Bailed Out, Sick, In The Absolute Nick Of Time

Sets 332-333:

Stuart v. S. at His Apartments. Winner: Stuart 6-3, 6-4.

My Mojo: Strong And Swift, But Suddenly Ready To Barf.

For most of this match, I had some of the best play that I had manage to scrape together in quite a long time. I was really on top of my shots, my anticipation was excellent, my guesswork as to where the ball would go from my opponent's body position was almost 100%, and my strokes were aimed correctly and followed through well. S. usually beats me pretty badly, but I stayed on top for most of the match. I thought that I detected a little bit of a problem with his balance,but it seemed to get better as the match went on. The last couple of times that we played, when he had gotten down, he moved to a game where he varied the depth a lot and also aggressively rushed to net. But this time, I was ready for that, and I handled it much better. He also wasn't able to get in as much control in that type of game as I was able to make the rallies flow in such a way that it didn't work as well.

After about the fourth or fifth game I was ahead, and I half-joked that S. shouldn't worry--he'd catch up. And I believed that at the time. I have played a lot of sets with S. where I get way up, and he comes barrelling from behind to win. But my play kept on staying up there, and I ended up winning both sets. However, suddenly in the last game, I was gripped with an incredibly strong wave of nausea. It came on really quickly right in the last few points of the last game. I hung on, hoping to be able to win and stop playing soon, but there were a couple of deuce and ad points that intervened. I was just hanging on for dear life in the last few points. If he had won the last game and tied up the score, I think I would have had to retire. But I managed to get a critical point after it moved to my ad, and I won the match. Usually we would play another set or two at this point, but I was just too sick to continue. I barely made it up the hill to my car, and took off, but I did feel better after about a half hour and some fluid infusion.