The Hard Way

A great tennis match occurs when two people are at the height of their powers out on the court. One spectacular shot is followed by a response that is even more spectacular. Both people are raising each other's games because they have to and because neither one is willing to back down and give an inch. Then there are other tennis matches, imbalances when one person is playing well and the other isn't. That usually results in a blow-out. Then there's the opposite, where both people aren't playing there best and have to rely on something else.
I'm thinking right now of the 2007 Wimbledon final between Rafeal Nadal and Roger Federer as an example where both players were pushed to the limits, hitting hard, hitting smart, pushing each other. The same can be said of the Lindsay Davenport and Venus William's in the 2005 Wimbledon Final. When players play like this, there is so little between them and it's thrilling to watch.
Thursday was an important day for me. I went out to hit with a friend, NC, and he put me through some weird exercises. NC is an amazing player. He can beat most people with his left hand even though he's a right-handed player. One of the exercises involved hitting back and forth during a set and having to do 10 push-ups for every unforced error I made. He won the set 6-0 having to do 20 push-ups. I had to do 100 and something push-ups and struggled to win points. It was a pretty important lesson. He didn't have to do much but get the ball in play and I would just give points to him.
Friday I didn't have anyone to play with, so I went and hit with a ball machine for an hour. The hitting was good. But any time you can have a machine feeding you exactly the way you want the ball to be hit to you, it tends to make things easier.
Saturday was a nightmare. I went to hit with BM, who's always calm no matter what kind of pressure he's under. Things started well and then fell apart. While I was playing, I started to miss shots, the more shots I missed, the more I started to think about everything that people had been saying to me in the previous weeks and about the person I would be playing the next day. I couldn't stop the voices in my head, I fell apart. I forgot how to hit a forehand. Things were sailing long and into the net. I had lost it. I packed up and stormed off. Once home, the voices didn't stop. I was having a nervous breakdown. I went to the bathroom and shaved off my hair. Just shaved it off. It made things a little better. I had some control over something (me and Britney Spears). I had agreed to sub that day and went to play. Things went fine. Nothing spectacular but enough to win.
Saturday night, the thoughts kept returning. Was I making the right decision? How badly was I going to lose my upcoming match? I needed all the voices to be silenced. I cleaned up the house, I listened to music, I messed around with my computer, I watched "Land of the Lost."
I was so drained that the next day I ended up sleeping until 2 hours before match time. I barely had time to eat anything so I put some crinkle French fries in the oven and was off to hit with BM for about 30 minutes before match time. We hit. Things didn't go well. I was so nervous, but slowly they got better. I changed the grip on my forehand and was hitting with more clearance over the net. Time to go.
I got there. Through all the comments people had made, all the advice I had been given, I had never really thought about not playing. I had entertained the idea of having someone else play for me just to make others happy, but deep down, I knew I would show up. (Although part of me wished for a sudden rainstorm that would make playing impossible.) We played doubles and won without a hassle. My singles match was up second. We were called to the court.
Things started out so-so. PK went up 40-love quickly on his serve, but I fought back to get a break point but I ended up losing the game. I also lost my next service game. I was down 0-2, but broke in the next game but was broken again with my fragile serve letting me down. It was 1-3 and I started have hints that I was out of the match. I just wasn't playing that well. I had a glimpse of losing and it almost felt like a relief to know I would soon be put out of my misery. Then I figured why not just play. Why not do what I did Thursday and just try to get every ball over the net. I'm not used to playing long points. I'm more about bang-bang for better or worse, but this was more important. Everything was on the line. People were watching knowing that I would be ripe for a breakdown. I trusted my legs to keep moving and just ran to everything and put it back over the net. Way over the net. Highballs with heavy topspin, nothing fancy. Ugly even. But they balls were going back over and PK was making mistakes.
At one point, I reeled off 7 straight points and went up 4-3. I served to take a 5-3 lead but quickly lost my edge. It was 4-4. The first point of that game was a long, tough one and I lost it. But I had hit a bunch of balls over the net and knew I had to keep doing it. And I did. And I broke again to go up 5-4. I've been to 5 many times in matches. 5-0, 5-1, 5-2, 5-3, 5-4 and something seems to happen. While most people tell themselves to close it out, I usually think to myself "The worst I can lose now is 5-7." This time I actually thought "Close it out." I knew my serve wasn't doing me any favors and I tried just to get it in and start grinding out the points. Luckily, my opponent was over it, or generous, or whatever, because he relented. I went up 40-0 with 3 match points. The last point was questionable, but PK called it in my favor and it was over. Did someone tell him to just give it to me? At that point I didn't care, the pain was over.
This wasn't a match of two people playing at their best. This was two so-so players playing so-so tennis. I did enough not to beat myself. I think I went the whole match without hitting a winner, but my unforced error count was low and I kept the ball in play.
I don't know if this victory is representative of anything like I wanted it to be. I don't know if it was the passing of some major test like I let myself think it was. I think it was good that in the end I didn't fall apart and just hand it over. I think maybe it's a step I need to take over and over again until it clicks. The truest words were when someone told me that after it was all over, win or lose, I'd be the same person when I woke up the next day.
I am the same person, maybe just a little happier that all the drama is done with.