Taking Weekend Tennis Seriously

My Tri-Level team played Sectionals (where the various winners at the city level throughout the state/USTA section compete against each other) this past weekend. Tri-Level is a team tennis event in which three different rated lines of doubles is played for each team match. My team played in the 3.0/3.5/4.0 Tri-Level league.

My team shouldn’t have even been in the Sectionals tournament, but my city got the wild card entry, and the second place team couldn’t go. It fell to us as the 3^rdplace team (we had a couple of injuries that weekend so getting another chance to prove ourselves would have been amazing). We just had the minimum for the 3.5 and 3.0 lines (two players on each line) to even agree to go to Sectionals in the first place. I’m very thankful those gals were able to get off 401K-compensated work (while the domestic engineers on our team couldn’t get off work…think about it…) to drive 230+ miles and play the two Friday matches as well as playing all the matches over the weekend without incident.

You know who couldn’t get off 401K-compensated work (yes, this will be a thing now) on Friday? Me (which was fine because the team’s best 4.0 doubles team played and had to go three sets in both matches to win. They were down match point each time. Wowza). Instead, my right calf and I carried on conversations all day Friday. I kept asking it if it was going to cramp up on me in my match on Saturday. It kept saying, “Um, maybe.” That’s how my cramps generally start: I can feel my right calf thinking about it.

However, driving four hours right before playing is one way of stopping your right calf from thinking.

By the time I got to the tournament site, my team was up 2-0 in the flight standings with one more team match to play. Win the final flight team match (2 of the 3 lines) and we automatically are in the semifinals. Lose and then there would have been some number crunching to see if we qualified in.

My partner and I won our 4.0 match in 35 minutes (so my partner says). 6-0, 6-1. Listen, man, four hours is a long time to be cooped up; my partner – who also drove down on Saturday – and I were roaring to go. Thinking the following was also helpful for me: “Please, please, don’t be the reason why your team didn’t advance; you’ve sat down your best doubles team so that you can selfishly hog a match. Don’t screw this up!”

Oh, and we just happened to play the team that ended up last in our flight. I’m still laughing at my fellow 4.0 teammates and their good fortune to play super tough flight matches.

The 3.0 line also won their flight match (so awesome, so steady) so we were in the semis for sure. The fireworks, however, was on the 3.5 line. One of the opponents kept foot faulting, which is when you cross the baseline before hitting your serve. It’s not something generally brought up during practice matches because nobody takes them as seriously as one would a real match and people don’t generally call out the friends they’re playing against. So because they’ve never been called out for it, it’s quite the shock for players when told they’re guilty of it during actual matches. My teammates’ opponent wasn’t too pleased about being told she was a foot faulter.

Here’s a tip: You might be a foot faulter if you’re inside the service box by the time the returner has hit the ball. Not even Usain Bolt makes it to the service line when he serves and volleys.

After warning the opponent she was foot faulting, my teammates called her out on it again, but they had stopped the point and wanted a second serve. Unfortunately, players don’t have the right to call opponents on foot faults (the player has to call it on herself for the fault to be enforced). Heated words were exchanged; an official had to be called over; and in those long excruciating minutes, I wondered if a fist fight was going to break out on the court and I would have to reluctantly jump in to help out my teammates. Would this be the cause for my first-ever stint in jail?

Welp, the 3.5s ended up losing in three sets, but it didn’t matter. Semifinals time!

After learning that it is actually possible to win a match in only two sets, my 4.0 teammates did just that in their semifinals match. However, the 3.0 line lost in three. It came down to our 3.5s.

Once again, so many words and glares were shot at each other and the official had to be called over (this time for the opponents’ bad line calls), and once again, I wondered if my teammates would be able to pull enough money amongst themselves to bail the 3.5s and me out. Can you post bail with a credit card? I don’t know. I’ve never thought about these things. Until now. At a women’s recreational weekend tennis match.

The momentum of the match swung when the official overruled the opponents’ out call on my teammate’s serve. What was initially a fault became an official ace. That boost of confidence propelled my teammates to battle through the rest of the match and win it. Finals, baby!

In the Sectionals Finals, we ended up playing the team that won our city’s Tri-Level tournament. Had we advanced to the finals at the city level (a possibility had no one been injured), we would have faced them then. Oh, the irony.

Still riding high from the intense battle the afternoon before, the 3.5 line played a tension-less finals match and won in two sets. My team was up 1-0! No official was needed in the taping of this movie.

For the sake of the narrative, let’s pretend that the 3.0s lost soon after instead of being the last match to finish (as I said in the team recap email to the teammates back home, the weight of carrying this team for so long finally caught up to them). Each team now had a match apiece, 1-1. It came down to the 4.0 line.

My team won the first set. Now it’s late in the second set. We’re fast forwarding to when I became a part of the story because really, this is about me. So one of the opposing team’s teammates was watching the 4.0 match, and she had something to say after every point. Every. Point. EVERY POINT. The unofficial rule in weekend tennis cheering is that you cheer when your team hits a winner. You don’t cheer when the other team simply makes a mistake, also known as an unforced error. So, generally, there’s not much cheering going on. This opposing teammate was cheering every point. I wish I could present you with examples of what she said, but you’re just going to have to believe me that she was being very vocally supportive.

All the while, my captain is telling me I need to cheer more; we need to be as vocal as the opposing teammate is being. And I’m blinking back at my captain like, “Okay, I would, if I had something to cheer about.” Which isn’t a knock on my teammates at all – most points aren’t won on clear winners. Plus, I really didn’t want to go to jail.

So my teammate hits a sharp angled shot that I didn’t even think the opposing player would get to, but she did; however, all she could do was dump the ball to the net. To celebrate my teammate and the forced error she caused, I yell out, “Great shot, [teammate’s name].” The opposing player retorts at me, “I missed the ball into the net.” And of all the things exclaimed in the name of supporting one’s teammates during this match, that was the catalyst for both teams to ask their respective camps to keep it down. I BECAME THE BAD GUY IN ALL THIS. I’m the one who has a reputation for violating cheering etiquette. Unbelievable. I mean, if I knew I would be called out for yelling something, I wouldn’t have wasted that line on congratulating my teammate on a good shot. I would have certainly gotten my money’s worth and said something like…

But it turned out just fine because that was right before the 3^rd set tiebreaker. Which my team won. And thus Sectionals.

Oh, hey. My team won Tri-Level Sectionals this past weekend.

Unfortunately, we don’t get to travel to Indian Wells to compete in the Nationals Tournament (and watch the professionals play in the BNP Paribas Open going on at the same time). Only the 3.5/4.0/4.5 level does (basically, it comes down to there not being enough courts for everyone, according to Indian Wells Tennis Garden Director of Tennis Tom Fey in his email to me). But my team is getting a banner. And, really, isn’t receiving a banner the whole point of playing weekend tennis? <high, sing-song-y voice>#MadeIt</>

~ Christy Vutam