Tennis, Tennis And More Tennis, With A No-Play Night

I just haven't been able to bring myself to write about every time I play...but I've been playing almost every day.  I've been meeting with this awesome South Austin Social Tennis Club most of the time. It's a pretty cool format, everybody gets to mix up and play with each other, nobody is usually left out.  It's both doubles and singles (though I don't usually play doubles, I've been growing to appreciate it more and more), and usually people will play four games and then switch up.  Usually it's two and a half hours of running around, sometimes (or most of the time) in incredible heat, seeing as how that's the deal in Texas in August in the early evening...

Last night I managed to get a couple of sets in.  One was with a guy who has a strong but inaccurate forehand; when he got them in they were awesome, but it was low-percentage.  I won that set 6-0.  Then I played a set against a guy who had some much better and accurate shots, and I lost 7-5.  The rest of the time, we just played the four-game thing, changing around the opponents that we played.

Thursday night was the exception.  I had planned to play with the group, but some guy on a ladder I am playing on wanted to play a ladder match, and talked me into going all the way out to Cedar Park to play.  So I cancelled with the social group, thinking it would free up someone on the waiting list to play (usually there are 12-14 spots for the social group each time, and then those who don't sign up in time get on the waiting list), but this time, a bunch of people cancelled, so there were only 8 or 9 people playing there.

Anyway, I rushed home after work, changed really quickly, and drove out to Cedar Park in mind-numbing rush hour traffic.  It was a parking lot all the way from I-35 to past Anderson Mill Rd.  I thought I would get there in plenty of time, but it took me over an hour to get there, and I barely got there in time.  I also thought I would have time to get gas and go to the bathroom...wrong.  So I got there just in the nick of time, and found out that the high school was having matches there and there were no courts available.  I made a quick go-around looking for my opponent, but didn't see him, and had to pee REALLY bad.  So I asked a security guy where there was a bathroom, and he let me in to the football game, where there was a bathroom, but made me promise not to watch the game.  That was probably a quarter-mile from the courts, so it was a significant detour.  But I tried to get my business done as quickly as possible, and then ran back to the courts to see if I could find my opponent.  No dice.  I waited 45 minutes just in case, but he was just not there.  So I drove back to Austin, having invested in nearly three hours of driving and waiting without getting to play.  He later told me he saw the matches there and split, and tried to call me (at my land line) with no success.  I offered to drive out there AGAIN to play, but he was not interested.  Oh well.

But I've gotten to play with the group every night this week except for Black Thursday.  And I'm getting ready for another ladder match this morning which is, once again, almost all the way out to Cedar Park, but this time not quite as far.  And it's on private courts, so hopefully there won't be any chance of someone else commandeering the courts.