Taking Weekend Tennis Seriously

Remember when I said I would never captain a weekend warrior adult tennis team? Yeah, about that…

Look it. I did not ask to captain. I didn’t go seeking for an open team tennis captaining/babysitting/therapy-listening/ego-massaging position in the help wanted section of my local tennis pro shop. I didn’t start my own team. Someone promised me beef tacos, ruffled Hickory BBQ chips, and chocolate milk if I would do it. I am a sucker for beef tacos, ruffled Hickory BBQ chips, and chocolate milk food. I totally would have done it just for curly fries. Besides, why in the world would a tennis-crazy control freak like me agree to captain unless she was forced to?

I had to take on the captaining crown when it was presented to me. I couldn’t let this poor village suffer when they found themselves leaderless! People’s lives were at stake here!

Speaking of those players, none of them read this blog. Thankfully. Don’t anyone be telling them about this Exhibit A in my insanity court case now, ya hear? Those players certainly wouldn’t agree to be on a team I captained if they knew about this ode to crazy. So between you and me, dear reader, this post outlines the rules of my dictatorship.

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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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The time has come to talk about the warm-up. The tennis warm-up (called a “knock-up” in Great Britain, #nowyaknow) is the short, polite hitting back and forth from player to player before the start of matches or lessons in order to, you know, warm up one’s muscles. It generally begins with each player a few feet away from the net bopping the ball to each other. Here are the attitudes of the various USTA levels towards this supposedly polite exchange.*

*I don’t say this often, and I’m not going to put this disclaimer before every post so listen up: I am clearly exaggerating throughout this post. And this blog. And yet not exaggerating all at the same time. Welcome to my blog. Thank you for reading!

3.0s – Just happy to be playing. Hoping to make contact with the ball (that feeling doesn’t go away when you’re a 4.0, by the way). Thrilled as long as the ball goes over the net and inside the lines.

3.5s – Can make solid contact with the ball. Sorta. Super, super excited that they can routinely make contact. Now trying out this power thing they’ve heard so much about.

4.0s – Can hit the ball solidly with power. Feel like they must wail on everything with all their might. It’s like they’ve discovered fire, and now they’re setting ablaze everything in sight with this crazy glint in their eyes.

4.5s – Control. So much awesome, beautiful, tranquil control. Can get nearly any ball wildly hit at them back and almost perfectly teed up for their hitting partner.

5.0s – Please. Like I have any idea how 5.0s warm up. I imagine it would be just heavenly though. With angels singing.

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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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I wish with all my heart that my superpower wasn’t making spreadsheets.

So I tried to recruit players to my USTA spring team yesterday. No, I’m not the captain. I’ve been rebuffed from more than half of them, and I’ll probably be receiving the rest of the bad news by the time this post is published.

The general reason for being unable to join my team is that they’re already on a team for the upcoming season. One player was asked three weeks ago. I met her four weeks ago. I have so much to learn.

Real USTA (spring USTA) starts in May. That is a little over three months away. Why didn’t anyone tell me open season started a while back?!

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If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you know that USTA is very important.  Or, maybe you don’t.  Maybe I just think I’ve written that line in every blog post, when in reality, I’ve only thought it every time I write an entry.  I think a lot of things.  Luckily, I don’t always write them down.

…that’s frightening, actually, if you think about it…

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With USTA play-offs starting this weekend, I thought we would talk about the silly people who don’t communicate well, who don’t take weekend tennis seriously, and who drive their captains and teammates nuts as a result.  I don’t see how the former spun off into the latter anymore than you do, but that’s my intro! Read the rest of this entry »

I am a werewolf.  Since you’re making me pick between a werewolf or a vampire to describe my playing style, I pick werewolf.  I’m aggressive; I go for the kill; and I don’t think much.  I just do.  *Bares fangs*

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My feet feel heavy.  Something is weighing them down.  My shoes.  All I want to do is to take my shoes off.  And to stop moving.  And to take gulps of my Gatorade.  And to stop playing.  I really, really want to stop playing. Read the rest of this entry »