[Breeze]

In week 2's match, we were slotting in against a 6'6" player with a huge serve he could spin multiple ways, or pound (though he rarely did), and an older player with extremely soft hands who can play very short angles.

My partner was a very aggressive player, who was typically matched with someone who didn't move, allowing him to cover the whole court. This made our pairing very awkward, as we often got in each others way.


We didn't play for 2 and half hours this time - I was much closer to 3 hours.

Set 1

The match started and I was awful. I couldn't find my stroke and my ground strokes were floating long on both the forehand and backhand sides. My partner was very aggressive with mixed results and we lost the first set 2 - 6

Set 2

At the end of the first set, I started to find my range and in the second set it really paid off. I was hitting my strokes real well, driving them deep, hitting winners, and dropping the ball on their feet with heavy top spin. We got up early in this set, held the break and got a second one at the end to win 6 -3

Set 3

At this point our opponents were avoiding hitting the ball to me as much as they could, and my partner's inconsistencies, especially with his ground strokes were becoming an issue. Then, on serve, midway through the set and I get pulled off the deuce side all the way to fence. I get it back, but the net guy jumps the shot and hits it back deuce side, now I could have gotten the ball, but my partner had come all the way over and hit it, effectively blocking me right at the corner of the baseline and sideline. His shot was returned wide to the Ad side - I took off and reach the ball at the singles line on the deuce side of the opposite court. I hit a running backhand that they failed to return (I think they were shocked I got the ball back), which gave us a break. Unfortunately, in the process I strained my hamstring. They broke us right back, as my partner's serve was fine, but his ground strokes floated long or wide consistently.

Despite my injury, I was still hitting good ground strokes, but my court coverage was diminished. We stayed on serve (though we had leads in almost every game but couldn't put them away) and ended up in a 3rd set tiebreaker. I served first and held. They got 2 serves and we were up 2-1. My partner got 1 and lost 1 so we were up 3-2, they held - 3-4...now it's my serve. We switched sides on 3-3 so this was the first time I had served on this end of the court, and it was the first time I realized how low the lights were and how poorly placed they were. I stared directly into the lights when I made my toss. Now, had I not been so exhausted and hurting I might have taken more time to try and find a way to see my toss better, but as it was, my brain wasn't working well and I just tried to fight through it, and I failed miserably - I double faulted both of my points, effectively handing the match away. We lost the next point and the match 3-7 in the tiebreaker.

We took 2 of the 4 points and we sit in 3rd place overall with 6 points despite already having our bye week. The two teams in front of us have played all 3 weeks so far. Unfortunately, we will forfeit a match this week for sure, and if my hamstring doesn't heal, we will forfeit at least 1 for every match I miss (this weeks forfeit isn't on me though - we had a player out for vacation).