Taking Weekend Tennis Seriously

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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Of the many tennis shots I don’t have, hitting a forehand groundstroke isn’t one of them. I like to think of this next line delivered in Uncle Rico’s voice from Napoleon Dynamite: I can whip a forehand groundstroke winner on you from just about anywhere on the court.

Well, I’ll try, anyway. And trying’s half the battle! So that’s a 50% chance I’ll hit a winner and a 50% chance I won’t. I like these chances. And the logic.

My opponent loves those chances, too, by the way.

When I was an up-and-coming weekend warrior adult tennis player, the scouting report on me was to hit to my backhand – stay the heck away from my forehand. In fact, I know of at least one tennis friend who told another tennis friend to do this before playing me a couple of years ago. Have I forgotten about this violation of trust? Actually, I did. Until I started writing this blog post. And now I just remembered that I’m not happy with you, you supposed tennis friend. As soon as USTA is over and I don’t need you to win tennis matches for me so I can feel good about myself, I’m not going to talk to you for a whole week.

Hah! That’ll show you. It’s not like you’ll be relieved about not being bugged about yet another inane tennis thing for one glorious, peaceful week or anything.

Anyway, I’m here to tell you to throw that scouting report out the window. Don’t worry about not hitting to my forehand now. My forehand can’t kill you anymore. It can’t even hit the ball.

I have the blasted forehand groundstroke yips.

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Hi, I’m Christy Vutam, and I’m a singles tennis player.

Being a singles player in the weekend warrior tennis community makes you something of a curious spectacle. You…run? You…are okay with playing by yourself? You…don’t think the point of playing tennis is exclusively to socialize?

You…can’t volley?

Let’s get something out of the way right now. Asking someone if she plays singles or making any sort of references to her singles abilities after she’s just played a doubles tennis match is a slap in the face to that player. She’s playing doubles. She’s…okay, trying to play doubles, bless her. When you bring up her singles game, you’re essentially saying she’s not a good doubles player. You are being rude and disrespectful.

Unless, of course, your goal is to ignite an unrelenting, burning passion within her to become a doubles ninja who will eventually show you what a real doubles player looks like and then beat you on a regular basis at ease with her mad doubles skills even if it takes her several years to actually enact this revenge, then that’s cool. Ignite away.

Sorry. Back to singles.

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If you haven’t signed up, yet, for the USTA team you told the captain or the co-captain you would join this spring/summer (real USTA is only a couple of months away; YES!), you are making your captain nervous. Yes, the league starts in April for men and in May for women and mixed. Yes, there’s no deadline to sign up. But dear goodness in Heaven, what if someone swoops in, whispers sweet nothings in your ear, and steals you away? WHAT IF THAT HAPPENS?!

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