I Grind Another One Out, But Briefly Go Nuts

Sets 286-288:

Stuart v. M. at The Quarries. Winner: Stuart 3-6, 7-5, 6-4.

My Mojo: Tenacious, With A Momentary Mental Collapse.

This was another really long match. It was stifling heat yet again, and we played for nearly three hours. My opponent was another guy who had really good ball control,though he lost it a little toward the end of the match when he got tired. I pretty much just played tougher as I went on, though I completely lost my mental state for a little while in the third set.

In the first set, we kept pace with each other at first, then I started slowly drifting into worse play as his play subtly got better; the worst combination for me. I lost the last three games of the set to lose 6-3. My serve was great during the warm-up and so were my groundstrokes. But my serve was not as hot when I started the match, and my groundstrokes were good at first but deteriorated as I lost momentum. I started cussing myself under my breath.

My loss of momentum continued into the second set. He was getting some really good shots in, especially when he would pull me to ad court and then slam a hard low whizzer cross-court in deuce court. Those seem to get me a lot, and I was falling into my usual trap with them. Before I knew it, I was down 5-2 in the second set. Then composure and energy hit me like a rock in the head. I told myself that I had to take this into a third set. I just kept repeating the mantra in my head. "every shot counts." And amazingly, I patiently won the next five games. I could feel strength and composure growing with each point and each game. On the changeover, all I could think about was calmness. I had even been recovering to the right place in the court from hard angles to ad court, so i wouldn't get slammed with cross-court deuce winners. I had been getting to almost all of those!

When the third set started, I was still keeping that momentum going. I lost only one game out of the first four, and was up 3-1. I was just cool and relaxed, playing with great anticipation, fantastic body position, and good strategy. Then in the fifth game something happened that just immediately reversed my mood.

I was up 40-love in the fifth game, and I played the next point aggressively, taking the initiative from the beginning, and each shot was better than the last. The last shot was just a burner cross-court down deuce court that there was no way he could get to. So I'm thinking I just won the game and it's 4-1.

But suddenly I notice that there are about 10 balls in my opponent's court from the cardio tennis class in the next court. There is a sheepish-looking woman from the next court saying, "Sorry, that point is a let." Wait a minute. You can't call a let after a point has gone out of play. I wouldn't have minded if he had called it during the point. He didn't even call it; the player from next door did. And I was so into playing that I have no idea how all those balls got there or when. So I said to him, "That's game, isn't it?" And he responded that, no, it was a let.

I wanted to say, "YOU CAN'T CALL A LET AFTER THE POINT IS OVER!" I was really steamed, but I let the let stand. And for some reason, I completely lost my mental composure. It just shook me that I hadn't just won the game to bring it to 4-1. So it was 40-15. And then I just was so rattled that I didn't win any more points that game. Nothing was going right for me. I lost that game to bring the score to 3-2. Then I couldn't do anything right in the next game, and the score was 3-3. Then I fumbled all over myself, getting even angrier, and suddenly I was losing 4-3. He hadn't been going for winners any more; he was just trying to be consistent, and I was just blowing it every time.

I let out an agonized scream and hurled my racquet over the fence, into the grass on the other side. Everybody around stopped to look. Oh, crap. That was the most unsportsmanlike thing I've done probably ever. But it snapped me back to reality. I felt immediately embarrassed, and more composed. A woman from the next court asked me, "Did you mean to do that?" and the only answer I could come up with was to sheepishly mumble, "Sorry."

How could I immediately go from being calm and on top of everything to mentally shattered just instantly like that? Why did I let something unexpected bother me so much that it just instantly cremated my composure? Anyway, I built my composure back piece by piece over the next few points, playing methodically and consistently, only doing a little bit better than he did with the same type of game because I had a lot of energy, but I think he was just about out of gas. This was my game. I grind out the long ones in intense heat regularly, and run for everything. That's what I do best. And I started being able to do it again. I won all the rest of the games; the first one felt tough and competitive, but the last two felt easy. I felt like I had a huge amount of strength for the last few games and was able to run difficult shots down and even place them well when I got there, while he was hardly even running at all any more for anything that was out of reach. I was able to get my head back and win the third set 6-4 and win the match.