Singles Tennis

When I left the tennis center with the cheap plastic trophy for winning the tournament, I swore to myself that I was NOT going to make a Big Deal out of this. Because, in the grand scheme of things, it's not a big deal.


As a single person, no one wants to hear about my tennis matches. It's kind of like telling someone about a dream you had. As I read in a book today (Nicholson Baker, The Fermata), "...lovers are the only people who will put up with hearing your dreams." *

This resolution-- to be low-key about my tennis success-- lasted about three minutes. I was still in the car on the way home when I got out my cell and tried to call my brother. Since then I think I've told most people I've come into contact with. I even broke down and posted it on Facebook. And now I'm blogging about it.


So much for not making a Big Deal out of this.

The thing is, winning the tournament truly wasn't a huge accomplishment. Full Disclosure: there were only three people in my draw, the Men's 35 Singles (ages 35-44.) I did have to beat a pretty tough rival in the finals, outlasting him 6-2, 1-6, 1-0 (10-7). In the third set super-tiebreak, he was up 6-3, but I won six straight points to take an insurmountable 9-6 lead.

What was interesting about that "championship" match is that it featured probably the only two single men over 35 who play tennis at our center. All the married guys have lives and other commitments and so can't devote the time to a tournament like this. The only other guy in our draw was a married dude whose wife had signed him up because he daughter was competing in the girl's division. Even he was committed to a family event-- it just happened to be the tournament. It truly was a "singles" final.

This is the kind of thing you get when you google "ball and chain tennis"

oooooooo

Still, this was the first tennis tournament I've ever won.

Even more impressive than winning the tournament, however, was that in the same week I clinched the Silver League championship. It's the second time I've won the Silver, but this time I ran the table, going 7-0. (The last time I blogged about tennis, I was struggling in the Silver league, having only won 2 of my first 17 matches. So I guess I've made some progress!) So between that and the tournament I've won nine straight matches. My last singles loss was on December 22nd.


This is the fourth time I've won a tennis league, but I've never received any hardware for that. When you win a league, you get to move up to the next level and they give you $10 off the registration fee for the next league. But a $10 discount is a difficult thing to show off in my living room.

ooooooo

And that cheesy cheap plastic trophy looks pretty good on my fireplace mantle.


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* Ironically, the day after I read that Nicholson Baker quote about sharing dreams, I had a really interesting one about finding a cute blind twin, who I met simultaneously online on a dating site at the same time I showed up at her house. There were people speaking German, hippies smoking pot, and circus animals-- horses and tigers-- in the house that she shared with her married twin sister, who was also blind. I swear, I hardly ever have/remember interesting dreams like this to tell people about.