Windsurfing

Sets 415-416:

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

My Mojo: Lucky Wind Blowing My Way.

I wish I could say that I won this match with absolutely brilliant play, but actually, I felt like I just kind of fumbled my way into a win. It was very windy, and there were gusts that would come up suddenly and even change direction occasionally. I think that I just got the lucky end of the stick with respect to playing in the wind.

My serve was not working the way I wanted it to at all. So I started experimenting with ultra-spin against the wind, and I alternated freakishly overspun serves (both spinning to the right and to the left) with hard, flat serves. Somehow, these seemed to get in the box. I can't say that they were doing what I wanted them to do, but the wind was cooperating to get them over the net. Also, I tried to play to my opponent's placement. Sometimes he would move in, so I would go for a slam serve to a difficult place to reach in the box. Then he would move back, and I would slice the crap out of it, or shoot a reverse slice. Not all of these worked, but it seemed like more of them did than didn't.

I think my opponent was having a much harder time with his serve. His groundstrokes were very solid with a lot of topspin, but once again, the wind was catching them in weird ways so he was getting a lot of shots either long or in the net. When he got in a good, deep, well-placed topspin groundstroke, it either put me on the serious defensive, or it whizzed by as a winner. My groundstrokes just seemed to get a little more lucky. I can't say it was completely luck on my part, because I did close some points really well, and I surged at the end of each set, but it was also in part due to my opponent's errors and possibly his frustration at having the wind take his shots apart. Heck, I'm used to my play in general taking my shots apart, so what's new...I just followed my usual pattern of trying to get one more shot over the net. I did get some good placements in some points. But I couldn't even begin to get anything approaching good footwork with the unpredictability of where the ball would fall, and I was returning a lot of shots late.