Sometimes you think you’re ready for something. Then you get it.
I’ve been trying to get my USTA rating bumped to 4.0 for a couple of years now. Last year, I won almost all my singles matches, but didn’t do so great in doubles. Still, I was sure I was about to get the bump. I didn’t and so I came into this season with a chip on my shoulder and a promise: You want to keep me at 3.5? I’m going to make everyone sorry about it. And I did, mowing down (almost) all takers at that level. I’m still a little mad about one match and I will get my vengeance, in this life or the next. (I quote "Gladiator" a lot on this blog.)
But then that got boring. And someone told me that in addition to killing it at 3.5, I should also play 4.0. So I did that, too, and the matches got more challenging, but I was holding my own. I don’t want to brag (but why not?), but I even had a winning record in 4.0 play this year: 12-3. Notably, in singles, that record is 3-3.
I was feeling pretty good about myself and my play. And then fall season came. I was playing in all kinds of combo leagues at differing skill levels and I think it messed me up. I had one partner I would always win with, but everything else was a shot in the dark. I found myself overcompensating for partners, trying to play safely so I could win. Why? So I could be a 4.0. Except who the hell wins at 4.0 like that? Not me. So the last few months have been a doozy.
Part of it could be playing too much and I did play in 10 leagues this year, which is probably a little too much in retrospect. The other problem I noticed was that I was not as dominant in singles as I had been. Yes, better players, but I was starting to wonder if I was getting Too Old for This. I’ve always been a slow starter, especially in singles, but in all my matches, I was just playing terribly. There were 2 or 3 matches where I had to chuckle at myself for having taken the match to tiebreaks, because I was stinking it up. Which meant I was maybe doing something right? But not very right, because the results.
The last league match of the year for me was for a league I had joined with the intention of playing doubles with one of my favorite partners. The reality is that both of us ended mostly on singles duty, so there I was at first singles feeling like ... well, not first. Or even second. I realized shortly after arriving that I was playing against my old team. I realized that when I went up to speak to a few of them and they acted like I had the plague. (Guys, life is too short for that nonsense.)
Anyway, then I realized my opponent was someone I had gone the distance against the previous year. Mostly what I remember about that match is that I was on my period and not in the best mood. I snapped at her for a line call for waiting a half-second too late, a call that was totally fine, and I had to tell her the next time I saw her why, and apologize. We had a good laugh. But I knew that this was going to be a pain in the ass, especially with my confidence in the basement as it was.
We got started. Well, she got started. I just stood around watching winners whiz past me. It was nice. Good breeze. The crazy part was that I didn’t feel as if I was playing badly – she was hitting a clean ball and playing smart. Even with that, I held game points and couldn’t convert them.
You know what I said about a slow start. 0-6 is a pretty slow start. All I could do was dig in my heels and keep going. But in the back of my head? Yeah, I was thinking I was too old for this maybe. I was able to win the first game of the second set and get on the board. But every game was a struggle and it felt like every positive step I took was erased by an error or a great shot from my opponent. In the middle of the set, I began to (sort of emptily) repeat my mantra to myself: “Inhale confidence. Exhale execution.” Which got me thinking about a conversation I’d just had with my boyfriend about confidence and what it really means. Debbie Millman has a definition that just stuck with me. I reminded myself of it on the baseline: Confidence is the successful repetition of an endeavor, a task. (You should listen to this whole interview if you’re a late bloomer in anything. It’s just *chef’s kiss.*) I told myself: You’ve won points before. You’ve won games before. You’ve won matches before. You have earned confidence.
Sometimes my self-talk game can be counterproductive, but something happened when I reminded myself that I knew how to play tennis. I began hitting my spots on the court. I began serving better. I bricked my volleys, which wasn’t a surprise, but after I did, I reset myself and kept going. I ran almost everything down, keeping points alive until my opponent missed. I realized that there was this one thing I could do that would always pull an error out of her, and I did it until I was serving at 5-3. Then I coughed up four errors quickly, and then we were at 5-all! Sigh. One second, I was killing it. The next, I was shooting myself in the foot and bleeding out on court. The problem, I think, was that it had been a minute since I had felt confident of my ability to close a match out. So I was getting to the precipice and then just standing there.
Bizarrely, I won the set tiebreak pretty fast. But now, there was a 10-point tiebreak for the match. And again, I built a lead. And again, I watched it disappear mostly due to bad decisions or straight-up errors. Then, at 9-all, I double-faulted. Which, my goodness. I stood at the line to now face a match point and I was angry and nervous and pissed and then my second serve landed in the box, and then I just played. I thought a lot about not making a stupid mistake but I left a ball sort of short. When she hit it out, I just took a long pause, and dug my heels in again.
I don’t remember much after that, not that there was much more to remember. We played only two more points after that and I won them both.
The next morning, my doubles partner sent me a note of congratulations and in glancing at it, thought it was about the match. No. The early-start ratings for USTA had come out and I was officially a 4.0. The timing made me chuckle.
You know I like a visual. Here's one I'm really digging on right now:
