[Breeze]

Match 1 vs Shakerag

We actually got the match in, which seems like a miracle given the weather conditions at the time. In fact, it was sprinkling at my house when I left, but 15 miles away where we played everything was dry. Humid but dry.

The warm ups for our match were short, which I definitely didn't need, having not gotten an opportunity to hit in over a week. But here is how the first set went:

They won the toss and elected to serve:

First set

- Break - (1-0)
- my partner had me serve first - and I was hitting my serves pretty good but I ended up losing the point after 5 deuce games (1-1)
- Break (2-1)
- We held (3-1)
- They held (3-2)
- My serve again, and again it was a long service game (4 deuces) and I served well but still lost my serve (3-3)
- Break (4-3)
- We held (5-3)
- They held (5-4)
- My serve - 3rd time and yet another long service game (3 deuces) but I held this time and we won the first set. (6-4)

First set wrap up: The 6-4 score didn't really indicate how much better we played than our opponent. Obviously, with 3 breaks of serve we should have won that going away. The biggest problem was my serve, but when I say I was serving well - I only had 1 double fault in that entire set, so I wasn't giving away my serve. There were some jitters on my part - which seems stupid, but I was a bit shaky from nervous energy. We made way to many boneheaded shots and bad times. But the biggest issue was our lack of familiarity - on several of my serves, Kevin (partner) and I were crossed up. He made a play to poach but then changed his mind and I was already moving to cover, that kind of stuff. I was hoping we'd do better with that in the second set.

Second Set

- They held (1-0)
- We held (1-1)
- They held (2-1)
- I held - another long service game but we pulled it out (2-2)
- They held (3-2)
- We were broken (4-2) - my partner double faulted 2x in this game which hurt
- They held (5-2)
- My serve - I go down 0-40..at which point I'm a bit pissed. I've served pretty good so far all game and have had nothing to show for it...so I decide Love-40 might as well go for it. I decide to hammer my serve - and here is what happened

big serve - soft return poached and put away (15 - 40)
fault - service winner (30 - 40)
big serve - blocked, cut, wide angle return to my backhand, I run up, cut it cross court ends up an opponents feet and he hit it in the net (deuce)
fault - service winner (ad in)
big serve - same blocked, cut, wide angle return to may backhand, I get it in, but he hits it for a winner. (deuce)
big serve - poached for a winner (ad in)
big serve - same return - opponent net player tries to poach and dumps it in the net. - we win my serve (3-5)

- We break (4-5)
- We hold (5-5)
- They hold (6-5)
- My serve - I double fault the first 2 serves - (nice time to pull that out dumbass). It wasn't a situation where I was tightening up, all four were at the top of the tape, I was barely off. My next serve was huge and an easy floater at the net right to my partner who when short side and missed the court by a mile. My next serve was one of the biggest I've ever hit, even the opposing captain said, "Man that's a cannon of a serve", unfortunately it didn't do me any good - the ad side player did his now patented block, cut, wide return to my backhand and my cut shot was in the net...so we lost the second set (5-7)

Second set wrap up - this set was very frustrating. Our opponents really started taking the pace off the ball and throwing up a lot of lobs, which was tough for a few reasons. 1. I was struggling to generate my pace and keep it in, I think some practice that week would have helped that some. 2. the lights on the court were very low so tracking the ball was difficult. 3. the lack of familiarity with my partner made court coverage a challenge. It also didn't help that I didn't have the patience to play lob tennis.

Third Set

- They held (0-1)
- We held (1-1)
- We break (2-1)
- now it's my serve, and here is what I'm thinking at this point. "Your last service game was poor with 2 double faults, don't really want to do that again in this situation. Also, the ad player seems to love the big serve, his return is better on it than it was on the serve you cut more, so let's go to the big cut and see how that goes". And here's how it went

I got good spin on the server and it really kicked up, which I hadn't really done to this point - it completely surprised the returner who barely got a racket on it. (15-0)
I wanted to try and serve wider to the ad side to get the ball to his backhand or into his body - mission accomplished - serve to his backhand - easy pop up return put away at the net by Kevin. (30-0)
My second serve to this side is almost identical to the first - he managed to get the return to the bottom of the net this time (40-0)
Serve into the body - blocked back, I overhit the shot and it goes long (40-15)
Another good serve to the deuce side - he returns it, but it's poached for a winner. We hold (3-1)

- They hold (3-2)
- We hold (4-2)
- They hold (4-3)
- My serve - given how well my last service game went, I obviously decided to do the same thing - and we ended up with the same result almost exactly. The deuce side player couldn't handle the top spin serve and we were able to poach the ad side player so I won at 15 again. (5-3)
- We jumped up early in this game 30-0 but then my partner botched an easy volley, followed by a great serve up the middle that I failed to return, which put us back to even. We ended up in a couple of deuce games, then they served to the deuce side, my partner - he hit a nice return that they cut back short my side, I ran in and hit a cut backhand, they lobbed me, so I turn and ran hitting a deep crosscourt half lob back. The return shot was poached by my partner but not put away - with the shot going deep to the deuce side. I crossed over and hit it back through the middle, they came through the middle and Kevin poached again, but again didn't put it away, the return was again short to the ad side, so I can cross court and up to hit a cut winner down the line to take the Advantage. Then the server hit another great serve up the middle, the same one he had done earlier in this game when he was down 15 -30, only this time I was able to rip the return through the middle for a winner. (6-3)

All in all the match took over 2 and half hours. To give you an idea of how long it took. We took the court when the 1s were 4-5 in the second set. They went 3 sets and they finished their second set 5-7 and their 3rd set before we finished our first. Then the 4's came on to play and they finished all 3 sets in the same time it took us to play our final 2 sets. I was exhausted...

I can tell you my lack of doubles play was a huge problem today. I found myself out of position regularly, and there were so many balls I should have poached that I didn't - I can't even count them all. I'm going to have to get more doubles play in or I'm going to struggle to win matches.

The team took all 4 points:

1s. 6-4, 5-7, 6-2
2s. 6-2, 6-1
3s. 6-4, 5-7, 6-3
4s. 6-3, 3-6, 6-2