Taking Weekend Tennis Seriously

I was mentally fried for at least a week from the Tri-Level Tournament two weekends ago. It was the weirdest feeling. I couldn’t even look my racquet in its face is how tired I was of tennis.

Ruh-roh.

It took till this past Saturday before I started recovering. USTA Fall Play-offs were going on that same weekend, and I don’t think I would have been able to play and do well in another high-stressed atmosphere so soon had my team been in it. I guess I didn’t understand just what I was in for that fateful tournament weekend, which turned out to involve playing very big deal, high-level tennis matches back-to-back-to-back, and so I didn’t take the appropriate steps afterwards. Of course, I’m going to blame the system for not preparing me adequately enough for such an experience.

An aside: I only had two 4.5s on my Tri-Level team, and they had to play back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back. They won all their matches except the last one. They are amazing. But I’m going to persevere and continue on with my woe-is-me post, anyway.

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My USTA Tri-Level tennis team finished 2^nd in the area tournament last weekend. It’s the single greatest thing in the universe that has ever happened to me*. I think I’m supposed to add “tennis-wise” to the end of that sentence. Oh, well.

*Happened to me – as in lucking out with having awesome players who played and won while I sat in my cozy chair and sipped on grapes.

On Tuesday, the powers that be emailed out to everyone a congratulatory note that listed all the winners and runner-ups. I was stoked. The names of all the fearsome Grand Wizards in my area decorated that document. And then there was my name right alongside those luminaries. I couldn’t help but grin from ear to ear when I saw it.

I got all ready to print the email out so I could put it on a plaque and hang it in my Weekend Tennis shrine when I spotted it.

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Tri-Level is this weekend for my area. Tri-Level is a USTA team tennis tournament in which three lines of three different rated doubles teams (for example: 4.5/4.0/3.5 or 4.0-3.5-3.0) play each head-to-head match. Win at least two of those lines, and your team has won that match-up and on your merry way you go to the next one.

The idea behind the tournament, I believe, is to allow tennis friends across rating levels to be on the same USTA team for once and to compete together in this fun-with-racquets game we lovingly call tennis.

That’s the technical definition.

Here’s the underlying definition. Tri-Level is a team tennis tournament in which captains craft their rosters by grabbing and hoarding the bestest players of each rating level they can find. The recruiting call/text/email could be the first time the captains and the differently rated players have ever had correspondence.

Tri-Level uses the year-end ratings from the previous year, and the tournament itself generally occurs late the next calendar year. Boy does a lot happen in a year. So for this weekend’s tournament in November of 2013, what the computer said you were rated at the end of 2012 is the minimum* level you can play at.

*Players can always play up, but having people play up at Tri-Level would be…unconventional, as you’ll see, and goes against the unwritten spirit of the tournament.

Unwritten, that is, until now. 🙂

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Tennis is hard.

Tennis is so flippity hard.

Nearly every time I play tennis, I’m rudely awoken by a shot I’ve never seen before. Wait, that exists? You can do that with the ball? I’m still trying to learn how to hit a groundstroke that’ll go over the net and into the court. Hopefully, deep. That’s where I’m at. That’s where I’ve been at for the last few years. And now you’re telling me you can hit the ball like that and it’ll land like this and then…spin in a circle and shoot straight up into the air never to be seen again??

Mind. Blown.

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