Taking Weekend Tennis Seriously

Last Friday morning, I drove into work while big flakes of snow were swirling down and powdering up the roads. I took the tollway with the logic that not having to brake and stop and turn on the treacherous pathways would be the best strategy for a safe drive. Not to mention it’d be the fastest route into the office.

I was wrong. Traffic slowed to a crawl as a two-car accident was being attended to by the cops on the left-most lane. As soon as I passed the wreckage, I vroomed back over to the passing lane. Other than the roads being wet, the snow didn’t appear to have much of an effect on the traveling conditions for this particular stretch of the tollway, and I figured it’d be an easy cruise the rest of the way into work with perhaps merely moments of the-car-is-slipping anxiousness that would ultimately prove innocuous…which I experienced earlier that week on my drive home from the office when it had sleeted and the roads were icy.

Suddenly, the white mini-SUV-jeep-looking vehicle in the right-most lane 30 yards in front of me lost control, turned 90 degrees to the left, drove straight into the rail, spun in place, and stopped in the middle of the left lane. That I was on.

Because I had just left the scene of a car accident and perhaps because of how fast I had been going, I had time to slow down and check behind me, veer into the middle lane without incident, and continue safely past the vehicle with its severely damaged front-end and its no-doubt traumatized passengers inside. And then I exited the tollway.

So that was my Friday, February 27th. How was yours?

The weather has been quite the hot topic of interest for the recreational tennis players of the Dallas/Ft. Worth area recently. Last week was the first week for several of the local community tennis leagues. Mother Nature could not have cared less. Or maybe she did care and she was purposefully screwing with everyone. However you want to look at it.

The real flurry of fun was the heated discussion of having to play during these conditions. Thursday, Feb. 26 was the first day for the weekday ladies section of the Tennis Competitors of Dallas (TCD) league, and it was the only day of the week when precipitation wasn’t in the forecast.

But it would be cold. Like in-the-30s-but-it-feels-like-it’s-in-the-20s cold. With 20 mph winds.

TCD doesn’t have a rule on not playing because of non-precipitous weather (cold, wind, heat). Like that’s the actual rule:

Page 35, under Section K. Weather Conditions, under item 2: “There are no provisions for extreme cold, heat, or wind.”

Which means you’re supposed to play.

Wouldn’t you know it, but this did not sit well with the grown women who can play recreational adult tennis on a weekday morning.

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Late last year, I was really looking forward to the recreational tennis off-season (November to February). This would have been my first tennis off-season with formal coaching. I had big plans. I was finally going to learn how to hit overheads, dear reader. Big, BIG plans.

Overheads terrorize the bed sheet marks out of me. I know. I ask myself the same question: will I ever run out of tennis strokes to be terrified by?

I’m shaking my head slowly and sadly. No.

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I hate the cold.

I hate the cold so much.

I live in Texas. I live in Texas where any hint of cold makes people think the world is about to be sucked into a black hole and all of society is nearing its end and RUN FOR YOUR LIVES, PEOPLE.

I’m not the person who gets her skirt all up in a tizzy and says no to tennis because it’s too cold. I’m the person who doesn’t get to play tennis because everyone else gets their skirts all up in a tizzy because it’s too cold.

The too-cold-to-play-tennis conversation always goes the same way, too:

The World: “Hey, do you guys think it’s too cold to play? Should we reschedule?”

Me: “No, I don’t think it’s too cold to play. Smiley face.”

The World: “Well, I think it’s too cold to play. Let’s reschedule.”

I don’t know why I even bother…

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From espn.go.com. I would absolutely attribute the photographer if I knew that information…

This is Matthew Stafford. As a reader of this blog, you probably do not know who Matthew Stafford is. Matthew Stafford is the starting quarterback for the Detroit Lions, a National Football League team. Quarterback. Stereotypically, the head of the jocks. What I find fascinating about Matthew Stafford is that when his picture appears on my television screen (NFL telecasts show head shots of the starting lineup, #nowyaknow) as it has for the last four seasons, I can’t believe that that’s what he actually looks like. That does not look like a starting quarterback in the NFL. That looks like a frat boy. And if you told me he played football, I would assume he was a linesman. You know, those bigger guys who don’t ever get to touch the football. Those guys.

I bring up Matthew Stafford because I’m warning those of you who haven’t seen me in the last hibernating month or so that that’s how I look right now. I look like Matthew Stafford. My face is pudgy. I just wanted to brace everyone for this likeness so no one does a severe double take and injures themselves in the pro shop before we even get out onto the courts.

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