A Hot And Humid Day Gives Us A Preview Of Summer

Sets 236-238:

Stuart v. S. at His Apartments. Winner: S. 6-4, 6-4, 6-2.

My Mojo: Not Bad...

I have not been doing that well against S. lately when I play him. We have had several matches in the last few months and I think I have only won one, though some of the early ones were close. Then he pulled way ahead and beat me by wider margins. With this match I may have tightened the gap a little.

I lowered my expectations for this match of my goal. Instead of making my goal to win, for the first two sets, my goal was to win three games a set. And I surpassed that for each of the first two sets.

It was pretty hot and humid. And it's not even summer yet. I brought a cooler full of ice with me and an extra towel to wet down and place in the ice bucket, and very shortly after starting the match, I was icing myself down every changeover. It only seemed to get hotter as we went along. We started the match a few minutes after four in the afternoon, and most of it was played in the peak heat. The humidity was stifling as well.

Starting off warming up, I felt like I was hitting really well, and continued that into the first couple of games. But then I started tightening up. S. pointed out that it was our usual pattern; I win the first few games, and then he starts coming back and winning from behind. But usually there are a few games where I am completely in the wilderness. Most of the time we play, there are several games in a row where his shots get so good that there is nothing I can do and I just watch them sail by while I am stratnded in some area of the court where it is hopeless to get to them. But this match, I felt that there were no whole games where that happened, though there were some isolated points. And my returns were faster, consistently deep and strategically placed to prevent him from hitting sure winners back. I think I did a better job of parrying his game.

In the incredible heat, we both tired out quickly. I felt half dead, but we played a third set. For this set, I dropped all expectations. It is one of my favorite things to do to practice when I am just dead tired and ready to drop, which I was this set. But I knew he was the better shotmeister, and he would probably be better at placement to conserve energy, and he certainly was. So he won the third set with a little more lopsided score than the first two sets. At the end of the set, both of us were dead tired, and I don't think either one of us wanted to play another set.

With this match, I managed to edge over my quota of a set a day for the month. I still have two matches scheduled tomorrow, and I hope I can make it through them--if it is as hot as today, it will be somewhat difficult.