VA/MAS NTRP, Part 2

Saturday

I spent 10 hours at the tournament site Saturday. Hey man, at least I got my money's worth, right?

The plan for Saturday was a doubles match at 10:45 and then a consolation singles match in the afternoon. My doubles partner and I had planned to meet at 10am to warm up for our match. This is the same person I partnered with the previous year at 3.0 doubles and we won!

At 10:30 she rolled in, having overslept. Turned out to not be a problem, as we were going to have to wait...all the courts were taken, and because of the four hour singles match, things got a bit backed up. They had an indoor bubble though, and we were able to go in there to warm-up and hit a few balls.

Only three teams signed up for 3.5 doubles, so we were put into a round robin. I knew three out of our four opponents, and both of the women we were to play for this match. One of them had been my teammate this previous season on one of my teams.

We ended up playing this match in the bubble since that singles match just wasn't ending. My partner was very happy with this, but I would have preferred to play outdoors, as I think that would have given us an advantage against our opponents.

The match got underway, and it was a frustrating one, no doubt. My partner, who hits very hard all the time, was missing just a bit on her groundstrokes, neither of us could seem to hit a decent return, and our opponents completely took our net game away from us. We lost 3 and 3. It was one of those matches where afterward, we looked at each other and kind of scratched our heads! One of our opponents had one of the most hideous service motions that I've ever seen...and still we couldn't seem to capitalize. I suppose, once our net game was taken away, we didn't have a plan B. Neither one of us has the patience and consistency to lob for days on end.

Ah well, disappointing for sure, but we had one more match the next day. My partner left, and I found out that my opponent for consolation singles had scratched. Instead of just doing one match, that actually advanced me in the singles bracket!

There was another woman, a singles player who had just lost her second round, that was willing to stick around and take the place of my scratched opponent. She was visiting from Texas, where she is a 3.5 who also plays 4.0. She was a great player, and blew me out the first set 1-6. I dug in, and managed to make a match of the second set, but still lost 4-6. She seemed to get to everything, and possessed a very effective drop shot. So my plan in that second set was to take away that drop shot by moving her around...and it almost worked. It was a fun match though, and I was very grateful for her for sticking around and playing.

As we suspected, the organizers couldn't get Tennislink to substitute her as my opponent, so we chalked the match up to a 'fun' match, and I still advanced in the consolation draw.

At this point, I had planned to watch fellow TTW'er Xisbum's doubles match, but one of the clerks at the desk asked me to hit with him! Lol! I was tired, but they are so nice there that it is hard to say no. So I said okay, but only one set and in the bubble (which also allowed me to watch Xisbum's match which was on the neighboring court).

I won this set 6-2 (or 6-3, can't remember!). Of course, when it doesn't count, I hit so much better! This tells us, gentle readers, that Topaz is also a headcase. It was a positive way to end the day though, and I felt like I got some good practice in.

I got to watch the final set of Xisbum's match, which was a close one, but unfortunately, this was just not the tournament for TTWers!

After this, I had to negotiate with the organizers a bit...as I was scheduled to play both singles and doubles at 9am the next day! Funny computer!!! They decided to do the singles first and move the doubles to 10:30. I would have preferred it the other way around, but I didn't want to be too pushy. These were seriously nice people and I didn't want to be a pest...it was just the consolation round after all...if it were main draw, I wouldn't have worried.

I called my partner on the way home to inform her of the change, and she said her youngest was sick with a fever...if he didn't get better, it didn't look like she'd be able to come out for the doubles match.