Tennis Thread

[Gladeite 375]

Played with Blue Star 15 gauge as a kid.  Leoina 66 15L gauge by the reel while in college.  Prince synthetic 16 gauge as a poor out of college.  VS gut in my later competitive days and now 18 gauge Babolat poly, strung in the 40's lb range.

[dcbc 14,464]

Long but funny story I heard from my kid's middle school tennis team coach (he's the high school team coach) at a tournament this weekend.  A little backstory, there's a 7th grade girl from Ukraine who came here last summer with her mother as a result of the war.  Her sister plays on the Tyler Junior College team.  Anyway, she's a ridiculously good player and plays on the eighth grade team.  She's also funny, gets along well with everyone on the team, and speaks very good English. 

 

Anyway, when she first started playing in school tournaments, she'd come up to the coach afterward and, in her thick accent, emphatically ask, "Why they suck?!?  Why they no try?!?"  He had to explain to her that she needed to not say that they "sucked" and that they just hadn't been playing since birth like she had. 

 

It's really fun to watch her play.  She was hitting with my son a few months ago and hit an absolute rocket forehand winner against him with a memorable, satisfied grin on her face.  She's really smart and I think she is trying to figure out a way to skip 8th grade so she can play high school tennis with her friends next year.   

Edited March 7, 2023 by dcbc

[dcbc 14,464]

Reviving the thead.  DCBC the younger (14) son braved the heat for a tournament on a mostly cloudy day and sets to 4.  Squeaked out his first match on a tie-breaker by 2.  He hates matches to 4 because he needs time to wake up, but oh well.  Second match was against a girl with a solid first serve and super consistent overall.  He ended up in another tie breaker (he has a tie-breaker win streak going back to last fall that we now have talked about against better judgment of the jinx variety).  Anyway, during his first match, some friends of ours (parents of another player who's one of his buddies) were watching him and we all noticed the same thing---he was hitting good shots, but they were straight back to the other player.  During the break, I had a little conversation with him about how he could exert way less energy overall if he just stopped hitting it directly to his opponent.  By the second match tie-breaker, I think he bought in.

 

 

Edited July 11, 2023 by dcbc