Game. Set. Match.

Thursday, February 4, 2016

In November I decided to join the local tennis club. It had been 21 years since I had really played tennis but I figured it was time to start swinging the racquet again. It’s taken a few months to kick the rust off but I’m starting to feel a little more consistent. When I joined and talked to the director about rankings, he said to come hit with someone and he’d watch me play and tell me where I should be. When he told me I should be with the 4.0 group, I didn’t really know what that even meant. When I found out it was the second highest group, I was flattered and excited. I got right to work and started going to the workouts and finding people to play with. I waited to join a team and play leagues until after the holidays so I could get a little practice under my belt and feel a little more confident. I’ve been playing tennis 3 or 4 times a week and absolutely loving it. It’s so fun to be able to build on all of the hours and hours I put in as a youth. And it’s fun to kind of be good at something! So leagues started two weeks ago. Last week was our first match. I was so nervous I was shaking a little. I played #1 doubles with Jen Langston and we ended up losing our match. Today was our second match. I went in totally nervous again. I am completely out of the loop as far as how rankings go and who people are. I guess that’s good because I had no idea we were playing the top ranked doubles team in the league! We lost the first set 1-6. I was ready to cry. I told Jen I wanted to quit. Maybe I couldn’t do this. Why did they put me at #1 doubles? Jen said, “just play like we do in the workouts. Let’s just have fun!” So I figured, what did we have to lose. And we came out and won the 2^nd set 6-3. You only have an hour and a half to play your match so if you split sets you have to play a tie-breaker to decide the winner. Since the first sets of matches were ending and the second set were getting ready to start, there were 20 or so women there on the bleachers watching our match. We were down 8-9 in the tie-breaker (you play to 10). I was returning the serve. My hands were seriously shaking! We ended up winning the tie-breaker 11-9! Afterwards several ladies on my team came up and said in hushed tones, “You have no idea who you just beat!” or “You have no idea how big this win was!” I couldn’t believe we won! It was pretty fun for this middle-aged lady! ;)