USTA/Eastern Metro Regional Championship, day 1

Eight of 10 mates showed up for work on an uncertain rainy Saturday. Actually the entire weekend was in question, intermittent rains and more rains. We started little early than scheduled 6pm due to heavy sky. Ricky and I played on Court 5. We jumped to a 2-0 lead but I double faulted on my game point. Then she held serve that brought the match to 2 apiece. The first set was pretty competitive, we all had our mistakes and chances. Me, missing the most. The second set was one sided, me, withdrawing from the match. It’s really all mental and I found myself not up to it. Is it another form of ‘nervous’? I probably knew all the rhetoric but it’s much harder to execute them. More pix on FB

There were couple of close line calls. After one call, she came to the net and reconfirmed it even we weren’t questioning it. There was a man who’s watching from another side of the court and made a audible disagreement when Ricky call a ball out. It’s clearly out dude. That’s pretty annoying. Our opponent’s young son was around which was cute.
During the brief rest between the two matches, few teams were munching on drinks, fruits and pasta … Irene forgot to do her share. Sorry kids, I didn’t bring anything and lost the match too ..

Five mates recycled, played the second match against Brooklyn. One court folded after one game due to injury. Second court was a re-match of our Queens’ Final that gone to third set tie break. However, this time Kim’s team disposed my pair in just two sets. It does pay off to play in multiple boroughs. Team Kim missed the Queens but made in Brooklyn. We missed Manhattan but made in Queens, etc.

The second doubles court was the last one to finish and require second location when rain finally came down. Our pair was behind at 3-5 but came back to win it at 7-6. The second set was hotly contested. When the opponent was serving at 5-3, the game score was 30:40 but they called it game and our mates accepted. On the way to the restaurant, Jerry said they were very involved with the match as a whole, especially came back from 3-5 in the first, so they weren’t paying enough attention to the progressing score.
Not good. Deb said repeatedly …. to yell out scores!!
I thought about our brief exchange at Queens final, with the same girl .. it’s her partner who questioned the score at the change over .. Take it as a lesson, call out scores for everyone’s benefit.
Sunday .. Day 2

our first match

the second match

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