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I played a tennis tournament this weekend and ended up playing my practice partner in the second round. As much as I loathe losing, when I can lose and clearly see improvement in my game and see the areas that I need to work on, while still able to maintain the belief that those deficient areas are areas that I can improve on, it is a good loss!

I’d been playing this seventeen year old kid twice a week since my ankle healed. Sometimes we have good practices. Sometimes, the fatigue of a week of school (or work) catches up to us and the intensity drops. I was excited to play her in a competitive environment though. And it lived up to my expectations.

Aside from the facts that one, I lack confidence in some of the shots I was becoming quite proficient at before my ankle injury and two, I am so sorely out of shape since there was little I could do with the ankle injury and moping and feeling sorry for myself and eating cookies seemed like a rational solution to my injury woes at the time, and three, it has been eight months since I played a competitive match, I left the match believing that I will get better.

There are always times when you play a match and you can say to yourself, I will never be as good as that person. So, you get down on yourself and maybe you don’t train as hard the next time around, figuring what’s the point? As much as I know that to be a mistake, I have yet to find a way to combat the after lost-match blues.

At any cost, there are things to work on before the next national (May 15^th), but I am just grateful to be in a good mental place right now. I love when I can finish a tournament and be inspired to train harder and practice more. I am looking forward to the next month of hard work on the court and in the gym.

Look for me to update some of my favorite footwork drills, soon.

Stay tuned,

KS

Tennis Friends

During a officials clinic I recently attended, the instructor told us this story to help us understand about using our best judgement in individual cases;

She had been umpiring a National 80s event and two ladies who were engaged in a singles battle were taking an enormous amount of time on changeovers. For those of you who aren't aware, a player is allotted 90 seconds on the changeovers and 120 between sets. Evidently, these two were taking anywhere from 5 to 8 minutes. Before putting the clock on these two, the umpire went and checked the court schedule. Since there was no one scheduled to use the courts afterwards, the temperature in sunny California that day was peaking at 92 degrees and the sum of the age of the two competitors was a three digit number, the umpire let the ladies play at their own pace.

"These two ladies have probably been playing against each other for sixty years," the trainer said.

Sixty years?

Wow.

I think of all my opponents in tennis and hockey and soccer. And I think about how many times, I seriously think, my life will be so enhanced if I never played them again! Never saw them again. And God-willing, never see them do that annoying thing they do just before they (serve the ball/shoot the puck/dribble the ball).

But then I heard that story and I thought, how cool would that be? How cool would it be to sit and chat with someone you've played year after year until those years became decades? Obviously many things color a memory and help make them vivid. And I have to say, my opponents are sometimes the most colorful part of my memories. I can never purge my thoughts of the opponent who awards herself first serves after calling phantom lets. Or the team that we affectionately refer to as the "pod people" because of the way they always hit the court like someone has got a gun on them, forcing them to be there. I remember my longest doubles match ever, a match that was about as long as any singles match I've ever played. And I remember the opponents. It's been three years, I've never played them since, but every time I've seen them, we spend a good ten minutes "remembering" the points of that match.

As vivid as the memory is to me, relaying it to people who weren't on the court is not the same as reliving it with my opponents.

There are many things that I look forward to as a tennis player in search of my first of many gold balls in Adult and Senior national tournaments. Since hearing that story at my training class, I look forward to something else; fifty years from now, sitting in my chair on a changeover and reminiscing about matches played over the decades of history I have with my opponent.

Stay tunes,
KS