rematch...kind of

The fifth set is not about tennis, it's about nerves.
- Boris Becker

Today's match was definitely an interesting one.

For starters, I got very little sleep last night. Writing and working, I was up until about 3 AM. So sleepy, in fact, was I when I finally got to bed, I forgot to remove my contact lenses. So when I woke up at 8 AM this morning, my eyes were not pleased in the least. They were dry, and my vision was annoyingly blurry. But after about 30 minutes, things began to look up, and at 8:45 I headed off to the courts.

I got there just on time, and when I went to look at who my opponent was, it was none other than the woman I first played in the league months ago. Awesome, right? Kind of. I was slightly nervous. Here I was, operating on little sleep and less than eager to go out and play tennis for an extended period of time, and I was about to face off with a player who would act as a gauge, in my head, of how far I've come in the league. Have I gotten better? Have I gotten worse? What has changed? What can I change? One match, as I saw it, was about to answer all those questions.

Wonderful.

So we got out on the court, and surprise, surprise, the first set was a bit of a flop. She took it 6-3. But even with the sleepiness and blurred vision, my game should've improved enough by this point to have taken the first set, right? Well, apparently not.

But it was what happened in the second set that salvaged the whole thing for me. I got angry (on the inside, of course). Frustrated, annoyed, and no longer tired, I realized I: 1. was playing with a brand new racquet; 2. had been training for several months now; and 3. was not about to let a lost first set lead to a similar result in the second. And I was definitely not about to let head games and tentative shots, the bane of my tennis existence, prevail - not again.

So I didn't. And I won the set 6-1. So there.