by It’s a stormy, muggy day here. There’s also a sense of déjà vu in the air, as Simona Halep faces off for the fourth time in a grand slam final. I’ve got a feeling that this time she’ll do it, mainly because she’s played with noticeably more aggression in her run to the final.
I’ve had some interesting lessons this week. My UK-based Skype student (he lived in Bucharest when I started with him in January) was complaining that his Kiwi boss wouldn’t let him use Facebook at work. Good on him, I wanted to say, but thought better of it. My student seems to like our lessons. Every week I pick out an article from a news website and prepare questions based on it. I have another student of 24 who is moving to the UK next month. He told me that he’s only really interested in making friends over there, or anywhere, if they can benefit him in a tangible (i.e. financial) way. I can believe that. I met somebody who worked for a bank; when I told him I taught from home, he shoved a bunch of credit card application forms in my hand for me to give to students. Um, are you serious?! I get the feeling that the guy with whom I used to play tennis gave up on me as a friend when it became obvious that I had no business contacts that he could use to his advantage. It’s a year since I last saw or heard from him.
I played three games of Scrabble last night. In the first game my opponent made bingos on his opening two turns, but even then I felt I could have beaten him. I knew I had high-probability bingos on my rack that included a blank, but somehow they eluded me. I did find a bingo at the end but it was too late; I fell to a 64-point loss. In game two it was a similar story: two early bingos by my opponent. Only this time he scored heavily, unremittingly, on his non-bingo plays too. A third bingo followed. Even though I found two bingos of my own, I fell to my heaviest defeat yet: 369 to me, a whopping 564 to my opponent. In contrast game three (12-minute clock) was a nailbiter, and as usual in sub-15-minute games I struggled with time management. I made two bingos but my opponent scored heavily with his X and Z and I held only a slender lead. I was soon behind when he later found a bingo. In a dramatic finish I spotted a place for my N with just three seconds remaining to eke out a three-point win, 413 to 410. That’s my closest game to date.
My parents’ train is due to arrive at 9:30 tonight. Dad emailed me to say that he was struggling with a bad headache after a very good run of relative freedom from them.
Update: At last! Simona did it! It didn’t look very likely at 3-6, 0-2, but she employed more variety and was more aggressive, while Stephens tired ever so slightly. What an absolute beast Simona is defensively though. Leading 3-0 in the final set but with Stephens holding a point to keep her in with a sniff, Simona was ludicruously out of position on her backhand side on each of the next three points, but was somehow able to win all of them. Quite remarkable. And a well-deserved first grand slam, finally, for the Romanian.
