Clash With The Titan (Again)

Sets 539-540:

Stuart v. TennisTitan in Yonkers, NY. Winner: Stuart 6-3, 6-2.

Traveling around the northeastern quadrant of the country, I stopped by to visit the TennisTitan in our series of back-and-forth matches. We had a little bit harder time this time finding time as I had stuff to do, and he had stuff to do. So my original plan of visiting him on the way up got changed around and I stopped through on the way back instead.

He was ever the gracious host, offering me a night's rest at his place since I was stopping through. Might be the last time for that, though, since he said he was starting to think about selling his humble home, now that he's been an empty-nester for a while. Sounded like he has a lot of memories invested in that place.

When I pulled into Yonkers, I had already visited most of the states in New England. Did my time in Woonsocket, RI. Spent a great time in Boston. Three days in Hartford, CT. Camped in Bear Brook State Park in New Hampshire. Spent a lovely night in Bennington, VT. Hiked the tallest mountain in Massachusetts and the Adirondacks in New York. So the tennis thing was turning out to be the icing on top of the cake; the cherry on the whipped cream.

TT and I went to one of his usual haunts and started smacking the ball around. I was a little stiff, having just gotten out of the car about an hour before. But I started getting into the fluidity of the situation, and loosened up a little. In the first set, we were keeping pace a lot, and he was getting a lot of drop shots and winners in on me. I was not covering the court as well as I should have been, but I made up for it with my usual speed in getting to where I needed to be. And I started getting savvy on the drop shots, and getting ready to rush in if it looked like a shot was going to go soft.

My defensive game was top-notch. My offensive game...well, it's never that great anyway, so I can't really complain. The first set I took 6-3, and the first few games were tougher than the last ones.

In the second set, my serve started getting better, and I won more points from dominant serves. Also, there were more long rallies, which I tend to be able to take. My anticipation improved, and I was getting to almost everything, whereby in the first set I was missing some far-court shots. I won the second set 6-2, and it was off to the Chinese buffet for both of us. A fitting cap on the evening. Of course, the Titan blogged his match right away, and I've been quite the slug once again.