More Difficulty In The Heat

Sets 283-284:

Stuart vs. J. at Buttercup Creek Park. Winner: Stuart 6-4, 3-6, 2-1 (J. retired due to injury).

My Mojo: Struggling

I don't know why this match and the last one have been so physically difficult for me. I have felt like I am running out of energy and couldn't get it back, only to have it return later in the match. Maybe it has something to do with the heat. My hands have also been cramping up toward the end of play.

My serve seemed to be mostly working well, but it ebbed and flowed. I had a lot of errors due to misfacing my racquet and my body. I had been doing better on that, but it seemed like it was creeping back. Also my back was hurting, so I wore a back brace. I didn't seem to be able to get to net much, while he was able to get to net more often than me. When he played net, he got good control most of the time, but there were a few occasions in which I was able to get some angled winners by him. He seemed to nail most of my lobs with overheads, but a few of those got by too. We were both running each other around the court a lot.

In the first set, I was keeping pace, but pulled ahead in the end. He didn't hit really big shots, but he had some effective slice and a mean power cross-court shot in deuce court that got me a few times. Mostly I got nailed with that shot because I failed to recover to the proper position.

In the second set, I felt weaker and it was harder for me to recover. He took an early lead and I never did quite catch up, even though I got a few powerful games in. In the third set, we were playing neck-and-neck again. He won the first game, but I won the next two. Then he had to retire because a cut on his hand was bothering him too much. We had played for a little over two hours, and it was probably going to be close to three hours by the time we finished if we had played out the third set. Of course, I only counted two sets in my running count since the last one was not finished.