League Watch: Just a Number

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:

  

Oh, a low 4.0? Let's see what we can do about that.  

            

League Watch: Sectionals (This is Not About a Couch!)

As Commodus from Gladiator might say, I’ve been a busy, busy bee. 

Anyone who has been reading this blog with any regularity knows that I have had a few major tennis goals lately, all centered around getting better. At first, it was improving my win/loss record (done), and then it was getting bumped up to a 4.0. That one has not been so easy. And buzzing around in the background has been the desire to play at sectionals. That one has also been hard.  

 I’ve been playing tennis for well over 20 years at this point. When I lived in Pittsburgh, I was on a great team of fun ladies and we went to sectionals not once, but twice. However, the experiences were not great ones for me, and instead of going on about it here, I’ll link to the blog posts I did way back. Summary: I won one match in two years. 

OK BIG ASIDE HERE, SORRY.  

Apparently, I have never documented here what really happened in my first sectionals match in 2008 that derailed that match for me. So I have to do it now. My well-matched opponent? This lady? 

 

 

Part of the reason things went sideways in the first set was due to a line call. She hit a ball (late in the set, I think, before the tiebreak) that missed the sideline, so I called it out, right away. She didn’t like the call, but I affirmed it and moved to get into position for the next point. She stood where she was and stared me down. Knowing me, I probably started sputtering to explain the call (which I would never do now) but she kept looking. All in all, she probably did this for 30 seconds. Then she looked at me and said, “You better watch it, girl.”  

Right?!  

That’s why I completely went away in that match. I have never forgotten that and, yes, I did just look her up on the USTA website, and if I’m ever in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Ms. You-Know-Who-You-Are, just know I always have two racquets and tennis shoes in the trunk of my car.  

OK TIME IN. I CAN’T BELIEVE I NEVER WROTE ABOUT THAT HERE. 

After that, I got bumped from a 3.5 to a 4.0, never really feeling I deserved it, and never really quite doing well at that level, either. So I appealed back down to a 3.5 and that’s where I’ve been for the last five years or so. In the last two years, some things in my game definitely came together and I started actually winning matches. A lot of them. So much so that last year, I was sure I was getting bumped back to 4.0. I mean, I went undefeated in singles for the whole season, across 2-3 teams. But it didn’t happen. So I signed up for 3.5 teams and also some 4.0 teams the following season. And I felt great about my game’s forward movement but I wanted to go back to sectionals, and especially here in Florida.  

Why. Sectionals are held in Florida at the USTA National Center in Lake Nona and it is beautiful. This thing is so highfalutin’ that matches are streamed on the internet! So heck yeah I wanted to do that! The problem was that although I was playing well, my teams as a whole were not advancing – there’s some tough competition out here in Florida, so I was not getting there like that.  

However. The USTA started this tournament called the Golden Ticket – tournaments all over the state where you enter individually, either as a team or in doubles. If you win, you have an opportunity to advance to sectionals! After four tries, I did do well enough in one of them to advance to sectional playoffs, which was not Lake Nona yet. But my doubles partner had an injury, so we came up short. Brief aside about these Golden Ticket things – the format is shortened sets and no-ad scoring. Tell me you only kinda want to play tennis without telling me you only kinda want to play tennis.  

So. It’s June and I’m thinking there’s no way I’m getting to sectionals this year and making my peace with it. I was picking up 4.0-level wins, so at least I hopefully had that to look forward to. Then I got a text from my friend Kim, inviting me to join her 3.5 team for the second time. I turned her down the first time because I was already playing too many teams and had determined I wasn’t doing 3.5 teams anymore. But the difference this time? Her team’s season was nearly over and the team was going to sectionals. They were also down a singles player and needed someone asap.  

I picked up my phone to politely decline again, but then I thought about it. Kim was offering me a ticket to sectionals and all I had to do was play two matches. And I was free sectionals weekend, too. What’s the reason not to? Other than feeling like a freeloader. But they were asking me! I told her I would think about it just to make sure my schedule was free and then by the end of the week, I was on the team!  

It wasn’t the smoothest start to the team – I lost my first match in a third-set tiebreak after holding a match point (I’m still a little upset about this one and am quite looking forward to playing my opponent again)  – but we made it to Lake Nona. (That was my first 3.5 singles loss in about two years and I am still feeling a need for vengeance. Speaking of antics, here’s one: It’s hot. I’m pouring water down my back to stay cool and apparently, I left a few drops on the other side of the court during the changeover. DURING MY SERVICE GAME, my opponent stopped play to go get a giant squeegee to wipe up 10 drops of water. I am just saying.) 

The USTA National Campus was everything I heard it was – massive and beautiful. The umpires didn’t joke around with warmups and opponents were tight on line calls. It was also ridiculously hot. The previous weekend, some of our players went to sectionals and reported sweltering conditions that possibly required a fan and definitely days of hydration prep. Folks were apparently cramping so bad that they were eating mustard to alleviate the symptoms. (Yeah. Mustard. You learn something new every day.) I came prepared with this stuff called Liquid IV, containers of coconut water and a spray bottle I could fill with ice-cold water on-court if things got tough.  

Our team drew the 7:30 and 11:30 a.m. slots and as much as I hate waking up that early to play tennis, it was better than the alternative. I know this because I got a taste of the alternative right away. My first match was at 11:30 against one of the Miami teams (we will get back to them), which is one of the stronger areas in the state. Obviously Miami is a big population base, so a better selection of players. Polk? Not so much. So we were the underdogs. I still think my opponent was rope-a-doping me. It was already hot out with almost no wind, sun blazing and as soon as I hit a shot more than two steps away from her, she would just give up. I got an early lead, and was hoping to be off the court quickly but then all of a sudden, this lady decided she felt great! She’s getting to my drop shots, which I had decided didn’t need to be that good. Hello! Anyway, just before we get to the tiebreak, I realized I was very nervous. It was hard to get a deep breath. I thought to myself: “All this time you wanted to get here and you play like this? You play like a [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted]? Like, why are you even here?” That helped. I realized I needed to play my game instead of worrying about what this lady was about to do. Before I knew it, I’d won a lopsided tiebreak and a relatively easy second set. But it was a mental roller-coaster. 

After the match, my captain asked me if I wanted to play the first or the second match the next day. That is what I heard. I said, “Put me where you need me, captain!” And I learned later that I had volunteered to play both matches. I had an out, of course, and I could have said no. But again, what did I come here for? I came to play! Woot! 

That was the excitement I carried into my second match, which I won in straight sets against a familiar opponent. This was good because even though we were done by 9, it was already starting to feel like a soupy, gooey mess out there.  

When I took the court for my second match of the day, it was hot. It was also well after 11:30 because the women from the (I have to assume) the 9 a.m. match on our court were still slugging out a singles match and were knotted in a tiebreak. And neither of them looked super thrilled about that fact. I thought one or both of them were gonna pass out.  

So it was already egg-scramble sizzling by the time my last opponent and I took the court. But I felt pretty fresh. I’d taken a cold shower, had some food, was somewhat hydrated and felt that all I needed to do was keep drinking water/coconut water, as I did the day before, and I would be all set! That was true. For the first set and a half of the match. I had won the first set, but was having trouble pulling away in the second. Unfortunately, my opponent had started to pick up on my game, so now our points were longer. At 4-all, I realized the heat was starting to get to me. I was having a hard time reaching up to the ball during my serve, I was trying to end points too early, and I started to feel just a touch overheated. And of course, this – THIS – was the time my opponent decided to really pick things up. One second, I was up in my service game, and the next, we were into multiple deuces. Despite my early-onset heat stroke, I realized that it was in my best interest to win that game. If she got to 5-4, things would get messy and I realized I was in no condition for that. I appealed to my brain for some thoughts on how to win points and fortunately, it was alert enough to notify me that I should really stop hitting to this person’s backhand. I managed to survive the game and the elements, then the match.  

Overall, the team finished in the middle of the pack, and honestly came up on the wrong end of tiebreakers sometimes. That’s frustrating but you don’t just find yourself materializing into a tiebreak in a tennis match. We were doing the right things, playing smart tennis, and sometimes, the bounces went the wrong way. But the best part was that this team was fun. They supported each other – and other teams from our region. They offered up on-court fans, water, and camaraderie. If I had lost all my matches like my first swing through sectionals up north with this group? I would have been a happy (if bitter) teammate. 

Not everyone is that lucky. Remember when I said I’d get back to the Miami team? Well, the lady I played against was lovely. Everyone else reported having a good experience on court. However, it came to our team’s attention that the captain of the Miami team made a social media video berating her teammates for being social with their opponents. I believe the title was something like: “Are you a Walmart greeter.” It would have been one thing if she had been going after us for being nice. But for her to go after her own team for being nice? After a match they won?? Some people forget we are playing an over-40 tournament and maybe save that spice for something that matters. 

Like making fun TikTok videos with your badass team.