My Back Gives Out

Sets 277-278:

Stuart v. I. at Connally High. Winner: Stuart 6-0, 6-2, 4-3 (Stuart retired)

My Mojo: Spectacular At First, Coming To A Sudden Halt.

My back had been bothering me a little when I woke up, but not too badly. I had slightly injured it about a week before, then aggravated it while I slept almost every night, but it had died down some. It was hurting but not crippling me. I thought that if I did some back exercises and took some anti-inflammatory medicine, it would be fine. As I left the house to go play, I realized about a mile away that I had forgotten to take an anti-inflammatory. No big deal, I thought to myself. Next time this happens, I'll turn around and get it.

The first and second sets went extraordinarily well for me. I was feeling on top of things and my play was precise. I decided from the start to keep a running tally of how many shots I flubbed because of a problem with misaligned facing of my racquet or misplaced position of my body (not including missed first serves, since I take a little more of a risk on those). Up through the middle of the second set, I had only had five shots that fell into these categories. That was spectacular. I was having great results from the good placement of my shots. I was able to dominate a lot of points and the majority of my game was offense. And he only won one point in the first three games.

In the middle of the second set, I dropped focus just slightly. And then in the next few games, he was able to get more competitive with me and win a couple of games. In two of those games alone, I had five mishits added to my running tally. One thing that helped my game was that I didn't get angry or frustrated about this, I just set out to correct it. And I did regain my game and won the rest of the games easily.

We agreed to play a third set after I had won the first two. Everything was going well for me in the first five games, and I was up 4-1. In the sixth game, I bent to reach for a ball, and I felt a painful snap in my lower back. I could tell this was bad, maybe enough to end play. I took a few minutes to do some back exercises to hopefully get back into shape to play. I tried to play a couple more games, but there was just jarring pain with every step and every reach. I tried to make my shots make up for my loss of mobility, and I won a couple of points with really good shots, but I could not get to balls that were out of reach at all, and I lost the next two games easily. Then when I felt a second snap in my back and a huge flash of pain, I told my opponent that I couldn't continue to play. At least it happened near the end, so I won two out of three.

Sets 275-276:

Stuart v. M. at Patterson Park. Winner: Stuart 7-6(4), 7-5.

Sets 271-274:

Stuart vs. P. at Perry Park. Winner: Stuart 6-1, 6-2, 6-2, 6-3.

Building Up To A Crescendo

Sets 269-270:

Stuart vs. L. at Bowie High. Winner: Stuart 6-4, 6-2.

My Mojo: Building to Above-Average.

The weather was not too bad for this one. I thought it was going to be hotter, but it was pleasantly temperate. We started out the match neck-and-neck. He had some really good strokes, but my defensive game and ability to run almost everything down cancelled out most of his advantages. He had this really deceptive shot that looked like he was hitting it with topspin, but when it got to my court, it bounced like it had backspin. At first this was really befuddling me, but by the time the second set started, I got used to it. I won the first set, but felt lucky to do so, as he was really giving me a hard time.

The second set was a little easier for me. I got used to some of his shots, and was able to anticipate his signature cross-court missile in deuce court enough that I was able to deal with it well. Also, I felt my energy building throughout the match, and at the end, I was playing in peak form.

This was supposed to be the second match I played today. The guy for the first match did not show up. That really annoyed me. I sent him an email after waiting for him for half an hour, and never heard anything from him afterward. I would have been willing to still play the game if I had heard anything from him, but since I didn't, I counted it as a forfeit on the ladder.

Working Up From A Painful Morning

Set 268:

Stuart v. J. at Pharr. Winner: Stuart 6-1.

My Mojo: Strong.

This was finishing up the match that I started on Wednesday with J. at Caswell. We had split sets and had run out of time, so we were supposed to meet up this morning at Caswell to play. I went out to run some errands in the morning, and just a few minutes before we were supposed to play, I was ominous gray clouds moving in. Uh-oh. Sure enough, it started pouring about ten minutes before our scheduled match. I rained steadily up until the time we were supposed to play, and right around the time we were supposed to start, I drove by Caswell to see what the conditions were. Of course, the whole area was soaked. It looked like there was no way it would dry out for at least a couple of hours even if it stopped raining.

So I headed back home. But as I got closer and closer to my house, I noticed that it was raining less and less. And when I got about a mile from my house, I saw that it was completely dry. The rain had soaked the ground just a couple of miles away, but had not touched the area where I lived!

So I called Pharr Tennis center to see if they had anything available. They had one court left, and I grabbed it. My opponent was also glad that we hadn't gotten completely rained out, and was happy to play. We started only a half an hour after our originally planned start time.

I felt like I was playing really well even though my back was killing me. I had thrown out my back on Friday morning bending over to tie my shoes, but not too badly. I was still able to play four sets on Friday evening with no problem. But this morning, I woke up, and the way I slept had aggravated the injury to the point that I could barely get out of bed. I was in incredible pain, and it took me about ten minutes to get out of bed. As I took the first couple of tentative, jarring steps, I thought for sure that I would have to forfeit today. Every movement was sending waves of agony through my back.

I spent about two hours doing back exercises to try to get to the point that I would be able to play, and also took some naproxen. Little by little, my back improved enough so I could at least walk. I went out and bought a back brace, and after I put that on, it filled in the missing piece of the puzzle, and I was pretty sure I could play. Woo-hoo! I didn't have to forfeit after all. It was hell getting there, but I made it.

During this third set, I had the back brace on under my shirt. I was worried that it would chafe me, but I didn't really have any chafing problems. Also, I was playing pretty well. I think I tend to do better when I'm sick or injured than a lot of people. I was getting to most of his shots, and returning them with strength and placement. He won one game, but I won all the rest, and managed to take this third set 6-1 for a final score of 3-6, 6-1, 6-1.

Pushing Myself Into A Bad Attitude

Sets 264-267:

Stuart v. S. at His Apts. Winner: S. 6-4, 6-0, 6-1, 7-5.

My Mojo: Frustrated.

I haven't won a match or even a set against S. in some time. The last few times I played him, I had even lowered my expectations to the point where I thought 6-2 or 6-3 would be a good result. But this time, I decided not to do that. Perhaps that was my downfall in terms of attitude.

S. told me that he thought that I was playing pretty well, but that didn't stop me from being disgusted with myself my the end of the fourth set. I really need to back off of the negative mental stuff, especially when I play S. I don't know why I get so down on myself sometimes. It's not really a lingering thing; half an hour after the match, and it's gone. But it can really affect my play.

A lot of times I'm able to "push a reset button" on my attitude. Especially at the beginnning of a new set. And frequently also, I can do that in the middle of a set and just act like it is a new set. I was able to do that to a certain degree in the fourth set, but my attitude was just too negative.

In the first set, I started out pretty strongly even though I lost the first couple of games. I was also able to sustain my momentum. Usually (especially when I am playing S.), I start out really strong and then fizzle after about four games. But in this set I managed to keep focus for at least the first eight games to bring the score to 4-4. This set contained probably my strongest sustained play. I was also getting really good balance during my shots, and moving my body effectively into the shots, which is something I have been working on. However, at the end of the first set, it started raining. I wanted to stop, but kept playing in the rain against my better judgment, and sure enough, I dropped the next couple of games easily to lose 6-4.

It rained for about ten minutes, but not hard enough to completely soak the ground. So we waited around to see if it would clear up, and it did after a short time. I had slightly thrown out my back this morning and didn't want to play on a surface that was at all slippery, so I wouldn't have played on a damp court this time. But it completely dried up, and we resumed.

I didn't count on what the loss of momentum would do to my attitude, though. I was totally unfocused for the next two sets, and lost game after game quickly before I realized what was going on. By the time I could have possibly regained my composure, my attitude was too far gone to do well for the second and third sets. He won almost every game easily, and I was just getting really angry at myself for losing my direction.

For the fourth set, I was able to push that "reset button" on my attitude somewhat. For the first part of this set, I was back to getting really good balance and movement, and was getting in the most aggressive play so far. By the time that I was up 4-1, I thought I actually might win a set. However, not only did he mix up his game somewhat (successfully), I completely dropped focus, and he brought the score up to 4-4, which made me really pissed. I won the next game to get to 5-4, but the win that was within reach never materialized. I could not get beyond scattered after that, and he also stopped playing with as much pace. I missed almost every shot at net as well, ehich frustrated me even worse. My failure to convert the advantages that I had previously into winning the set really frustrated me, and my mental attitude was at its lowest at the end of this set. Still, I would have played more, and maybe at some point I would have been able to "reset" again. He had to get somewhere, though, so he couldn't play another set, and I was left in my gnarly funk under a black cloud mentally kicking myself in the butt. But, like I said earlier, half an hour later, everything was OK again. The world is not going to end because I lost a set of tennis.

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.

The Interstate Battle Of The Bloggers

Sets 260-261:

Stuart v. TennisTitan at Northwest Park. Winner: Stuart 6-1, 6-2.

My Mojo: Average Shots, Solid Hustle.

This was a classic New York v. Texas smackdown as TennisTitan came in blowing a cold north wind to play in the land of jalapeños and brain-dead politicians (which are actually kinda the same thing--they both sting on the way out). But the guns of the Alamo state just wouldn't let up. Shouldn't Governor Shapleigh have to wear a dress or something after this one?

This whole saga started when I was looking for other people who blog their (putting it charitably) less than professional-quality games. It's dang hard to find other bloggers who are writing about their own play and not following the pros. If you look in a search engine, just about any search term you put in will take you to people who either want to pour adulation on Roger Federer or to drool over Anna Kournikova. So I made a diligent search for kindred folk, and I found the Titan. His was one of TWO, count 'em, two blogs that I found where non-pro players talk about their own play. I bet there's more out there but they are just buried in search engine results and almost impossible to find.

So we started some back-and-forth by email, and, lo and behold, it turns out he has a son in Austin that he is planning to visit. We make arrangements to play and the fateful day arrives (cue the theme song to the movie "The Mexican").

We agree to meet at the O.K. Corral, er...I mean Northwest Park, for the exchange of big round yellow bullets. It was hotter than a diseased whore's knickers outside, but we both held up well. Well, at least I did. I can't speak for him.

In the first set I started out a little understated. I wanted to feel out his game and see where I needed to go. His shots were pretty decent, but my run game was not missing a beat at all, and I ran down just about every shot that went to some weird angle that he thought would be out of my range. I'm pretty used to playing with people who think they can cannonball stuff out of my range, and some of the really fantastic players do a good job of it, but on the whole, if a player's whole strategy is predicated on making me run, and that's all they bring to the plate, then that's where I usually bring home the burritos.

Though we did have a few pretty close games in the first set, I took the set fairly easily 6-1 by running everything down, even the so-called impossible shots, and by pulling him out of position and dropping balls out of his reach. I hit very few cannonballs, and that's usual for me.

In the second set, I think he was a little tired. I was just getting into a groove, and though he did win one more game, I felt more confident this set than I had the first. I felt like I knew where he was going most of the time, and my anticipation was even better, so I was able to run down even more impossible shots, getting good court coverage. His best tactic on me was a cross-court low slam to deuce court when I was positioned off-balance in ad court. I got most of those, but he did nail me on a few.

My serve wasn't outstanding but it was average or a little better than average. My second serve was getting really deceptive spin on it but accurate placement. I was doing something a little weird with my wrist for experimentation on my second serve, and it seemed to work. Some of my second serves were pulling him pretty far out of position so I could get an aggressive game in after that, and I even aced him with one second serve. All in all, my shots were not fantastic, but I ran everything down and kept a physical edge going.

After the match, we had a little bit of conversation and he took some pics for his blog. His son had showed up toward the end of the match to "watch the massacre" (his words, not mine) and ended up taking a couple of pictures. Maybe I'll show up in his neck of the woods sometime so "Pancho Villa" can plan out his revenge.

On a side note, I've been a real slug about blogging lately. I have been faithfully recording the scores, but the stories are falling by the wayside. I guess maybe I kinda discovered that I actually do have a life, despite what my daughters keep telling me, and there are other things to do. Not that tennis isn't fun and all that, but I do want to stop and smell the flowers occasionally. There's the romantic view, but the reality is more like I need to catch up on chores that I've been letting pile up for the last, oh, six months or so.

Barely Over The Edge

Sets 258-259:

Stuart v. M. at Patterson Park. Winner: Stuart 7-6(5), 4-6, 10-7 match tiebreak

My Mojo: Below Average.

I felt like I could not get it together at all today. I did manage to do what I needed to do at crucial points to barely win the match, but it didn't feel right at all. I was making a huge number of errors, and my shots just did not seem to go where I wanted them to go.

In the first set, I was just barely keeping pace with him. I got ahead, but then he caught up, and I could not break out at all. I could not get anything aggressive going because my shots were so awful. I barely squeaked out the first set on a set tiebreak. I was happy that I managed to pull out the win, but not happy with the way I was playing. In the second set, things went downhill for me a little, and things got a little better for my opponent, though we were still doing the neck-and-neck thing throughout the first part of the set. He broke out in the middle of the set, and stayed ahead to win and split.

He wanted to play a tiebreak after we split sets, and at first I said that I really didn't want to, but after he said that he needed to be somewhere else and didn't think the match would take so long (it was nearly three hours long), I went ahead and agreed to play a tiebreak. At first he thought we were playing to seven, but I pointed out that a match tiebreak was to ten. I almost regretted correcting him later as I had handily won what would have been a seven-pointer, but he started building momentum after that. I did manage to pull out the last couple points of the tiebreak to win the tiebreak and the match. I felt like that was too close for comfort, though I've played matches that close before and not been on edge about it.

Dismal Says It All

Sets 256-257:

Stuart v. D. at Northwest Park. Winner: D. 6-1, 6-3.

My Mojo: Dismal.

I played some of the worst tennis I had played in a while. I can't completely blame my loss on that, though, because my opponent was playing really well. This was the worst performance I had had against D. since we started playing together, and I could not at any point get to a place of any kind of strength. At the end of the match, I was just disgusted with myself and my poor play. Lesson learned.

Sets 251-255:

Stuart v. P. at Northwest Park. Winner: Stuart 6-2, 6-1, 6-1, 6-0, 6-3.

Sets 248-250:

Stuart v. I. at Northwest Park. Winner: Stuart 6-3, 6-2, 6-2

Sets 245-247:

Stuart v. P. at Northwest Park. Winner: Stuart 6-1, 6-1, 6-0.

Sets 243-244:

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

Spazzing Out In Mid-Set

Sets 241-242:

My Mojo: Quick Flameout.

Stuart vs. S. at Harris Branch. Winner: S. 6-2, 6-2.

Both this time and the last time that I played this guy, I felt like I had a chance starting out. I warmed up feeling pretty good, and played really well my first three games, and was up 2-1. Then, typically, I went spazz. Nothing seemed to work right for me any more. I hit just a few too many weak returns, and let him get in position for blazing net games which he managed to control too well for me to even get anything going. My forearm was not giving me that easy roll that brings me fast, solid shots just over the net, placed well, with good topspin. No, I pretty much got the opposite of that after the first few games.

He seems like the type of player who "ramps up," too. The first few games, it seems like he was taking it a little bit easy and reading how I was going to play, and then coming in around game 5 with an edgier style of play that is custom tailored to my weaknesses. I think that is the mark of a lot of pretty good players. They take some time to test their opponents, and then adjust their style to what they see. And as he was ramping up, I was flaming out.

In the second set, though the score was the same, I felt much more outplayed. Many of the games were closer in the first set, whereas many of the games in the second set were blowouts. I also didn't feel like my serve was bringing me as many advantages in the second set. He honed in for easy kills, and though I did manage to eke out a couple of games, it wasn't as much because my play improved as because his error rate went up a little. Not a noble way to win games, and certainly not a noble way to lose a set.