Thursday, March 13, 2019 (Court Day #246)
I couldn’t leave work early, so I got to Scotts Valley at 7 p.m. It was a chilly evening, I spent the entire evening in my sweatshirt, though I did get pretty warm at one point.
My tennis elbow, while improving, still has a way to go. Shaking hands will people still hurts, but not enough to cause my eyes to water in pain.
I played a few games, winning one.
Walking off a court to the waiting area, an errant ball approached and I instinctively switched my paddle to my right hand and tapped the ball back over the net. Mistake! That was unquestionably painful. So much for my secret hopes of switching back to my right hand soon. Nope. Not even close.
The fun stretch of the night was Mark C. (Maree’s husband) and me playing three games against Binh and Greg. Binh is getting quite good, he gets balls back that most local players would not. I could tell that he was taking it slightly easy on me—his serves were gentle deep serves. I need to work on those. My left handed serving is getting far better. I was able to get some deep into our opponents courts. I got an ace tonight too, but that was purely a fluke of me trying to even get my serve in! Mark and I won the first game and lost the next two by close scores. In the second game, I did miss a couple of low backhands to my right side.
Greg commented on one shot. “I saw that…” He went on to talk about how I’d volleyed his dink out of the air swinging low to high applying topspin to the shot when hitting it toward Binh. It’s a “beyond newbie” shot and not all that easy to do with the weak hand/arm, but I was successful executing it. A nice surprise.
Bruce, Mark Dettle, Janet (Bruce’s wife), and Marie in the last game of the night.
As we walked out, I chatted with Binh. He admitted that he was sometimes avoiding hitting to my backhand, “I’ll do that when you get better with your left hand.” Binh is a great guy and I appreciate him looking out for me, but I’d rather get beat and get the practice on shots that need work. Plus I like an “honest” game. Hit me! Pull out the stops! Take advantage! Push me! That’s how one gets better.
I check my phone in the car, 8:43 p.m.
So?
My serving is continue to get much better. It’s still inconsistent and I can’t very accurately place balls, but I’m getting the vast majority of them in now.
I’m dying to switch back to playing with my right hand. It’s aggravating! I know that in the long run, it can only help my game, but it’s miserable. I hate it.
Saturday, March 16, 2019 (No Play)
My right wrist and forearm are causing me elevated pain with certain movements the last few days. It’s really odd. I’m continuing to ice my elbow most evenings. I’ve talked to a few people who said they’ve had tennis elbow but when I tell them that even shaking hands was excruciatingly painful, they say, “Oh. That’s much worse than I had it.”
Number of days on a court: 246
Number of total hours: 677
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