5-08-17 Tennis.

5-08-17 Tennis.

Well, it has been a long time coming, but I finally got to play some "competitive" tennis today.  Since switching to Pickle-Ball with my regular partner, I haven't played match tennis in several months, or more.  So I was a little nervous playing today.  I was especially nervous about my serve.  I haven't served in a match setting in a very long time.  I haven't even really practiced my serve for a very long time.  When I play with my wife, I don't serve at full strength.  There was a twist to the match today, though.  I was thinking of playing singles, but my regular playing partner called a couple of his friends and so we ended up playing doubles.  Which is fine because I need doubles practice if I'm going to enter a tournament with my son sometime.  But these guys play 3-4 times a week for 3-4 hours at a time so they are very good and very consistent.  Not a lot of power, but they are like walls, getting everything back.  During the warm up time, I was spraying balls everywhere.  It was making me more nervous.  I just couldn't catch up to the ball because it seemed to exponentially pick up speed after bouncing, and I was always late.  When I tried to take the ball early, I didn't make good contact so I was a mess.

So we started to play a match.  I got a huge surprise!  My serve in the match was AWESOME!!!  First of all, I served 6 games and I won all of them.  That is the first time that has happened since playing doubles in Japan.  Second, I didn't double fault in my first four games.  I hit one in the fifth and a couple in the last game, but I pulled it out, stayed in control and still won.  I lost the first set with one partner 3-6, but I won a second set with another partner 6-5 (Yeah, that is one of the rules in their club, at 5-5 the next winner takes the set.  So I didn't get to serve the last game).  Aside from my serve, the other parts of my game were okay.  I hit some good shots and winners and shanked several other balls.  One shot I was particularly proud of was a reaction volley I hit standing two meters from the net.  The ball I hit was an overhead from my opponent standing a midcourt.  He aimed right at me, and I guess right and hit that volley into the open court.  Shot of the match for me!

I had such a great time.  I look forward to Monday's now with a renewed zest!

In the end, I torched a big 1300+kcals.  I was very surprised because it was doubles, but I guess I was moving a lot more than I thought I was.