Taking Weekend Tennis Seriously

I’m not a good doubles player.  That’s why I write about doubles so often.  I didn’t play it when I was growing up and now the concept of volleying and hitting balls out of the air plague my mind to no end.  Doubles is a mystery I spend most of my working day trying to solve.  My boss should look at my pie charts more closely.

A typical working day.
It should be noted that most of my lobs are either long/out or short/easy putaways for the wrong team.

See, doubles is a finesse game.  Crafty older ladies dominate me because they understand the nuances of this higher level type of tennis.  Don’t hit to the net person.  Use the lob as a weapon.  Place the ball.  That’s…that’s just a lot of thinking.

I’ve tried to play this style.  I’ve tried thinking.  I’ve tried to make sure I don’t hit the ball anywhere near the net person.  But with all that concentratin’, I forget to hit the ball hard.  That would be fine if I could compensate by hitting volleys, and well, we all know I can’t do that.

So I concentrate to stay away from the net player, and I end up merely pushing the ball back in what I think is the correct direction.  The Crafty Older Ladies – with their eyes as big as the cookies they should be busily making – scurry like lightning to put away the juicy volley.  That’s how slow my ball is going.

This is exactly what happened Saturday morning.  It was an atrocious display of fluffy, patty-cake tennis.  There is no excuse for losing the final point because my weaksauce groundstroke going down the line (the opponents had switched so the back person was now down the line across from me while the net person had moved over) doesn’t even reach the net.  Do you understand how embarrassing it is for me – a branded singles player – to not even muster a proper, straightforward  groundstroke, the one shot I’m supposed to be able to hit?!

It was the worst doubles match I had ever played.  I couldn’t speak to myself for nearly ten minutes afterwards.  It was that bad.

No more.  No more fluffy, patty-cake, weaksauce tennis.  Look out, Crafty Older Ladies.  Hulk sees ball.  Hulk smashes ball.  That’s all there is to it.

This is how I normally play singles.  I try to hit winners on every single ball no matter where I am on the court.  Various coaches have tried to browbeat this out of me.  It’s ruining my doubles game.

And the worst part is that I come to this earth-shattering conclusion once every 2 months or so.  I vaguely remember having this exact eureka moment back in January.  The breakthrough didn’t last.

A wise partner told me about a month ago we would win if I hit the ball hard to set her up for the easy put-away.  I said sincerely, “Oh my gosh, you’re right!!”

Yeah, this brain – it’s going places.

When I played with her again on Saturday, I had forgotten how to hit hard.

I don’t know why I forget.  Maybe it’s because I’ll play with weaker-hitting players and I think I can’t hit these soft balls hard because they’ll sail out of the court.  And because I usually win anyway, I think not hitting hard is what I’m supposed to do.  Or, it’s because I’ll get partnered with an out-of-control knucklehead and I think I need to be the more grounded player and just get the ball in to compensate for her ridiculousness.

I need to stop thinking.

And I will.  I’ll be The Hulk in doubles (and a werewolf in singles for those of you keeping track at home).  I don’t care where I hit the ball to as long as I hit it hard.  Just smash the crap out of the ball.  It’ll take a special net player who’ll be able to do something with that rocket.

Sigh.  It won’t take a special net player.  The ladies I play against will get used to the speed and simply stick out their boney arms and the ball will plop off their racquet and die onto my side of the court.  I’ll curse myself for not having finesse in my game and for being so one-dimensional.  The cycle will start over.  And there will be blog posts.