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.