Draggin' My Ass To A Defeat

Set 319:

My Mojo: Rusty And Sluggish.

Stuart vs. TennisTitan in Andrus Park, Yonkers, N. Y. Winner: TennisTitan 7-6(5)

It had been raining for a while during the time I was in Paterson, N. J. I had thought about calling TennisTitan during my voyage and decided to give him a call, even though it didn't look to me at the time like we would be able to play tennis. So I rang him up and he extended a gracious invitation to stay at his place in lieu of me staying at a hotel, and I accepted.

Lo and behold, by the time I got to Yonkers, the rain had pretty much let up. The ground was still a little damp, but drying up rapidly, and just in the almost-tolerable range for hitting some tennis balls. So we decided to try playing a set. I had thrown a tennis racquet into the car just in case, but when I went looking for it, it was nowhere to be found. I bet I left it at the last hotel I stayed at, but I have no idea what I did with it. Luckily (or maybe unluckily, as it turned out) TennisTitan loaned me a racquet to hit the ball around with.

We got to the courts, squeegeed for a few minutes, and started hitting. I felt like I was hitting OK at first, but I didn't really have any serious panache. I was having a hard time getting advantages, though I held most of my serves. And my footwork was not that great, compounded by my having a hard time getting my movement started on the wet court. I guess not playing for a couple of weeks turned me into a snail. But enough with the excuses. We kept pace pretty well back and forth, though he got ahead a game for a couple games, and then I caught up to get ahead at 5-4. But my luck from then on was not so good. Though the next few games were close, we tied up the set at 6-6 and then went into tiebreak.

I immediately lost the first couple points. I was really dragging my butt and needed to get into gear. I brought it back on a couple of my serves to get to 3-3, but from then on, my play just wasn't confident enough. Still, we got to 4-4, and then 5-5 in the tiebreak. But I just dropped my keys into the toilet at this point, and lost the next two points to drop the set 7-5.