Father v. Daughter--Loss #2 For Me

Stuart v. E. at Patterson Park.  Winner: E. 2-6, 6-4, 6-4.

My Mojo: Strong, Then Deflating.

One advantage of the confluence of the end of my daughter's school tennis practice and my current transportation situation is that we have more time to play tennis with each other.  Today we went to Patterson Park.

My daughter had just gotten her two racquets restrung and so we picked them up.  When she was playing with them, she was complaining about how the strings didn't feel right, so we warmed up for a long time so she could get a chance to get used to them.

Of course, almost the first shot of the warmup, she slammed me really hard in the nuts with a missile shot, and I immediately crumpled to the ground in extreme pain.  I was finally able to get up after about a couple of minutes, while the people in the next court stared on in horror.  Good to toughen up the old gonads early on.  But maybe it's time to start wearing an iron cup.

Today I felt like I was playing more solidly than the last match.  I was returning most of her missile serves, though some of my returns were more defensive than offensive; still, I was getting good placement.  Also, I was not getting outplayed as much in rallies and she did not get to net as much, and I got to net a little more.  There seemed to be this recurring theme too of shots coming right at my body, and I often had to just stick the racquet in front of me at some weird angle just to avoid being hit.  Daddy issues?

The first set I held pretty steadily.  In the second set, I thought I would win almost as easily, but after I had won four games, she roared back and started getting me with the shots that pulled me to one side and set up hot blast in the other direction out of my reach.  But this didn't happen as often as the last match we played.  Also, I was returning a few weakly, which she almost always took advantage of with a great smash back.  I knew almost every time as soon as the ball left my racquet with a fairly weak return that I was going to get creamed when she hit it back as she is definitely good enough to exploit that.

And she ended up coming back in the second set to win 6-4.  Rats.  So we ended up playing a third set.  In this last set, we kept pace with each other; first it was 1-1, then 2-2, then she got up to 4-2, and I tied it up at 4-4.  Then she broke out with really good play, and I fizzled out.  The last two games were no contest as she won the set 6-4.

Though I lost, it was closer than last time, I was more satisfied with my play throughout (except at the end), and we actually each won the same number of games.