Easy Killer defeated the West Chester Aces 3-2 on Saturday, June 13, 2009 to improve to 6-2 on the season. We won easily at singles but had to hold on for dear life with a 7-6, 3rd set victory (and we were down in the tiebreaker) at 2nd doubles. All’s well that ends well and we have 2 matches remaining.
I will deviate from my usual format of primarily reporting on our PATD 4.0 team (Easy Killer). I wasn’t at the match on Saturday so writing a recap would be more fiction than usual. I will instead recap my own tennis weekend. It started at 8pm on Friday night by playing a match for my Central Penn (CPD) team in Landisville, PA under the lights. The Hempfield Rec center is an amazing facility with a superb layout, a viewing stand, indoor courts and a vibrant membership replete with strong tennis players. We faced one of the tougher teams and unfortunately lost the team match 2-3. What was really nice was my own doubles court where for the first 90% of the match we got our butts kicked. We dropped the first set 3-6 and our opponents were serving in the 2nd set up a break at 4-3. My partner who I had never played with was Ryan Jeckel. Ryan is a strong player who likes to communicate. He constantly harped on being positive, communicating after every point and adjusting to what our opponents were doing.
I’m not sure how I would have handled the match without Ryan as my partner. I can get real frustrated when things don’t go my way but one thing Ryan said mid-match was “don’t give them the satisfaction” (by looking distraught after a particularly frustrating point). He was so right. Move your feet, talk, adjust, be positive, just like Clint Eastwood’s mantra in Heartbreak Ridge, “improvise, adapt, overcome.”
Ryan told me we had to break Rich who was serving at 4-3 in the 2nd set. “We must break him now.” We went down 0-30 but we remained focused and we took the next 4 points and broke him to level the set at 4-4. It was Ryan’s turn to serve and we held easily at love for a 5-4 lead. Our opponent Bill, who went to 4.0 Mens Nationals last year, was serving next and he had been winning his serve at love in the first set. We were adjusting to his game and at least putting a little more pressure on his serve although we hadn’t broken him. Ryan told me for the first time all night to hit every single ball to Rich. I hit my first two returns down the line (basically at Rich) and we raced out to a 40-0 lead – triple set point. Bill served an ace out wide and then they won a long point to make it 30-40. Bill served to Ryan and after a few shots on both sides they hit the ball wide.
We started the mandatory 3rd set tiebreaker immediately as we did not want to lose our new found momentum. We stayed aggressive and won the tiebreaker 10-2. We got a few breaks in the tiebreaker but by this point Ryan and I were playing as a team and starting to be effective. This was a great win for us as our opponents are solid players. It proves that you can talk you way to victory when you are up against a wall.
Saturday morning I played with my regular partner Ron Rubenstein for the Delaware team (DD) we are both on. We faced two crafty seniors who have won most of the matches they have played. They lobbed us with surprising effectiveness but our challenge was primarily to stay aggressive and remain focused. We jumped out to a 6-2, 3-0 lead before dropping the next 3 games which included losing Ron’s serve. As a team, losing Ron’s serve should never happen. My strength is by far my net play. Ron’s strength is his powerful 1st and 2nd serves. But, we got broke and found ourselves in a match that we thought we had already won. Fortunately we managed to win the next 3 games, the match and the team match 4-1. A very nice way to start what turned out to be an unexpectedly rainy Saturday.
On Sunday, Ron and I again played for our DD team. As most of us tennis veterans do, we take our tennis seriously. Our team showed up a half hour early to warm up and by match time we were ready to go – except that we only had 7 guys and we were still waiting for our 8th and final teammate. We were all standing at the net much like friends on a street corner. Our group at the net was one guy who is about 30 and the rest of us are all 40+. We were laughing and wondering where our final man was. On a side note, “lateness penalty” does not seem to be in the lexicon of the Delaware players which I think is terrific. One of the reasons for this is that the Delaware league coordinator (who does an awesome job) handles all of the scheduling for the teams. This is great but you end up playing at some strange locations. For instance, we played aDuPont as a home match on their courts and then this weekend we were playing an away match on our home courts – go figure. So, with not everyone crystal clear on home team/away team there isn’t any pressure to start the match promptly at the start time. The rules state that if you arrive 16 minutes after the start time you can be defaulted. On rare occasions I have been late before which is always a stressful situation as I like the calm mental prep time before I compete. Arriving late would disrupt this process so I am almost always early. At 20 minutes past the start time we hear loud dance music coming from the road and getting louder. Our player had arrived. He pulls in, takes a few minutes to exit the car, keeps the music pumping and then gets out, hair styled, looking great and ready to play. Paul Bradbury, our captain, turned to us all and said, “ahhh, we were all young once too.”
Ron and I played a younger pair than the day before and they were hitting the ball with pace and spin. They served to start the match and we barely got the serves back which were poached and pounded by the net guy. I decided we would both play back in the next service game but I didn’t want to make the adjustment in the first game as I didn’t want to give our opponents the added boost in confidence. Ron held his serve and we got on a good roll. We were up 5-1 after Ron held again. With our opponents serving 30-40 on set point Ron hit a driving groundstroke that was weakly hit back to us just over the net. I pounced and aimed my volley at feet of my opponent closest to the net. I was off by about a foot and the ball went between the knees of my opponent for a winner. However, the swift reaction by our opponent to protect himself caused an injury to his shoulder. We played two more games and then at 6-1, 1-1 – they retired. It’s a real bummer to have a match end like this and hopefully our opponent is OK and heals quickly. My apologies and they are two real good sports.
And that’s it for this update. We play Healthplex on Saturday (assuming it ever stops raining) and then Great Valley 6/27.
