Sunday, August 8, 2021 (Court Day #399)
It would be a short morning, I needed to leave after just an hour for a family function. I arrived at Brommer Park at 9:00 a.m. I was expecting Alain, my former co-worker, but I found out later that he overslept since he had been up until 4 a.m. Heck, I’d oversleep too!
Mike K. was sitting outside the fence in his portable chair and I invited him to warm up with me and he readily agreed. Craig—whose name I’d forgotten—was already inside sitting on the wall. While the three of us warmed up, Sycha arrived but she passed us and walked over to the court where women were in a game. Mike invited her into a game with us while she was waiting.
First Game
My first game would be Sycha and me versus Mike and Craig. It was never close. We won 11-4. Sycha kindly commented, “You are playing so consistently.” To which I explained, “I’m playing righty. “
“It’s been a year?”
“Two years.”
“It seems like you haven’t missed a beat.”
Down the Middle
For the next game, Sycha went off to join the women but Hue had arrived—with his small dog in tow—and joined our court. Craig suggested I play with Hue; Craig felt he made too many mistakes and wanted to spare Mike suffering through another game with him. So, it was Craig and me against Mike and Hue. Mike was funny . . . after the latest winner down the middle, he exclaimed, “Damn it, Andrew! You haven’t missed one of those yet!” It was a good game. Craig and I pulled ahead, they caught back up, but then we finished off the game.
Another Level
We rotated partners so it was Hue and me against Craig and Mike. During the game when we were about to serve, Hue turned to me and said, “I was playing in a ladder on Friday [elsewhere] and I was holding my own—but you guys play at a whole ‘nother level.” Hue and I went on to win.
Dean
Dean arrived. It’s always great to play against Dean. He’s such a good player. Hue and I played against Dean and Craig. Dean tried a “no looky” on me. We were all at the net when Hue hit a ‘too high’ dink. I was on the right and Dean was across from me. Dean was very much selling a crosscourt shot but at the last instant he directed the ball off to my right. I whipped my paddle over and whacked the ball crosscourt and into Craig’s chest. Point over. Dean had tried this several years ago against me. Last time, I’d hit a passing shot off his left side for a winner. Andrew 2, Dean no-looky 0. Ha! But overall, Dean 291, Andrew 3. (I made that up, but you get the idea.) As for this game, it was close, but Hue and I lost 12-10.
Checked the time, it was 10:06 a.m. Time to hit the road.
As I started to walk out, saying goodbyes, Dean said, “You’re leaving and taking your highlight play with you?”
“You have plenty of highlight play for all of us, Dean!”
Advice
Dean had offered two pieces of advice that stuck with me during the game.
One was hitting my drop shots higher. “Counterintuitive, I know, but you want them to hit the ball on the bounce.” Something to work on. The “goldilocks zone” of higher but not too high.
The second was on a crosscourt dink he made to my left. I was considering an ATP with it and waited on the shot, but I judged that it wasn’t going go out wide enough to get a proper angle back into the court, so I changed my mind and had to hit the ball up—it was a bad shot and got attacked. Dean said that if I’d taken another step and let the ball drop more, I would have had the ATP and it would have been nearly indefensible. My ego says I made a good decision and couldn’t have pulled off the ATP. My brain says, maybe he was right, he was observing and not actively in the shot and maybe could make a better judgement. Then my brain and ego say that it’s hard to judge distance and angles along the line of ball travel. Regardless, his advice is very good. Wait as long as you can for an ATP and hit the ball when it’s low.
This was a fabulous day of good games and I played extremely well.
Number of days on a court: 399
Number of total hours: 2,035
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