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.

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• A tennis class of adult beginners is learning how to hit forehands on the adjacent court. Every other word out of the teaching pro is “Excellent!”, “Good!”, or “That was beautiful!” I’m having to duck as the class’s balls come raining down on my side of the fence. If the teaching pro’s goal was to drum up more business for herself, then she’s doing a stupendous job because if she thinks that was beautiful, then I can’t wait to hear what she has to say about my shots. Mine actually go over the net now. On the same court even. I would definitely pay to have a teaching pro tell me how awesome my strokes are for once.

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