A Solid Match Not Quite Interrupted By Rain

Sets 289-291:

Stuart v. R. at McCallum High. Winner: Stuart 6-0, 6-1, 6-0.

My Mojo: Solid.

I was worried that this was going to get rained out. We had gotten rained out once on this match, and I was hoping it wouldn't happen again. One thing or another has seemed to happen a lot lately to keep me from playing. Not only has there been a lot of rain, but I've had back problems, finger problems, and a painful kidney infection that has all cramped my style and my ability to play huge numbers of matches. So I haven't been able to get out and play as often as I would like.

Though it was cloudy, it wasn't raining. That was a good sign. I started off playing strongly; Iwasn't playing super-aggressively, but I was getting good placement and making him run a lot. My serve was not blazing most of the time but it was solid. I was also anticipating well enough to set up strongly for my shots. At the beginning of the first set, he got very few points in, but started getting a few more in towards the end of the set.

In the second set, he was playing a little bit stronger and trying for more assertive plays. He won one game and there were a lot of games in which there were several deuce and ad points back and forth. I had a little trouble in one game after the sun suddenly came out briefly, and only for that game, and it was right in my eyes whenever I served on ad court and whenever I hit cross-court on ad court. It gave me a bit of a bother, and I did win the game, but it was one of the ones that there were a lot of back-and-forth deuce and ad points.

I asked him if he wanted to play a third set, and he agreed. He is one of the more energetic players that I play against, and he is good at running a lot of stuff down. I like playing people like that, because I do that too. In the third set, I did my typical late-in-the-long-match surge, and was playing almost as well as I could hope. My serve became stronger, and I was able to play more offensive points. Also, my energy level really crescendoed upwards. Late in the set, it started raining, and it got a little wetter than I usually like to play, but it stopped quickly. By the time the set was over, it had almost dried out again. But I don't think we would have been able to play another one; on my way home it started raining again, and this time it was enough to soak the ground.