Nostalgia in Portugal
After an exhausting last few days of travel and matches, I woke up this morning in Portugal to the smell of pine straw and fresh air. The cool morning breeze and piercing sunshine woke me up to the sound of dove calls: tranquility. As I walked to breakfast, I saw the hotel for the first time in the daylight and it was beautiful. A proper English breakfast with fried eggs, sausage, beans, mushrooms, and tomatoes lined the buffet with a few French and Portuguese additions. I thoroughly enjoyed the breakfast and fresh fruit as I had only eaten a tuna sandwich and hard-boiled eggs for dinner the night prior after four continuous hours on court during my club match.
Leaving the hotel, we loaded our tennis bags onto the
shuttle with all the other tennis players heading on the last morning shuttle
to the club. I couldn’t help but feel like we were all going to summer camp for
the day. It reminded me of the days when I would go to Veneta, OR on the bus in
the summer for an outdoor day camp. I noticed a few languages other than
English spoken on the bus, like Russian, Polish, and Spanish. We drove through
rolling hills of vineyards and villas between the hotel and the tennis club, adding
to my reminiscing of tennis camps in Ojai, CA in the early summer. As the
nostalgia subsided, I began my preparation for my match against my friend Mesa,
in the first round of the tournament.
Hours went by as we waited at the club for our (not before
1:30 PM) match to begin at 4:00 PM in the afternoon. We grabbed lunch together,
practiced separately, and still our court was finishing up matches. Fortunately,
I was able to get a post-meditation powernap in the gym to mentally prepare for
battle. My Body was physically tired from the day before, so a quick nap
allowed myself to reset and get my energy back before it was go-time. By the
time we started, half of the courts had finished their matches and there were
very few people in the facility.
Just as we began our match, the wind picked up, dramatically
affecting our play. It began increasingly difficult to play any resemblance of
my typical tennis and I realized when I was broken for a second time in the
first set, that it would become a dog fight. Different than my match last Friday,
I vowed to go-down swinging and to make my opponent beat me. I hated the
feeling of burnout that I experienced last week and made it a point to respond
to those sentiments with more determination than ever. Internally it felt easier
to fold than to fight, but I know better than that. So, as our match continued,
I dug my teeth in and competed hard. I didn’t want to lose to my friend and
part-time coach, but I also wanted to prove to myself that I can respond to a
few disheartening losses in a row. I fought back through the tough conditions
in the second set and won, forcing a third and deciding set. With roars of
triumph, complaining about the conditions, and a bunch of other nonsense I was
spewing, I leveled the match. Early in the third set, we both knew how
paramount it was to get an early lead, as we had spoken about it at practice
earlier in the week!
Unfortunately today, I was on the wrong end of the equation…
a few unlucky gusts of wind on my service game forced me down a break and I
struggled to get my feet behind all my shots. Errors seeped into my game, and I
continued to go down as opportunities were erased by my opponent’s scrapy and consistent
shot-making. Unfortunately, I lost the battle, but I ended the match feeling
good about my competitiveness. Although I must’ve looked like an idiot to
anyone watching in-person or online, throwing my racket, swearing, screaming COME-ON,
it was kind of the release I needed to kickstart my week of matches here in
Portugal. Let’s get it, onto the next one.
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