Fuzzy yellow balls

I’ve been trying to figure out the most opportune moment to post to the blog, but you see what happens when I do that. Yeah, how did it get to be mid-July?? Anyway, here’s what’s been going on.

As you might have guessed from the title of this post, tennis, lots of tennis. So far I’ve been making quite the impact on the USTA team. Won the first match as part of a doubles pair, then got switched to singles and won the next two matches too. Those were both hard fought, and I learned that I (often) possess that ineffable quality necessary for sport known as mental toughness—which I suppose I knew already, but it was confirmed as I made it through those two matches with victory definitely not assured. That being said, my fourth match was a real rout, and not in the good way. I got totally pwned by this woman such that I was actually quite relaxed the whole time, in a “well there’s certainly no reason I should feel bad about getting beaten by someone so clearly better than I” kind of way. The funny thing there is that about four days later, she was disqualified by the USTA from 3.0-level play, and all her matches from this season awarded to her opponents. (I should add that she kicked everybody’s asses up and down, not just mine!) So I guess that match is now in my win column too, although only on a technicality. And finally, to catch you up, I won last week at singles too, even though I dropped the first set. In fact, I had a long moment where I thought about how much I actually was starting to hate competitive tennis, but fortunately that passed and I got back to the business of figuring out how to beat my opponent. Which I did!

So there’s one week left, and two matches, before the season ends. It’s been a lot of fun to get to know all the people on my team, and to play so much goddamn tennis. But it will be nice to have a break from it and get back to other things. The cycling is getting a bit neglected, for example. And it’s getting very close to vacation time for me and the Swami, which is a cycling tour in Scotland starting on the 23rd. There will be lots to report from that, so I’m assuming that August will be a better month for the blog than June and July. Also, I imagine that you intrepid readers might want a break from my incessant blathering about tennis. Did I mention that the Swami and I have been playing doubles too? Ah well, never mind that!