I played well in my two Club Challenge matches this weekend with my pal Peter. We always laugh at how nervous we get at the start of these things. Like, legit Waco Kid shaky hands. We did some line shuffling as a team to lock in a favorable lineup so Peter and I were matched against a weaker line from a better team. It didn’t really matter, because we’ve been nice this year and we won the first match 6-4, 6-2.
The nerves and little too much coffee had me bouncing between zones 3 and 4, but we eventually settled down and handled things.
The format for the weekend is two days of play to determine the top 6 (of 12) teams, and then scores reset for Sunday where the top 6 play for the trophy. Our Sunday match was against a better team’s 1st line, and it was a tougher match. It didn’t help that I rolled my ankle pretty badly in the middle of the 2nd set, so I spent the next three games waiting for a pop or a crunch to end my match and season. We won the match 6-4, 5-7, 1-0 in a 3rd set tiebreak.
Once I was confident enough that my ankle wasn’t going to implode things settled down. It was a bit of a marathon match, though, and I’m still sore and tired.
Big Zone 3 energy out there, which is nice. That deep HR dip around 10am was the ankle roll. I had to take a minute to assess the damage and retie my shoe. I was sweating it.
As a first Club Challenge experience, it was a really good time. Probably because I played well and won my matches, but the whole thing was wall-to-wall tennis and watching/laughing/cheering with my tennis friends for 3 straight days. I’m unlikely to move up to 3.5 after this season so I should be in a good spot to make the team again next year. If i don’t make the team, I will 100% make time to go watch as much as I can.
4 stars.
