest player on the ladder that I have beaten so far; I am inching my way toward the rarified air at the top of the ladder, but I bet there's a wall to stop me much not much higher than T., unless I either get incredibly lucky, get better, or pull a miracle out of my pocket. But maybe every time I perform one of those "miracles," it helps my game a little from then on.

The first set was pretty much what I expected. I was no match for his great offense, and could not get to almost anything that he hit. My serve was decent, but not keeping the power on my side enough for me to win games. I came in winning the first game on the strength of my serve, and then didn't win another game that set. I was just on the run and helpless for the whole set.

In the second set, my serve helped me, and I broke his serve just enough to squeak out a win. I felt like I was losing, and in fact, for a while I was behind. We got to 3-3 winning our respective serves. Then he broke my serve and held to come ahead 5-3. I thought that was the end, but I did what is effective for me a lot when I'm behind, I just "relaxed into the loss." That is, I thought I had nothing to lose, so I concentrated on shots and strategy instead of where we were in the set. And it worked well enough that I won the next four games, which astounded me. He was hitting so many shots that were to places I could not get to, but it was definitely happening less than in the first set.

The third set had a similar feel to me as the second set. I think, though, that I was just a tiny bit more confident. But my confidence was mostly extending to feeling happy that I had won at least one set and thinking he would now come back with a vengeance and punish me for that second set. But he never did get ahead. I think I would have just been happy to win the second set, and if I had stopped to think about it, I don't think I would have contemplated I had a chance in the third set. But I was looking at it with blinders and just taking it one point at a time, and not thinking about the big picutre much. I broke his serve early to come out ahead 2-1, and then squeaked out two of the next three games to get to 4-2, and then I just held to win at 6-4.