Mother Nature put my rantings aside and as I rose to head to the airport around 6am this morning the weather was cloudy, windy but dry. David met me and we went to the courts shortly after since the weather was holding but we didn't want to take any chances on it changing. Here is the match recap (just to remind, it was a best of 3 sets):
Like the true athletes we are, Dave and I stretched and warmed up for about 5 minutes. I informed Dave he'd have to kill me to beat me but honestly he was a lot better than I remembered and I was feeling really tentative like I couldn't pull the trigger on my shots.
First set: Dave jumped out to a 3-0 lead although the games themselves were pretty good. I was feeling pretty dumb at this point for spending a week practicing and blogging and going down for this match. I put it together a little better in the second part of the set but ended up losing the set 6-4.
Second set: My back was to the wall here so I jumped out like a bat out of hell and went up 3-0, playing much better and more aggressively. It went to 3-1 and then to 4-2 at which point I began to completely meltdown. A combination of me playing out of my mind at the beginning of the set and starting to get really fatigued probably contributed to this but suddenly the score was 5-5 and I was dangerously close to having things end. I lost my serve to put Dave up 6-5, serving for the match but I gutted out that game to pull it back to 6-6 and force a tiebreaker. When I couldn't put the set the away and it went to 5-5 my morale was at a low, I had blown a huge lead and lost momentum but I roared back hard and took the tiebreaker 7-2 and put Dave on his heels.
Third set: I was banking on my heart and endurance but holy shit I was gassed at this point, I had to just assume David was worse off. The third set was textbook, we were on serve until 4-4 when I broke Dave to go up 5-4 and then served for the win and took the third set 6-4, total match time of around three hours. It was an epic match and I'm amazed I pulled it out, I was very consistent for not playing much but pretty defensive the whole time, I got somewhat lucky but I'll take it.
Post match it was too cold an windy for the beach so we visited with our friend Kim Bong Il and spent the rest of the afternoon getting to know horse racing culture through Kentucky Derby coverage, although Dave had to pay me for my flight, he did inexplicably call 50-1 longshot Mine That Bird to win the Derby, although unfortunately for him we weren't betting, just making living room predictions. All in all a great and glorious day.
The Monstro is never defeated in a direct challenge. We are, however, vulnerable to flanking maneuvers and vermin infestation.
ReplyDelete