Taking Weekend Tennis Seriously

This fall is the sixth season I will have captained a tennis team, and for the first time in my team tennis captainship, I will be out of town and out of pocket for at least one of the matches.

Hold me.

Read the rest of this entry »

• 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… 😉

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

• The Real Housewives of Tennis: this delightful blog post about the weekend tennis scene in Nashville and its effect on unsuspecting domestic engineers and 401K-compensated women proves it’s not all just in my head. However, I am unclear on the whole “lunch that the other team brings” bit. What’s this about lunch being provided? And here I am getting all giddy when my team plays at country clubs that have complimentary Goldfish…
• Wouldn’t it be awesome if we had a Take Your Dog to Tennis Day? An actual thought I had when I brought my dog to a match I was playing. What a silly idea, right? Tennis balls flying everywhere and people running around willy-nilly: yeah, there is no way most dogs would sit nicely during all this delicious movement. Had there been other dogs at the tennis facility in honor of Take Your Dog to Tennis Day, my dog would have barked incessantly instead of being bored out of her mind.
• If your dog was watching you play tennis, do you think he/she would say, “Wow, she never moves that fast in real life” or “Yup, that dawdling looks about right”?

Read the rest of this entry »

Recreational tennis is heralded as one of those sports adults should play: it’s life-long fun; it’s good for the physical health; and it brings together strangers who, at best, may end up being friends for life, and, at the very least, may enrich each other’s lives.

We know better.

There is something wrong with my knee now. There was nothing wrong with my knee until last week when I played scrabble tennis. As I was scrambling madly around during a point in a doubles practice match, I inadvertently banged my racquet on the side of my knee, and I felt…something. I never would have played in said match except one of my “friends” said, “I am free for tennis on such-and-such morning within this particular time frame” and then looked at me expectantly. “Um, o-okay, I-I’ll set something up then!” Because that’s what I do. As a sucker friend.

All of the women I played with in that fateful practice match – this will be the match I look back at when I have to have knee surgery – are all “friends.” You know what they said when I was trying to walk out the wobbliness in my knee?

<sarcastically>“Uh-huh, sure looks serious.”</>

“She’s faking it.”

“Come on, Vutam.”

To their credit, they did offer to stop the match prematurely…as they were taking their respective places for the next point.

Read the rest of this entry »

I feel like a million things have happened since last I wrote that have rocked my personal tennis world, and at some point when my head has cleared, I hope to address the two major ones. But if I never do, which is more likely, here’s where my head is at with those things:

The Qualifying Tournament: If I weren’t me, I would concentrate on what was probably the best part of the QT, or what I like to call, the worst thing that happened to my 4.0 team: my teammates mercilessly razzing me for eating chilli cheese fries as my pre-game meal and blaming that for why I cramped up/lost in the deciding match that pretty much dashed the hopes and dreams of my team for the tournament. If I weren’t me, I would focus on how much I laughed and laughed during that team bonding experience and how much I enjoyed the team camaraderie while we were rallying and figuring out how to win all five lines of our last flight match in order to advance (which we didn’t do). Alas, it’s me so…

Early Season League Ratings: In my USTA section, mid-year ratings come out around this time. USTA ratings are a BIG deal in my town. It’s just…it’s just stupid how big a deal it is. Teams disband; relationships are severed; and people cry because of this one silly pdf file.

There are 3 main reactions when ratings come out: 1. “Darn right.” 2. “Crap.” 3. “EXCUSE ME? How did the powers that be not recognize my greatness??” Remind me that I want to break down these thoughts and all the different variations just in time for when the year-end ratings come out. This year’s year-end list in particular is going to be a lot of fun…

…because I got bumped up when mid-season ratings came out. I’m sure I’ll unleash my hot sports opinions on this sudden bit of news at some point, but that is not this post (here’s a tease for you: I didn’t go undefeated and I barely won several of my matches this season. They clearly were meeting a quota by bumping me up). This post is about what happened afterwards and how I’ve inadvertently found myself in the cross hairs of one of the grand wizards of my tennis community.

Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe my tennis team lost the last match of the season so that I would post regularly again.

Joke’s on them, of course. It’s taken me nearly two weeks to get over that loss. HAH!

I’m still not over it. I’m still in Phase One of the Don’t Make Play-Offs By One Match Recovery Stage: moping around in my sweat pants. Who’s joining me for Phase Two?

Read the rest of this entry »

Captaining is going well. Thanks for asking. I’m learning a lot. Every week, every day, every match, and every player is a learning experience.

I hate learning.

Read the rest of this entry »

Somebody made this delightful video that summarizes everything I’ve ever thought about women’s recreational tennis in two and a half minutes.

Because of this video, there’s really no reason for me to keep writing. Oh, well.

The last time I was this stressed co-captaining a tennis team, that team ended up winning Sectionals. I guess that’s something to try to remember as I’m being pelted by the tennis gods as they play their version of dodgeball with me. In this game, I don’t get eliminated once I’ve been hit; I just keep getting hit. It hurts.

It is the second/third week of USTA, and I’ve discovered a truth about the player/captain relationship that I’m sure veteran captains already know: I dread hearing from any of my players. I don’t want to see a text from any of them on my cell; I don’t want to see an incoming call from any of them on my phone; and I don’t want to see an email from any of them in my inbox. In a perfect world, I would simply send out the line-up to the team, crawl back into bed, and sleep out the week till I had to see the scheduled players on Match Day.

I better see them all accounted for on Match Day. On time. Ooh, maybe even early. Wait. No. We’re still just working on being on time. Baby steps.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m co-captaining two USTA teams this season – one Thursday, one Saturday – and I’ve been playing team tennis for the last few years…so what I’m saying is if anyone from either of my current USTA teams is reading this, I’m totally not talking about you, you good, strong player-woman, you.

Read the rest of this entry »