Finding My Game

Sets 262-263:

My Mojo: Off To A Slow Start.

Stuart vs. J. at Caswell. Winner: split 6-3 (J.), 1-6 (S)

I hadn't played at Caswell for quite a while. I like the site, but one of the problems about all of the tennis centers that I don't like is that you can only reserve courts for one and a half hours, so very often, the match does not finish in the allotted time. So usually I will try to play in a public park or a high school. I usually play at Northwest Park even though it's kind of far from where I live and work just because it had decent courts and good lights and nobody will have a reservation to kick you off.

In the first set, I was having trouble finding my game. For about the first four games, I was just floundering around. This gave me just too great of a disadvantage to overcome. My opponent was a methodical player, and I could tell he put a lot of thought into strategy. He really mixed things up when they needed to be mixed up, and I was just not adapting. Late in the first set, I found my game, but it was too late to win the set. I did manage to come fom zilch to win three games, though.

Now that I had located my mojo, I was more ready for the second set. I dealt with his variations in play much better, and was able to get a real advantage out of my run game. My shots also became a little more aggressive, just as he was starting to increase the percentage of his errors slightly. I was able to take the second set my a wide margin. But since we had split sets, we only had a few minutes left. He asked me if I wanted to play a tiebreaker; I generally shy away from tiebreaks so I said I would rather reschedule and play a third set. He agreed that he would rather play a third set too.