Darkness Creeping

It's starting to get dark earlier and earlier.  Tonight it was dark a few minutes before eight.  Here it comes...the time when we have to find courts with lights.

I got there just a hair before six o'clock.  It was nice and cool, comparatively.  Not searing hot like it was a couple of weeks ago.  Strangely enough, I didn't even drink any water in the couple of hours I played tonight, and most of it was spent running around and even hitting balls between scored rounds.  I don't even think tonight I stopped to rest or towel down at a changeover, which is unusual, and probably a first since the heat has started to subside.

Today I played a few doubles and a singles, and in between just hit a lot of balls around.  Lately I've been taking about a half hour to get in the zone, and then playing really well.  Today was no exception.  My team won the first doubles 6-2.  We were going to play just four games, like we usually do in this group, but nobody else was done and ready to switch up, so we ended up playing a full set.  I think we were up 3-1 when we decided to extend the set, and I guess the second half went about the same way.  I was ramping up for a while so in the beginning I wasn't all that steady, but then I played really well when I got to the net.

Then at the end of the set, none of the other teams were done yet, so we just switched partners.  This time we only played four games, and my team won 4-0.  By this time, I had flushed the cobwebs out of my play and was hitting and responding really well.  Lately I've been concentrating on my footwork as well as my shots so I can be in place for a great shot, and it really has been helping.My partner was placing these awesome lobs that would go over the heads of the other side when one person would come to net, and would be out of range for the other person to get.  But one of the players on the other side was tapping these drop shits barely across the net that I didn't get to when I hit the ball right to him.  I joked after about the third time that I have to stop doing that.

By the end of these four games, everybody else was ready to switch up, so I moved to singles.  I was still hitting pretty well and, most importantly, I was getting to almost everything and placing my returns well.  I ended up winning the singles match 4-0.

Then there was one more round of doubles and this time my team didn't have as good rapport.  We ended up winning the first game, losing the second, losing the third and winning the fourth.  The first game was on my serve and we won on the strengths of my serve and the momentum it provided to the rallies.  Often this is one of the strengths of my game as not only can I usually get a pretty consistent serve, but I can usually also place it well and regulate the spin on it pretty well.  My serve is probably the shot that I have the best control over.  Lately my backhand has been surprisingly strong and my forehand ground strokes are probably my weakest spot, but they are slowly getting there.   This last scored round we tied 2-2.  Then we just smacked the ball around some until it got too dark to see, which happened surprisingly early compared to the last time I played.  But I've had to take a few evenings off because I've had to deal with other matters.  Tomorrow I have a singles ladder match at Shipe Park, so we'll see how I play in a more competitive setting.

Can't Believe I Got To Play Today

Man, the rain has come to knock out our drought.  It is awesome.  But it knocked out tennis for the group last night and I thought it was going to foreclose on the courts tonight too.

But after pouring like mad all morning, all of a sudden it let up.  It didn't rain for two hours after lunch, and when I looked at the radar, there was a big hole opening up for just about all of Austin.  It was cloudy but not raining.

I was so sure it was going to rain that I didn't even take my racquets to work with me to go play afterwards.  So when it turned out that it was going to be OK to play after all, I had to haul ass home, change and get my racquets, and peel out to the courts.  I got there to Austin High just in time and hit with one guy for a while.  Then he texted some more people that it was great on the courts, and one by one, they started filtering in.

The weather was awesome, too.  After all of this searing heat, it was nice to have a breezy cold front blow in and bring us cool weather.  We mixed it up a bunch with doubles and singles; when I played singles, it was like I was hitting with magic.  My shots were going right where I wanted them to go, with just the right amount of spin and power.  I was smacking the crap out of the ball and playing offensively when my usual game is defensive.  And I was lined up almost perfectly for every shot.  It was awesome.  I won most of the singles, except for one which was a tie.

Wish I could say it was the same for the doubles.  It was like night and day in one of the pairings.  I didn't coordinate well with one of my partners.  I was hitting totally off, and just not reading anything well.  Luckily the frustration was momentary.

It's starting to get darker even earlier now....I started hitting about 5:30 and stayed there until 8:00...we played until about the last minute I could have played and still could see the ball.

The No-Tennis Zone

Well, I haven't been able to play for the last three nights because I've had other commitments.  But also, it's been raining.  I would much rather it rain when I have other commitments anyway.  Tomorrow is the first night I can play again, but I'm afraid it's going to rain.  That hasn't stopped me from signing up to play with the group. We'll see.  We do need the rain.

I've got a singles ladder match set on Sunday morning.  There's a story there, and I'll probably tell more of it when I blog that match.

Also, I just signed up with a running meetup group and I'll be running with them next Monday night instead of playing tennis.  So no tennis next Monday for me either.

Tennis Elbow Treatment

Here is a video that shows how to fix tennis elbow:

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2012/09/09/health/100000001768943/a-fix-for-tennis-elbow.html

Playing Against A Sizzler

Today I showed up at Martin Junior High to play.  A bunch of people showed up...first I played some with a guy that I beat last week who has a fairly erratic style, then another woman showed up so we switched it to Australian doubles (two against one).  I hope Australians don't get offended.  Maybe they call it American doubles there.  Who knows.

Anyway, we play a version where the person on the singles side gets two points if they win, and the two on the doubles side get a point each if they win.  Then we rotate to the left every game, so everybody is playing in a different position, and the singles person always gets to serve.  We play to four (we usually don't play many games so we can switch it up as more people show up) This went by pretty fast, and after being 3-3-0, J. finally won the last game serving singles to pass four points.

Then I played singles against this guy who was a total shot sizzler.  He was hitting really fast balls that were super accurate.  The only reason I did OK against him was because I play such a defensive game.  But he still beat me 2-0.  Then another guy showed up and we played some more Australian.  But we were kinda lax on the score; we played for a long time because the people next to us (four who were playing doubles) weren't done yet.

Then I played a guy who had some pretty good shots and I beat him 3-1.  I would have played more but it was getting dark and the courts at the junior high didn't have lights.  We're going to start having to find places with lights soon as it's getting darker earlier, and daylight savings time is looming around the corner.

Might not play for the next two or three nights...there's some other stuff going on that I might want to get involved in.

A Week In The Life, and Group Tennis Compared To Group Sex

I played tennis almost every day this week.  The exception was one day when I canceled with the group because a good friend of mine's dad died and I wanted to attend the memorial service to be with him.

Today I wasn't sure if I was going to make it.  To play tennis, that is.  There was a group thing at nine in the morning and I like to sleep late.  And, to top it off, I had gotten up to play tennis at eight in the morning yesterday *groan*.  But once I got there (both days) it was happening.

Group tennis vs. group sex:  You get to do a bunch of people.  You get to watch how everybody does it, and how their bodies move.  You get to marvel at people who have techniques that you either only dream of or that you can incorporate into your routine.  You might not know who will show up, and you might be pleasantly surprised.

OK, group tennis is really nothing like group sex.  It's not intimate.  It's not fake.  Nobody is naked, and nobody is trying to get their rocks off.  There's much less jealousy.  But it's worth a comparison because it brings me eyeballs.  (ha, ha, got you here, didn't I?)

So enough of this prurient pornographic stuff.  Back to the tennis.

Today, four people showed up for the group, so we just played doubles.  I'm not a huge fan of doubles.  For some strange reason, I like control over my shit.  But I do like to mix with folks and smack balls around, so it's all good.  But we just couldn't get it together, and lost a set 6-4.  We had a good surge mid-set, and won a couple of games, but just lost the magic.  *sniff*

Everybody else took off at that point, but I was still ready to jump up and down for another hour and a half, so I went to the gym and did 45 min. of weights and then 45 min. of elliptical.

Yesterday, a bunch of people showed up, so we mixed it up between singles and doubles, moving around people from one thing to the next. I tink we played for about two and a half hours.  I was triumphantly undefeated (though one doubles thing was a tie) in every configuration I played in.  So there. (don't worry about me getting smug, I'll get my ass handed to me in humiliating fashion soon enough).

Before that it's a blur.  All I know is I played a bunch.

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.

Finally...A Hard-Fought Win

Stuart v. J. at Northwest Park.  Winner: Stuart 3-6, 6-4, 6-2.

My Mojo: Surging.

It has not been a favorable atmosphere for me on the tennis court lately when I've been playing sets.  First last week I lost a set 6-1 at Austin High.  But the frustrating thing was that the games were great, with lots of back-and-forth between deuce and ad, and super-long rallies.  But I was not physically well; I think I was dehydrated, and it was really hot.  I just didn't have the edge even though I was putting forth some good game.

Then I lost a couple of really lopsided matches where I played two sets and only won one game out of thirteen in each of the whole two sets.  One was 6-1, 6-0, one was 6-0, 6-1.  I forget which was which.

One was against an opponent that I probably could have done better against, and another was just a completely outclassed mismatch in which I couldn't do anything.  This guy played so well that I was there about 80% of the first ball he would hit, then 70% the second time the ball came at me, then about 50% for the third time, then the kill shot would come.  And almost every point was like that.

Today, at first, I thought it was going to be another complete mismatch.  The guy I played against was just totally wiping the court with me at the beginning.  He was a big, accurate hitter with a good sense of strategy.  His serve had a huge amount of bounce and he was hugely fierce on both the first and second serves.  I was mishitting the serves, and that led to really weak rallies.  But even on my serves, I just felt like there was not much of an inroad for me.  In the first set, I didn't get a lot of points, but I did manage to win three games mostly on the strength of my serves.  But when I got into a rally my game just melted.

So I thought that I was just oatmeal.  But in the second set, after I was down 1-4, I just decided to play one point at a time, with blinders as to what happened before, and just try to be calm and steady with my shots.  And I started winning one game after another.  Whereas in the first set, I hadn't won any games on his serve, suddenly I was breaking his serve over and over again.  Before I knew it, I had tied the score at 4-4.

Then he had a momentary rage thing.  He looked at me with some serious anger, and then let out a yell, and hit the ball way out of the court.  Usually if I do something like that, I'm pretty sheepish afterwards.  But he still looked mad, and it freaked me out a little.  But it also kinda made me more calm in a way, realizing that I had some stability in my mood and that was a good thing.  I won the next two games to win the set, and he was starting to play a little more erratically.  I don't think he expected to get to a third set, and I was ready for anything.

But then his focus came back for the third set.  And mine got kinda diffuse.  He and I matched games, getting to 2-2, when my calmness came back and I started strategizing a little better.  I won the next two games quickly, and then his shots got really unsteady.  He was hitting hard, but not putting a lot of aim into it, with the exception of the occasional great approach shot for the kill.  I just tortoised my way past this hare and won the match.

Down And Out In Bev...er...Northwest Park

OK.  I'm baaaaaack.  It's been three years since I last posted here.  It had started to become rote to me.  It was getting to be a chore.  I was unfulfilled.  Or whatever.  But here I am again.

The original aim of this blog was to chronicle playing 365 sets in a year.  And I did that with flying colors.  Then I slowed down in my playing, and didn't feel like blogging after a while.  Sometimes I just posted the scores.  Then I quit even doing that.

Why did I stop?  Life takes over sometimes.  It reminds us that there's a huge world out there, and that focusing on one little facet of it detracts from everything else.  And there was a lot of everything else in the meantime.  I could write a blog, I tell ya.

So now I have no real goal, which is OK with me.  I'm not reaching for a brass ring.  I can do whatever I want here.  I can post my games if I want, and not post them if I don't.

I've been on kind of a hiatus for a while.  I had escaped tennis elbow-type stuff for most of the duration of my tennis play, but toward the end of when I quit for a while, my elbow had been hurting.  I iced, used anti-inflammatories, exercised, and did all the things you are supposed to do, but it wasn't getting any better.  So I quit for a while.  It was probably about nine months.  I had quit blogging long before that, and I had reduced my game load also.  But here I am to bug you once again with my useless ramblings about a tiny sliver of the life of this mostly insignificant ball of seemingly sentient twitches, spazzing around in one little festering pocket of the universe.

I've played some tennis that I didn't blog.  Since I started playing again this month, I haven't really played any matches; I've just been hitting with some people and maybe playing some informal games.  Maybe I'll blog those, maybe I won't.

But back to our protagonist.

Sets (oh, that's another thing...I'm not going to keep a running count of the sets any more).

Stuart v. C. at Northwest Park.  Winner: C. 6-1, 6-0

My Mojo:  One Step Back.


Since I started hitting informally a short while back, at first my shots were complete garbage.  Nothing was going where it should have gone and everything was hitting the wrong part of the racquet.  "Erratic" would be an understatement.  So I dialed it back and just tried to get the fundamentals down.  After hitting a few times, I was getting the old feel back.  The last couple of times I hit, it was feeling really solid.  It was getting better and better.  Last time, almost everything felt great.  Footwork was better, shots were solid, and I was using really good spin control.

But not today.  It was definitely a step back.  It's a good sign to take two steps forward and one step back, I guess.  I just wish it hadn't happened today.

Not to denigrate my opponent at all, but I mostly beat myself.  I hit poor angles that made the ball go out when it should have gone in.  I was too low on the net tape.  My opponent helped me dig my grave by hitting everything back really solidly, capitalizing well on my weak shots, and playing for position superbly.  Toward the end the heat and my feeble excuse for play was just getting to me too much.  Even though the score was lopsided, at first it was pretty competitive.  But toward the end, it was exactly what the score reflected.  I just could not break out on almost anything, and they points just were not my friends anymore.  There was really no way out by the end of the second set.  I could probably do better against this opponent on a better day, but not today.

Sets 560-562:

Stuart v. K. at Connally HS. Winner: K. 6-7(5), 6-2, 6-2.

Sets 558-559:

Stuart v. TennisTitan at Northwest Park. Winner: Stuart 6-1, 6-3.

Sets 556-557:

Stuart v. TennisTitan at Northwest Park. Winner: Stuart 6-3, 6-1.

Sets 553-555:

Stuart v. C. at South Austin Tennis Center and Westlake High School. Winner: Stuart 6-4, 5-7, 6-3.

Sets 550-552:

Stuart v. S. at Williamson County Tennis Center. Winner: S. 2-6, 7-5, 6-2.

Sets 548-549:

Stuart v. W. at Little Stacy Park. Winner: W. 6-0, 6-1.