Saturday, July 09, 2005
Swinging in the Rain
The guy is on his way to fix our internet woes at home! Hopefully I will be back up and running later today. In the meantime I had to stop by the office today so I thought I would check in on blog-world.
Last night I played one of the most interesting tennis matches of my life. First of all, I am playing with a guy who is ranked two levels higher than me. He is a 4.00 and I am a 3.00. We are playing in a 7.00 league so that is good. But, the team we were playing against had to be sand-bagging. The guy was easily a 4.00 and the girl a 3.50 if not a 4.00 so I started off a little intimidated. I don’t think I properly returned one of his serves until about the third service game for him. Well, mostly because of my intimidation we dropped the first set 6-3. Shortly thereafter it began to rain. Then it started raining harder! OK these people wanted to keep playing. The other five courts had cleared and headed for shelter, but not us, we just kept on playing. The funny thing is, somehow when I was soaked and the ball was as heavy as a baseball, I realized I was just going to play my best and have fun. The intimidation factor left and I started playing better. The second set went to a tie-break and we won! The third set went to a tie-break, but we lost. However, I left the courts knowing that I could play with these people, when we started I was not too sure. The puddles on the courts made for some interesting shots, the ball would take off like a rocket when it bounced in one of these puddles. So while I am not sure you would classify what we did as tennis, we did play in the rain, we did have a lot of fun, and I did feel young and carefree….at least until I sat down in the car and realized how exhausted I was. But it was GREAT!
Life is like that sometimes. The greatest joys are found in what others might call an unfortunate turn of events. The very thing that caused others to quit playing helped me to play up to my potential. I hope I can take that lesson off of the tennis courts and find the uncovered treasures in all of life’s detours.
Last night I played one of the most interesting tennis matches of my life. First of all, I am playing with a guy who is ranked two levels higher than me. He is a 4.00 and I am a 3.00. We are playing in a 7.00 league so that is good. But, the team we were playing against had to be sand-bagging. The guy was easily a 4.00 and the girl a 3.50 if not a 4.00 so I started off a little intimidated. I don’t think I properly returned one of his serves until about the third service game for him. Well, mostly because of my intimidation we dropped the first set 6-3. Shortly thereafter it began to rain. Then it started raining harder! OK these people wanted to keep playing. The other five courts had cleared and headed for shelter, but not us, we just kept on playing. The funny thing is, somehow when I was soaked and the ball was as heavy as a baseball, I realized I was just going to play my best and have fun. The intimidation factor left and I started playing better. The second set went to a tie-break and we won! The third set went to a tie-break, but we lost. However, I left the courts knowing that I could play with these people, when we started I was not too sure. The puddles on the courts made for some interesting shots, the ball would take off like a rocket when it bounced in one of these puddles. So while I am not sure you would classify what we did as tennis, we did play in the rain, we did have a lot of fun, and I did feel young and carefree….at least until I sat down in the car and realized how exhausted I was. But it was GREAT!
Life is like that sometimes. The greatest joys are found in what others might call an unfortunate turn of events. The very thing that caused others to quit playing helped me to play up to my potential. I hope I can take that lesson off of the tennis courts and find the uncovered treasures in all of life’s detours.
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I am not sure where you are in Alabama--but I do hope you don't get too much rain with Dennis on the way north!!!
Or you could call up your previous opponents and play another match in the rain!!! I am thinking you could this time!
JB
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Or you could call up your previous opponents and play another match in the rain!!! I am thinking you could this time!
JB
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