Tennis Notes

I took it easy this week-- alcohol-wise and exercise-wise-- because I thought I was playing an excellent in the Saturday morning tennis league . . . last week I had an easy match where I got to practice various serves and shots (as I destroyed my opponent . . . he had no killer instinct) which was kind of a nice break because the scouting report I received on Manoj was that he tough to beat, especially if his first serve was on-- but I arrived at the club this morning and found out that Manoj pulled his groin and hurt his elbow-- so he is out for the rest of the season-- and I was playing his replacement, a guy with a Russian accent named Alex . . . this was a bit of a letdown as I was amped up to see how I would fare against Manoj-- but when I started warming up with Alex, I realized I was going to have my work cut out for me anyway-- Alex was hitting the ball hard in warm-ups-- a strong forehand and a big first serve and he wanted to take a bunch of overhead smashes, which he killed . . . then we started playing-- and while his first serve was intimidating (he even aced me once) I noticed he didn't have a great backhand, it was a spinning slice shot which skipped low, nor did he have a great second serve and he sometimes made unforced errors-- and so instead of attacking the net and trying to hit winners-- which wasn't working all that well (after some long games full of errant shots, we were tied 4 to 4) I started concentrated on something simple-- keeping my eye on the ball-- and I hit my serves to his backhand, kept the ball in play, and watched him run around his backhand and feed me hittable balls . . . with this simple strategy, I won the next seven games straight and beat him 11-4.