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.