Tennis

After getting back from work tonight I decided to brave the harsh winter weather and attend a club session. I had a hit with J last Tuesday, and the standard wasn’t too bad considering neither of us had played for nearly one-third of a year. Tonight, however, I was terrible.

During the knock up everything seemed to be going well, but as soon as the set got under way I couldn’t hit a single decent shot. Every attempt at closing out the point would cause the ball ricochet from the frame of my racquet and send some horrible reverberation up my arm, which would send the ball either into either the bottom of the net or the back fence. The most frustrating thing (as the other tennis players amongst us know) is the fact your mind knows the shot you want to play, but your body just refuses to co-operate. Reactions are just that split-second too slow and consistency is non-existent.

I suppose it could have been worse, though. I only lost the set 6-4 against a fairly strong pair, but felt I let my partner down at every conceivable opportunity. What made it worse, was my partner was a new member, and he now probably thinks I’m just a crappy player that should be sitting somewhere in the off-peak membership ranks. I need to set him straight later in the year, but not today, so I just went straight home and sulked.

I have arranged to have a hit with J and Loz on Saturday morning which I’m really looking forward to. Hopefully we can keep it serious for long enough to get some decent practice in, which I think will happen as we all have real intentions of hitting good form before the season begins this year. It’s just so hard to get motivated to go out and brave the elements when the weather is like this.

Botten came round last night to watch the United v Derby match and kindly brought along an eight-pack of Grolsch (which we nearly managed to finish by the end of the 90 minutes). He also mentioned an interesting mug-punt he is thinking of taking. This coming year, with nobody really having a Premier League season of a life-time, and nobody really having an opportunity to shine in athletics, Andy Murray could be in with a shout of winning sports personality of the year should he win a Grand Slam. So saying, I have no idea what the odds are on this, but at this stage it could be worth a fiver.

In two weeks today J and I will be in Canada, ‘enjoying’ temperatures of around -20 degrees. Before this summer, I had never experienced heat like Death Valley (125 degrees), and I have never experienced anything anywhere near as cold as Canada is set to be in February. I have always wondered, if given the choice, whether I would prefer to deal with extreme heat versus extreme cold. I will know the answer to this question in a little over two weeks time.