Blood Sport

Mike,

Unfortunately, there isn’t much to the story. Dom and I got to the court about 10 minutes before time and started up after no warmup. This is usually a mistake for me, but this time it wasn’t. Dom failed to return any of my first 8 serves, and he went on to lose 15-3. The next game wasn’t so easy for me, but the Dom couldn’t score more then 6. By then I was relaxed–a bit too much relaxed–and Dom started off scoring 6 straight. I buckled down and chased after him, catching up at 10. He failed to score after that. By then I was so relaxed I was a standing puddle of jelly, and the Dom was scoring steadily. He was up 9-2 in the 4th game, when the adrenalin began to re-flood my veins. We reached 14-13, Dom’s favor, when he blasted an unhittable serve past me and won his first of the night.

The sweat pouring down my face, I looked at my watch. We’d been playing an hour. I said, ‘How many games have we played so far? Six?” Dom was a better counter than me, retaining 6 or 7 functioning brain cells to my 3, and said, “Let’s play a fifth.” By then we were both physically shot and refused to chase after any ball further than 3 feet away. By the time we got up to a 10-10 score, The Dom was just standing in one place, swinging pathetically, and I won that one just by spinning balls 4 feet away from him.

As we walked out, Dom panted, “I’m going to be sore tomorrow.” I smiled, but didn’t tell him I’d have to recover for my game Friday with Patrick. 

Now it’s Friday morning, and the Ibruprofin has kicked in. The court reservations are for 5 pm. Whatever happens, I have the weekend, with no snow-shoveling or tree sawing, to recover.

Now on to Friday’s challenge by rakkity-son–

Patrick returned to the challenge court on Friday at 5, and we played two long games, followed by an interupted no-decision. The first game was a wipeout for Patrick (15-3), but he wore his old man down in the 2nd game and managed to get 10 points before losing. It’s a good thing for me that our games are so long, because time ran out in the middle of the 3rd game. We were tied 8-8 when a knock on the door from two other players interrupted us on the dot of 6. Patrick asked them if we could play until one of us scored and then we’d quit.

So it was sudden death between Rakkity & Son.

It was my turn to serve, and P. fielded it well. I lost the serve, so P. served, and blasted a good one. I
returned it to a low corner. He dove for it, and missed it, losing his serve. My subsequent serve made a ridiculous bounce–impossible to return. Nevertheless, P. returned it, and I was so surprised I missed my return. Three serves now, and neither one of us had scored. This went on for 5 more serves without a point.

We figured we had exceeded the good will of the anxiously waiting players,so we quit. At least we gave them a good show. And now we await next Friday’s match for a final decision.

rakkity & son