Taking Weekend Tennis Seriously

Hello, Dear Reader!

I know.

I’ve been away. 🙁

The honest reason for it? I just didn’t feel like writing.

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• One of my high school teachers said that to purposefully get every question wrong on a multiple choice exam was harder than it seemed. If anyone pulled off the feat, he would give that student a 100. This challenge created a bit of a buzz in the classroom, but of course, no one took him up on it.

For whatever reason, that memory surfaced recently, and now I’m tempted to see if I can manipulate my line-ups so that my oblivious team will lose every line, every match.

Obviously, the first step in losing every line, every match would be to not play me, um… 😉

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The USTA Combo Tournament was underway this weekend for my area (and will take place next weekend for the area an hour from here – Hi, Fort Worth!). I didn’t play in it, which confirms my suspicions that if I didn’t captain a USTA team, I would never get to play USTA tennis.

I’m playin’ with ya. I’m honestly relieved that my reputation for captaining teams and needing to micromanage precedes me and people automatically assume I’m putting together a team and don’t ask me to play on theirs. Yes, that’s it, Christy. Keep telling yourself that. 😉

I have never quite understood the Combo Tournament.

Someone sadistically thought it would be an excellent idea to pair up two people of different ratings to play another pairing of the same different ratings. Three lines for each team match and voilà. The Combo Tournament!

Obviously, this someone was the lower rated player in his/her Combo doubles partnership.

I have been on teams in which I was not good enough to play with certain teammates, but of course, the only person who didn’t know I wasn’t good enough was me. If I had known at the time that I could have just shrewdly entered into this tournament to pair up with these too-good-to-partner-up-with-under-normal-circumstances players, I would have been ALL over this.

Did I describe the person who thought of this concept as sadistic? There’s a part of me that would like to change the term to genius. Total genius.

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One of the supposed perks of being a captain is that you can choose who you want to play doubles with, which would imply that whomever I deign as deserving as being on the same court as myself is probably one of the best players on the team. Captains are not totally stupid. Well actually, a captain’s partner might be one of the worst players or one of the least enjoyable people to play with, and the captain is taking (yet another) one for the team.

For the record, I’m not totally stupid.

I do have players on my team that I very much would like to play doubles with, people I wouldn’t otherwise play doubles with in a real match (which kills me because what is the point of playing tennis if it’s not recorded anywhere for opposing captains to gaze at and go “Ooh, who is Christy’s partner?”) because this is the only tennis team we’re on together.

So this is perfect, right? I captain a tennis team comprised of people I want to play doubles with and whatdoyaknow I’m in charge of the line-up and it’s the most awesome power in the world. Nay, the universe. That’s how that works, right?

There are three cities-spanning team tennis leagues for women in my area. There are three leagues I could have possibly captained a team in. Being the brilliant person that I am, I captain a team in the one league that requires singles. I am a moron.

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I stumbled upon this D Magazine feature article on TCD (a non-USTA, cities-spanning, flight-ladder league in my area) from 1999. Some of the words/letters didn’t quite make it in the digital transition, but otherwise…yup. Yup, yup. Exactly.

On to the actual post:

You do not want to be my doubles partner. I wrote within the first month of starting this blog about the things I do / don’t do that annoy my doubles partners. Well, over the course of two years, I have accumulated even more evidence of my special talent for alienating people from wanting to play with me. I am awesome.

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Here’s the best part about being the captain of a 4.5 USTA team: after playing a non-USTA team tennis league match against strangers who were well on their way to steamrolling my behind before my partner stepped in, placed me on her back while I’m kicking and screaming, and dragged both of us across the finish line to victory, I will, of course, ask those opponents, “Would you be interested in playing on my USTA team?”

Their response: “I’m a 4.5…um…is this a 4.5 team?”

That’s fun. Tennis is fun. Everyone should experience how much fun tennis is.

Speaking of which, I am actually captaining a 4.0 USTA team in addition to the 4.5 one this summer.

*Music screeches to a halt*

What?

No. No, I can’t play on the team. I mean, not this summer, anyway. When mid-year ratings come out though, I should be…

Yes, that’s right. I’m just captaining a tennis team…that I can’t play on.

What? Is that, like, not a usual thing people do or something? Huh. Oh! So sorry for my rudeness. We haven’t been properly introduced, yet…

Hi, I’m Christy!

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There’s something wrong with my tennis head that no Pink/Katy Perry/Sara Bareilles song can help me out of.

I wouldn’t wish this mental anguish on anyone. Anyone. This sucks. Playing scared is no way to play tennis.

How to describe it. Um…

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• There’s nothing like taking a private tennis lesson to humble the rice pudding out of you.
• I very rarely leave a tennis lesson or a drill pleased with my game. I’m totally the Tim Tebow of weekend tennis. I’m awful in practice yet I inexplicably have won in match play (#WhosCarryingMeThisTime). I’m convinced more than ever that I’m rated as I am simply because I’m more athletic than most people who play recreational tennis are. I’m clearly doing tennis wrong. My coaches and I are still stuck on how to hit groundstrokes. And what the right grip is. Ugh, my grip. There’s a mark on my racquet grip that corresponds with a mark on my fist so I know how I’m supposed to hold my racquet. If you watch me closely while I’m playing a match, sometimes you’ll see me glance down at my racquet in mid rally to see if the marks match up.

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I’m constantly amazed by life and how life unfolds. I probably didn’t know you a year ago. I probably was not on your tennis team a year ago. And now here we are. Texting buddies.

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Half of house/pet sitting is pleading with dogs to go to the bathroom when it’s raining/wet outside.

As I predicted, my coach cancelled that next night’s lesson because it was too cold. Eye roll.

I’ve recently started private lessons with a second tennis coach while I’m still taking from my original teaching pro whom I’ve been with for about a year. That was a mistake. You know for two people who don’t know the other one exists – they work at different facilities, and one is new to town – they sure have loud arguments with each other. In my head.

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