One Epic Tennis Match

(If you don’t like tennis or don’t care about my personal life, save yourself a couple minutes and stop reading this entry…)

Freshman year I decided to try my hand at Intramural tennis.  This year, I decided to try again.  After losing 6-1 6-2 in my freshman outing, my goal for this year was to win a set.  Mission complete.

I met with my opponent at the State College High School tennis courts (nice courts!) at 8:30.  We warmed up for a little bit, each took a few practice serves, and the match began.

The first set started off with back-to-back breaks, followed by lots of holds.  Long story short – my hopes were high because I was looking and feeling good.  I made it to 6-6 and had a tie break which I rocked — first set to Danny: 7-6 (7-4)

The second set was much shakier – my General Tso’s chicken nuggets and entire lack of carbs were bad dinner decisions.  Anyhow, he got up 5-2 and ended up winning the set 6-4.

The third and final set was a roller-coaster.  Similar to the second set, I was still blowing it — got down 5-2.  With 3 match points on his racquet, there were two double faults and a second serve I destroyed.  Cue Danny’s Major Comeback (heck yes it’s capitalized!).  3 deuces preceded my win, but then I was able to hold and break yet again to make it 5-5.  At this point I made sure we had out 3rd set rules straightened out (no tiebreak – play until a 2 game lead).  I won the next game to make it 6-5.

That’s when disaster struck.  With my strings somewhat out of place (3 were really bunched together), I did my typical gently-kick-the-racquet-to-fix-the-strings to get it back to normal.  And I felt it immediately in the handle — one of the strings broke.  In all my life, with all the tennis I’ve played (4-5 times a week the majority of weeks this summer!), I have never broken a string.  Of course when I’m up 6-5 in the final set my string is going to break!

Luckily, I was somewhat prepared and had my one and a half year old WalMart Wilson racquet in my bag.  I pull it out (the first time in 2 months), and notice the difference immediately.  He easily hold serve to make it 6-6 and then breaks to take the 7-6 lead.  At this point in time, his beastly first serve has become only slight faster than his second (I’m standing on the baseline instead of 4 feet back), and I was able to break back and hold to make it 8-7.  Since his friend had been waiting about 2 hours for him at this point in time, he asked if I’d be all right with a tie break if he made it 8-8.  Sure thing – I’m pooped at this point anyways, and maybe that would be the motivation I’d need to win it outright.

I can’t break again, so it’s 8-8 and I absolutely blow it in the tie-break.  Bummer.

I really had a blast though!  It was by far one of the best matches I’ve played, and I really held my own!  Bryan (my opponent) told me that I should get involved with the tennis club, and I realized that that is a phenomenal idea!  So I joined the listserv and sent an email to the contact address, and hopefully I’ll hear back that it’s not too late for me to join!