Thursday, July 12, 2018 (Court Day #168)
I left work not long after closing time and raced home then to Skypark. I pulled in just after 6:30 and the lot was already completely packed, so I parked on the street. Colleen pulled up in her little red car right after me.
Bruce, a woman, Brennan and Janet on the near court. Sue, in the “Rocky” stance, on the far court.
Colleen photobombing my shot! Dave Cox on the left and Mark Dettle blocked by a funny jumping woman!
The first game was Mark Dettle and me against Rochella and Sue. It was pretty lopsided. After Mark and I won, we split and Mark played with Sue. It was a bit closer, but Rochella and I still won.
Then Barb and I took on Mark and Brennan. Surprisingly, we were winning at the start but Mark and Brennan made good use of passing shots on Barb’s side of the court and we couldn’t hold on. Fun game.
This was a good night for competition. Dave Cox and I played a few games. Won some, lost some. But good games. When I mentioned that I hadn’t seen him in a while, Dave said that he’s been playing at Brommer. I told him that I’ve been working too much to play there during the (club-play) daytime hours.
Rob and I have a tournament in about two and a half weeks, so we continued to play together through the rest of the evening. (Eric wasn’t around, so Rob made sense to have as a partner.)
We beat Brennan and Bruce by a decent margin. Then we played Dave and Oleg. We won. I was a bit surprised. We played again but lost the second one. In the third game, we won 11-3. An another upset. Maybe Rob and I won’t do too badly at a Concord. Time will tell. But Eric and I have the Pleasanton tournament first, this Saturday.
Both my knees were a little sore afterward, but I couldn’t feel the pain my left knee during play—it had been bothering me some during the day. Nothing major, but an annoyance. It hurts when I lock my knee forward. I did feel my right ankle, it’s still not 100% after a number of months, it may be with me for a while.
Overall, I played well tonight. I was happy afterward. Some of my dropshots failed, but they worked more than not. I hit some shots long, but most were good. I won a few points on my spin heavy backspin shots. A number of my serves ended up returned into the net—including two in a row. And I think Brennan would admit that I had the edge in our play tonight—that’s not always the case!
I’m slowly getting better. But all it takes is a game against someone like Brian or Terry Long to remind me I have a very long way to go.
Number of days on a court: 168
Number of total hours: 465
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