Tennis

Some good news: our team did win the interclub competition for our grade.

In Wellington they split the season into two competitions – pre-Christmas, where we finished mid-table, and post-Christmas, where we finished first out of seven teams by the slimmest of margins.

We tied on points with the team who beat us in the penultimate round of matches. The first tie-breaker wasn’t head-to-head (which would have been curtains for us, obviously) but overall wins and losses. Our rivals, like us, had five wins and one loss. The next criterion was set differential: we finished on +16 to their +11.

The teams in third and fourth place were nipping at our heels too. There were no stand-out teams, and our winning total of 32 points (out of a possible 48) is probably some kind of historic low. But somebody had to win, and how often in life have I been part of a winning team? Hardly ever. I certainly played my part in the win: all those straight-set singles wins were a big help, and although some of my doubles losses were disappointing, the closeness of those defeats was crucial in eking out overall wins, as well as for our set differential when it came to that.

In a round robin competition like this, how should you separate teams tied on points? In football, should you use goal difference or head-to-head as the first tie-breaker? I’m firmly in the goal difference camp. Why use only one (or two) matches to break the tie when you can use them all (which could be as many as 38 or 46 matches)? Why shouldn’t every goal in every game be worth something? And when three (or more) teams tie, head-to-head can get messy. The same principle applies in a tennis competition. It’s just as well whoever made the rules of Wellington interclub saw things the same way.

Our team went into the last round of matches with a chance of winning the post-Christmas competition. I don’t yet know whether this morning’s performance was good enough – it depends on the outcome of a match between two other contenders for the title.

We played the same team as last week but in a different order. My doubles partner was elevated to number one, so I played in the top doubles match against big servers and big hitters. One of them was a young Serbian who played in a Novak Djokovic shirt. I could tell he’d had many hours of coaching. In the first few games the rallies just went on and on and on… Actually no, it almost entirely rally-free tennis. Remarkably there were no breaks of serve at all in the first set. I don’t ever remember playing such a set before. We missed some break point chances but then had to save three set points at 4-5, love-40 on my serve (I’d won both my previous service games to love). We did save them and got to 6-6 and a tie-break, but that was our undoing; we quickly fell 5-0 behind before losing it 7-3. After that “macho” service-break-free first set, there were six breaks in the second which we lost 6-3 after having a point for a 4-1 lead. I had a bad time at the net in the second set, even by my standards. That was disappointing, even if we got closer than I expected we would given out opponents’ sheer firepower. We somehow avoided sudden death in the first set, despite getting to deuce a few times, but played three decisive points in the second set, winning one of them.

I played my singles in the heat of Wellington’s never-ending summer. My opponent, who turns 62 next week, works as a photographer. I felt confident that my younger legs would see me through in a match I needed to win to give our team a chance of winning the morning’s contest, let alone the competition as a whole. My opponent aced me on the very first point and I had to climb over the fence to retrieve the ball. Apart from that I started comfortably enough, but even though I won the first set 6-1 I’d lost my dominance by the end of it. I dug deep to open up a 3-1, 40-love lead in the second set, but on one of my game points I called a ball in that was out over the baseline according to my team-mate; to be honest I thought it was out too, but I didn’t know it was out. I dropped my serve, and played two absolutely shocking games to go 4-3 behind when I should have just about been off the court. I’d lost all confidence in my shots, everything I tried came back with interest, and worst of all I was stringing double faults together. I needed to win in straight sets for our team to win. It was all unravelling. But my opponent couldn’t quite keep up his level, I regained some consistency, and I won the last three games to give the team the overall win. We won three matches out of six, with every match being decided in two sets, but we won by an eleven-game margin.

And guess what? I finished the season with an unbeaten singles record. Nine wins out of nine, 18 sets out of 18. I didn’t expect that for one minute at the start of the season. I had my hairy moments along the way, not least the match a couple of weeks ago where I faced four set points in the first set, but I did it! My doubles record was nowhere near as good (four losses including the last three matches) but maybe that just shows that I don’t need other people. Flatmates, workmates, team-mates, who needs ’em?!

I made a bad start to this morning’s interclub. I thought we were playing at Karori, not Kilbirnie. I arrived at Karori in plenty of time, but none of my team-mates turned up. One of the guys we played last week did turn up, however. Damn. I had a look at the drawsheet and had to hightail it to Kilbirnie, which isn’t particularly close to Karori (or Kelburn or Khandallah or any other posh places beginning with K that I might have forgotten about). At the time I thought, this is normal anxiety, normal stress brought about by a normal everyday event. It almost makes a nice change.

I didn’t play well in the doubles, to put it mildly. In the first few games I hardly hit the ball. That might be why we led 4-1. Our opponents had no problems wiping out our lead, and we were fortunate when they caught the tape on the sudden-death point in game nine (the only game of the match to reach sudden death) to put us back in front. We broke in the next game to win the set, despite my general ineptitude. We trailed 5-2 in the second set but pulled it back to 5-5 after my only decent spell of the whole match. The 11th game, however, was on my partner’s serve. Just what am I supposed to do in that game? Intercept at the net, that’s what, but I’m so terrible at that. They broke, and their better player put together an impressive love service game to put away the set. His serving didn’t get any worse in the super tie-break which we found ourselves in yet again; we won the first couple of points but went down 10-5. I was really disappointed with my performance and felt I let my partner down badly.

Singles. What a contrast. I played the weaker of our doubles opponents, the same bloke I played in Week 5 when I fell over and lost four straight games but won easily in the end (the format of the competition makes it possible to face the same player twice in one season). This time, after one or two scratchy games early on, I won 6-1 6-0. He had no real weapons and I was able to stay in the rallies and generally wear him down. He came to the net probably too much and I hit a number of passing winners.

The sun came out just as I was finishing my match, and I was more than happy to hang around for the next two hours while the other matches played out. Overall we lost by four matches to two. It could have been worse if my doubles partner hadn’t won his singles 7-5 in the third set. It could have been a lot better if I’d shown up to the doubles.

Everything is such a struggle at the moment that I didn’t hold out much hope for today’s outing at the Wellington club, which is one of many clubs in Wellington. Sleep deprivation would surely have an effect on my play. We started with the doubles: we lost the first set 6-4 after gaining an early lead, then won the second 6-3 to set up the dreaded super tie-break. We trailed 8-4 in the ten-pointer but won the next three points, only for their (better) player to send down two fantastic serves, the second of which was rendered almost unreturnable by a gust of wind. It was a dramatic finish to a close match. Before the shoot-out we went to sudden death six times (0 from 3 in the first set, 2 from 3 in the second).

I had a longish break in between matches. I spent some of that in the club rooms which are always fascinating. Photos of winning interclub teams going back more than a century: the hairstyles, the rackets, even the fonts used for the names. Occasionally I’d recognise a famous surname. Sometimes you’d get opening day photos: just look how many people turned out in the thirties or the fifties compared to today.

In the singles I felt really sluggish. From 3-1 up in the first set I lost four straight games amid a barrage of winners from my opponent. I lost 14 consecutive points or something ridiculous. He made his fair share of errors, but he could accelerate through the ball on the forehand, killing off points that I’d had the upper hand in. I saved a set point on my serve to close to 4-5, then faced three more in the next game which was the longest of the match. He double-faulted on one, but I saved the other two with winners including a volley (most unusual for me). Strangely the fact that I’m feeling so much pressure elsewhere in my life might have helped me on those crucial points. When I’m feeling my sanity going down the plughole, who cares if I might lose a set of tennis? Two more breaks of serve took us into the tie-break in which I struck something of a purple patch to take it 7-2. I still wasn’t overly confident because physically I felt shot to pieces, but I got my nose in front and finished strongly in the second set which I won 6-3. Four months ago I might well have won rather more comfortably, but under the circumstances this was a very good win for me. It took 80 minutes or thereabouts. Sheer determination and a stroke of luck got me over the line in the first set; had I lost that set I suspect the match would have run away from me.

This was a direct match-up between the top two teams in the league. We won three matches out of six but claimed the overall win by virtue of winning more sets. Those four set points were pretty important then, not that I cared about that at the time.