Today is the day! This is only the third tournament I'm playing in with my son. The past two times we didn't make it into the regular draw from the group round, so our goal was to make it into the main draw, not just the consolation draw.
I was really feeling the nerves all morning. Our first match was very competitive. From the start, I was not feeling good. Not "sick", but like I wasn't able to move like I wanted. My body was so "not mine" if that makes any sense. I felt uncoordinated and out of control. I didn't feel comfortable setting up on my forehand. Everything just felt off. But, I played on. My son, who is a veteran at playing tournaments helped me through and really carried us the whole match. There were several good things about the match as well. First of all, I was able to serve well, and keep all my service games. I didn't double fault as much as I thought I would, but I did lay off my second serve just to get it in. Something I really didn't want to do on principle. But, I guess my nerves got the better of me in that situation. There were a few moments of brilliance where I was able to keep the rally going and hit the winning shot. But for the most part, since we were evenly matched, there were mistakes on both ends that kept the match close to the end. But we finally won in a Tie-Breaker 7-6.
The next group round match was against a pair that have been playing together for years. They were better all around and they didn't make many unforced errors. So, in order to win, we would have to win points as opposed to waiting for them to give us points. We actually did pretty well. I lost my first service game and they went up 1-3. My son won both of this service games to a score of 2-5. If we were going to stay in the match I would have to win my next service game. In my first service game, I went up quickly 30-Love, then things fell apart. My serve in the second game was on fire. No double faults. And we raced to a 40-15 lead. Then I hit the best serve of the day. I hard, fast, and wide serve for a clean ACE! The receiver didn't even move for it. Oh man! That felt good to win my game on an ace. Well, we ended up losing by a score of 3-6, but the match was a lot of fun.
Good news! We made it into the main draw as the second seed from our group. The bad news, we would have to play the first seed from another group. The team we played was even better than the first seed of our group. We had our chances for points and even an extra game or two, but my lack of experience and their level of play were just too much for us to overcome. My son won his first service game for a 1-1 score. But that was it. They were just too strong and consistent for us to really compete. They would return fast shots by my son with even more pace. Serves that would have been aces or at least service winners were returned deep and with pace. They were just too good. By this time I was a little more warmed up so I was hitting the ball better, but it was no where near enough to put us in contention. In the final game, the score was 1-5. We were receiving the serve of the better server of the two. My son was unable to return the first serve, 15-Love. Me, being on the Ad side received a wide serve to my back hand which I returned down the line, but the ball fell wide by about a foot. If I had made the shot, we would have gotten the point because the net player was moving to poach a cross court shot. He looked at his partner with the expression, "WHEW! That was close!". 30-Love. There was short rally on the next point, but they got it to go to Match Point. Back to me. No time to hold back, Fault on the first serve. I moved closer to base line and hoped to catch the ball early. Again, I got a wide serve to my backhand. I banged it down the line and it landed well in for a return winner! That was the shot of the day for me. I guess the net played didn't think I'd try going down the line again, because again, he was moving to poach and got totally burned. Either way, it felt great to hit such a great shot. We live another point. But they got the next point and that was the match, 1-6. It was a big loss, but the match itself was a lot of fun because playing a team that is clearly better forced me to push myself all the harder to make shots I wouldn't try otherwise. In sports, the old adage is true, "In order to be a winner, you have to lose." or something like that. Even though we lost our last two match, they were against clearly better teams so I think I got a little better through those losses. As for my son, if he had played with the friend who originally invited him to play, he could have gone all the way, possibly. So I know I held him back. But I think that playing with me, he learned a lot about leading a team. His friend is the better player so it would have been a different roll for him. But losing makes me want to practice harder to become a better player for next time. I don't know when that will be, but I'll be ready.
There was even a more valuable benefit that came from today's tournament. The first match we played was against a team that was a member of a tennis club. We got to talking and they were very nice people. They invited us, my son, wife, and I, to join their club. Thankfully, they play on Sundays, so we can go to their sessions. They also play on Wednesdays, so when I'm free, I'll play then, too. I really don't want to play on the gym floor if I can help it, so I'm glad that I now have the opportunity to play and learn. But the big thing that I learned from my Thursday club is the game mentality. Since being in Japan and getting back into tennis a few years ago, I was mostly teaching beginners and playing with beginners so I lost my stroke form for power and spin. But I mostly lost Match toughness and that Game Mentality. Beating the nerves, overcoming the stress and nervousness. I didn't learn much as far as skills, but I got back a lot of the mental toughness I lost through constantly playing matches with them. So I am very indebted to them for allowing me to play with them.
Just as a trial, I used my HRM for all my matches, practices and warm-ups today.
When I got home, I was exhausted. My legs were numb and from the second match there was a slight kink in my neck. I checked with my Arm Shaper group to see what day 13 was, and thankfully, the admin decided to hold off on a day 13 task until other member caught up. So, I did my 35 Push-Ups and I was done. A short Flow series today as well.
In the end, I torched a big 2000+kcals. Eight straight days of tennis. I haven't played this much tennis since I last went to tennis camp when I was a high school student. I wish I could keep it up, but that is just a dream. My son goes back to Tokyo next week and I leave for Nagasaki to watch my daughter play in in the Japanese National Field Hockey Tournament as a member of the Kagoshima Team. Busy week ahead. But I'll see if I can play a few times more while my son is still here.
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