Would You Like Fudge With Your Super Salad?

Sets 522-523:

Stuart v. B. at South Austin Tennis Center. Winner; Stuart 6-2, 6-2.

My Mojo: Untouchable At First, Then Stupendous, With Intermittent Fudge.

Sweet, merciful pizza, giver of life, you arrive just as my body is completely spent and replenish my fuel and electrolytes. More later when I can hold my fingers up.
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OK, now I'm back and I'm recombobulated. So here's the back story.

After the previous match, I had a half hour to rest. And it put me back together well enough. But I didn't have time to get anything to eat. I started the match feeling like dynamite--explosive and powerful. The first four games, I just wiped almost every shot, and won 4-0. But he did get a couple good ones in. Two balls got hit over the fence (he slammed shots at me on both that hit my racquets and bounced askew) into really bad places. Not that they were bad places per se, but they were places that I had to walk all the way around the facility to get to. And it was about a ten-minute walk. When the first one went over, we just left it. But when the second one went over, we couldn't just play with one ball.

So I did my "walk of shame," (actually, there was no shame involved, just tedium) and got the balls. Somehow this break seemed to put a spell on my invincible mojo, because when I got back, I wasn't able to do anything right in the next two games and lost almost every point. Everything was all fudging up for me. My shots were erratic, my timing was in the toilet, and my mental state was kablooie. So now the score was 4-2.

Luckily, I tucked it back in, and was able to score the next two games. But they were definitely harder to win than the first four had been. In the second set, I had a major advantage in most games, but he pulled ahead in a couple of games in a mojo-busting fashion; once again, I didn't do almost anything right in either of those games. But I did take the majority of the games, even though it was a little tougher than before.

For the last two games, though, I REALLY started running out of fuel. I hadn't eaten in a while, and I was probably starting to get an electrolyte imbalance. Though I started feeling weaker, I still was getting good shots in, and that helped. So I won the last few games, with somewhat of a fight. But by the time the match was over, I could barely stand up. I had to go report my score, and had to wait quite a while in line, and felt almost ready to pass out. Since I couldn't get the score reported, I sat down away from the tournament desk for a while, and kept going back to try to report, but still couldn't get in for a while. And then when I did report, the guy at the desk turned to somebody else quickly before I could find when the next match was. I was starting to feel at death's door, but finally, about ten minutes later, I got to ask my question about when my next match was, and the guy at the tournament desk, who was filling in, said he didn't know. Then some guy came up and said I was supposed to play him right then.

Well, that would definitely not have worked. Maybe if I could have rested for half an hour or so, I could have pulled it together. I didn't want to play a fourth match today much either. I want inside and lay down for a while on the couch, and when I came back, the tournament director had come back from his game, and told me that I played at 9 the next day. I thought he had said earlier that my next match would be the next day, so I was grateful to get that confirmed. I was starting to strengthen some from the pizza that I gobbled down when I got off the court. I maybe could have played another match. But I don't think I would have been a very happy camper.