It's dangerous out there (on the tennis court)

I especially enjoy the round robins at The Enfield Tennis Club on Wednesdays like today before the light therapy (or ECP) at Dana-Farber. I had actually planned on going to pilates, knowing that it's good to work into your routine in general and hoping that specifically it might help my abdomen to protrude less (a result of the Graft. vs. Host of Skin.)

But when I got a call from Rebecca at the club saying they needed an eighth, I jumped at the chance.

Tennis is always more fun, but it didn't start out great. The player across from me hit me hard on my thigh. It was a stinger, probably because my skin is so sensitive. A few minutes later, she hit me on the calf. I bent over to rub it as tears welled up in my eyes.

At our level, we don't do these things on purpose, despite our old coach Rich Bray standing on the other side and saying, "Hit me, hit me," to improve our net game. But it is a shocker, especially twice in a row at the same speed. I said the understatement of the year – I have a problem with my skin – or something like that, maybe to explain my apparent lack of toughness.

The other three said maybe I should go sit out and call Marie from the front desk. But no way was I doing that, although my better instincts said I should ice.

Instead I said to myself, "There's no crying in tennis," and went back to my spot.

My serve, which had been pretty bad earlier, suddenly got better. I thanked the other player for knocking the bad serve out of me.

During the change in teams (we do three combinations), another player and I stood at the net talking about the times we have been hit. I mentioned an incident from the week before, saying a different player whaled the ball at me on purpose.

Last week I wasn't technically supposed to play because I still had a day to go before my friend nurse Jo took the stitch out of the biopsy on my right thumb. But it was so small that I put a bandaid on it and figured it would be OK.

Three of us were warming up before the fourth arrived. The woman on the other side kept hitting it only to the person next to me. I jumped up and down and said, hit it to me, hit it to me. I was just fooling around, but she backed up, took a big swing, and hit it straight at me.

After a few minutes she apologized and said she doesn't like it when she acts like that. I accepted the apology, but the after effects ruined that set. Most of all it affected my serve. I double faulted more times than I ever have done, and although I was just trying to forget it and get over it, I saw how your emotions can affect your game.

In the other rounds, my mood and playing picked up. People complicated me on my net game, an inheritance from my father, the result of George's lessons, and my height and long arms.

Afterwards she apologized again and we chatted a little about, of all things, our respective dental problems. I wanted to hang around a little so the air could naturally clear because I wasn't upset anymore and didn't want her to be either. She joked that if her ball had made contact and I had lost another tooth (making it 13 gone) it would be something to write about on my blog.

So that's what I did.

 I can think of quite a few when tempers flared. I don't know how men on teams react to stress. Maybe better, maybe worse.

Many of us are our own worst enemy, which in turn makes us worse. It's then that we need to focus on the ball and maybe even reread (or read for the first time) The Inner Game of Tennis.

Sometimes, especially in league play, we forget that we're only playing for the brownies at the end. But the competitiveness is also what keeps us coming back.

(Sort of) back in the swing of things and trying something new

On Wednesday after I went back to the round robin in Enfield for the first time in a couple of weeks, I did something new.

I slept through the haircut that I got later in the day. Part of my fatigue came from returning to activity after pneumonia and part was from skipping my morning coffee because my stomach was upset.

You can definitely lose a lot after just a couple of weeks out. Or maybe it was three. I don't remember exactly. Especially at a "certain age."

A few days earlier I had gone back to yoga. I took it easy, telling the instructor that I might go into child's pose. Even so for a few days after, my arms hurt.

I usually like to do some kind of exercise every day, but I didn't want to push it. On one bitter cold day I thought of going to an exercise class at the Y but thought better of it. Maddie was glad.

On Thursday I finally gave in and tried Pickleball at the club. I had kept saying I didn't want to do it because I couldn't see the exercise in hitting a wiffle ball on a small court. Then I realized I couldn't say I didn't like it if I hadn't tried it.

Extra racquets were available for us newbies, and after trying it for a while, I could see that if you learned the rules and figured out how to hit the ball (especially the serve), it would be fun. You have to learn to stay out of "the kitchen," the area next to the net, except for a short amount of time, kind of like the zone in basketball.

Almost 30 of us were there, with play on four courts and people waiting to come in. I learned  how Pickleball came to be and read afterwards that it got its name from the family dog, like so:

"The sport was named after the the family cocker spaniel, Pickles, who was a canine of one of the co-inventors of Pickleball. Pickles chased stray balls and then hid in the bushes, so they named the game after him."

A sport named after a dog is a good sport.

A few of us watched some of the advanced players, who were really making the ball fly back and forth. I didn't realize how popular it has become. Some people play every day at various locations. I wouldn't want to do that, but I signed up for this coming Thursday.

I thought I was doing more listening than exercising, but still, as soon as I got home and pulled into the driveway, I fell asleep in the car.

Being sick for that relatively short amount of time definitely took its toll.

A good day at the US Open

With Donna Young and Lori Chase.

What a difference a year makes.

Donna and I thoroughly enjoyed the trip we took Friday to the US Open on the bus from the Enfield Tennis Club, where we met up with our friend Lori Chase. It was much better than last year because, (a) we knew the ropes, and (b) I wasn't just a month out of surgery like I was the year before.

Knowing the ropes meant going straight to one of the field courts, Court 7, and watching a good women's doubles match instead of wandering around, and then when we went to our seats in the nosebleed section of Arthur Ashe, following the lead of other carpetbaggers who did not go all the way up. You can do this earlier in the tournament and if someone comes, you just move back a little. Hence we had a good view of a three-set battle between Venus Williams and Sara Errani and were able to get in on the excitement by cheering Venus on. (She lost in the third set tie-break.)

After lunch we had good seats on Court 17 where we saw Roberto Bautista Agut win the match that will pit him against Roger Federer next.

It is just amazing to sit so close and see how hard they hit the ball.

Happy on the bus.

The other good news is that I did not get totally dehydrated in the heat and then proceed to drink two vodka lemonades made in a special glass with a list of the Open champions on it, and that I did not proceed to feel very sick in this scene that Donna and I can laugh about now: We needed half an hour to get back to the bus (scheduled to leave at 6:30), but we left too late, and our friend Deb Doner was walking at a very fast clip ahead of us and telling us to get a move on or we would miss the bus. Deb even wanted to get a pedicab for me, but all were full. Donna, who had stayed back with me, called ahead, "I can't pick her up!"

The bus of course did not leave without us. But let's just say that when I got on I did not feel well enough to eat the walnut chocolate chip brownies that the organizer of the trip brings every year.

This year we left plenty of time and even had a chance to wait on the grass and enjoy the day for a few more minutes.

I had my brownie, covered myself with my jacket and fell asleep, visions of tennis balls dancing in my head.