I played tennis quite a lot back in my early college days, but have been out of the sport for many, many years. After getting laid off in Feb, I began playing again with a former co-worker who lost his job at the same time. He has been a semi-regular player for several years and was far better than me when we began. We normally played once per week - usually a midweek morning when the courts were mostly empty. Over the first few months my best effort was a 6-3 loss. I finally beat him 7-5 in early June.
The following week he had to return home (Belgrade) for 5 weeks in order to attend to some personal business and see his family. To fill the void, I joined a local tennis group via the online website Meetup.com. (Pretty cool networking / hobby website). There are several hundred players in the local group at various skill levels and they play most weekday evenings and weekend mornings. I've played several weekends with various people and made some new friends.
Yesterday they held a singles + doubles tournament in 4 different skill classes, A - D. I was in the C (intermediate) group and wound up playing 5 matches over 4 hours. Each match consisted of 4 games + a tiebreaker (first to hit 7 points + win by two points, wins). By the end I was basically spent and had nasty leg cramps (even though I had a large banana smoothie for breakfast and was hydrating between matches). Overall I won 3 matches and lost 2. I figured I was in the middle of the rankings. (Rankings are based on overall number of games won + tiebreaker win margin.)
Today the organizer notified me that I placed first in my bracket and I would be playing a semi-final match on Wednesday with the runner up in the other C-level bracket. If I win, I play a championship match next weekend.
Not bad for a (semi) old man ...
The following week he had to return home (Belgrade) for 5 weeks in order to attend to some personal business and see his family. To fill the void, I joined a local tennis group via the online website Meetup.com. (Pretty cool networking / hobby website). There are several hundred players in the local group at various skill levels and they play most weekday evenings and weekend mornings. I've played several weekends with various people and made some new friends.
Yesterday they held a singles + doubles tournament in 4 different skill classes, A - D. I was in the C (intermediate) group and wound up playing 5 matches over 4 hours. Each match consisted of 4 games + a tiebreaker (first to hit 7 points + win by two points, wins). By the end I was basically spent and had nasty leg cramps (even though I had a large banana smoothie for breakfast and was hydrating between matches). Overall I won 3 matches and lost 2. I figured I was in the middle of the rankings. (Rankings are based on overall number of games won + tiebreaker win margin.)
Today the organizer notified me that I placed first in my bracket and I would be playing a semi-final match on Wednesday with the runner up in the other C-level bracket. If I win, I play a championship match next weekend.
Not bad for a (semi) old man ...
