Sunday, December 29, 2019 (Court Day #327)

I arrived at Derby Park to open up at 8:50. It was overcast and cold, in the high 40s°F. My wife said it was supposed to start heavy rain at noon. Wayne arrived as I unlocked the bins and I got to blowing off the courts. Wayne helped set up a net or two as players started to trickle in.

Tom S., retired ER doctor, asked how my arm was since he noticed that I was warming up lefty with him and a new older woman named Jan.
“Still hurts.”
“It has been almost a year hasn’t it?”
“Yep, November last year.”
“Have you shot it up yet?”
“No, my GP recommended against it.”
“I had mine shot up and it hasn’t bothered me since. You should get the shot. But you need to have someone who knows what they are doing. The first one who shot me up didn’t know what he were doing. The second one was much better.”

Something to think about. If it’s just masking the pain of the injury so it gets worse, that’s not a good solution.

Today would be a lighter attended day, we set up the last net later on and even then we only played one or two games on it before we took it back down. We barely cracked 25 people.

I played a game with John P. against Grita and a newer guy named Matt that I’d never seen before. Early on, Matt wasn’t playing in a way that would make anyone take notice. But later he played far better—on par with most of the solid players. Regardless, John and I played well together and won without question. Afterward, Matt said to John about me, “I’d hate to see him play right-handed.” John replied, “He’s scary right-handed!” (A nice compliment!)

Charles invited me into a game. “Give me a minute, I’ll grab my forearm band and I’ll play right-handed.” Charles kidded, “We didn’t invite you to play right-handed!” A minute later, I was back.

My modified Bandit strap. The foam adds more pressure right on the forearm tendon/muscle. Today was my third time using it with the extra foam.

Charles asked if I wanted to warm up. I said no, and off we started against Grita and Matt from Monterey—the very strong player Matt. (Not the same Matt as before.) I was playing great. Sure, I made a few small errors early on, but it was like magic. Playing left-handed does keep one from being lackadaisical—you have to be focused—and that manifested itself in this game with me playing righty. Charles and I won 11-2.

In that first game, Matt hit a shot off to my left. Instead of really stretching to reach, I switched the paddle to my left hand and returned the ball. Charles commented right afterward that I’d hit a perfect dropshot lefty. Those should happen now and then after a year of practice, right?

We stitched sides and had a rematch, with a similar result. One particularly memorable moment for me was whipping a forehand topspin approach groundstroke an inch over the net crosscourt to Grita who was already at the kitchen line. The ball only made is as far back as their side of the net.

For the third game with the same four of us, we split Charles and me and paired Grita with Charles and Matt and me. Matt and I fell behind initially—I made a few mistakes—but we caught back up and pulled ahead and won.

My arm didn’t feel too worse for the wear. We’ll see how it does in the next few days.

It was 12:30 and the rain was behind schedule compared to the prediction. Two games were still going on the city nets. As my duty, I made sure all the club balls were collected, locked up everything and hit the road.

I was happy about today. I managed ok playing left-handed and playing righty was amazing.

Monday, December 30, 2019 (No Play)

The muscle in my left forearm is sore. Weird. But it’s not lefty tennis elbow, it’s the top muscle, which is good.

Number of days on a court: 327
Number of total hours: 921

To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.