My Birthday Battle with the Boys

Waking up on the morning of my birthday this year was especially difficult. After a night of heavy FaceTime conversations, my mind was active early on my birthday. Emotionally exhausted, I got out of bed and made sure to gather everything I would need for a long day of matches. After frantically packing up my bag, I hustled over to the Nett, or “Nice” bakery, on the way to the tennis club, where I gave my best effort in ordering breakfast. On the way to our away match, I was still waking up and trying to figure out how to compartmentalize emotionally to get ready for the competition.

My singles match was in the second wave of matches, where I would face a familiar opponent, someone whom I’d played last summer during a tournament in Hamburg. In our previous meeting, it was a relatively one-sided affair with my opponent winning all the big points to propel himself into the lead. It wasn’t until a rain delay halted our play when my opponent was two points from victory that I had a chance. The tournament moved the matches from outdoor clay to indoor carpet and to an entirely different surface and speed of play. Once we moved indoors, I came all the way back from 1-5 to 5-5 only to come up short 5-7. The experience we both had playing each other would certainly be a factor in the match, given that we would be playing on outdoor clay again.

Before the match, I called a legendary coach I worked with in London for advice in how to approach the dogfight. He gave me a tremendous game plan for playing a natural clay-court player, as someone like me, who grew up on hardcourts. While we were on the call, my coach Dieter’s girlfriend approached me with a cookie and a candle perked up in the middle of it, lit aflame. I thanked her in German and returned to my conversation with my coach Gordon, desperately jotting down his main points in the Notes app on my phone.

During the first set, I was down an early break a couple of times, only to break him back both times. After grueling long deuce games and two set points saved, we went to a tiebreak where the quality of the points jumped to the next level. Over an hour elapsed, and the entire side fence of the court was filled with around 50 spectators. I saved another set point at 5-6 in the tiebreak with an incredible rally of at least 25 shots. Following a prolonged water break, the subsequent point lasted only four shots as my opponent's first ball after his serve took a bad bounce into my body, which I fought off, only to have my opponent crunch the next shot for a winner. Then he served a big first serve and I lost the point after scrambling for a shot or two.

A close second set early on resulted in a few breaks of serve back and forth as the balls continued to wear out. I had a few breakpoints to convert the fourth consecutive break of serve, only to come up empty-handed and down 2-5. The very first point of the next game, I was running to a dropshot, and as I began to slide into the shot, my foot plunged an inch deep into the clay as I flew over the handlebars onto my wrist, into a shoulder-roll. I did my best to shake off the fall, wiping some clay off my arms and legs in preparation for the next point. It was at this point that I realized some pain in my wrist, moving it around and bouncing the ball to test its stability. Nothing torn or broken, so I continued to play with a good serve and backhand, only to be set up with a forehand swing-volley I hit to the fence. The pain wasn’t agonizing, but my body wouldn’t let my wrist release into the shot. My opponent knew he just needed to put the ball in the court to my forehand, to which I responded with a couple of solid forehands before coming into the net, only to make the same mistake on match point.

The handshake was cordial, and my Garstedt supporters consoled me afterward. I was distraught to not have closed out the first set and to let my service games slip away in the second set. However, I was tremendously proud of my effort and mentality during the match. I played a mature match, where it would’ve been very easy for many things to bother me, given my opponent taking ages between points, on changeovers, watching other courts, and cheering them on instead of keeping up our pace of play. None of it fazed me as I was entirely locked in on executing the game plan I had discussed with Gordon before. The natural disappointment lingered from the match during our brief lunch break between singles and doubles, despite sentiments of satisfaction for my effort and execution, given my lack of practice and experience on clay this year.

Our team’s coach chose to play me in the second doubles with the worst guy on the team not making life easy for me. We kept it close and gave ourselves chances to win the first set, ultimately losing 7-6 6-4. We quickly showered and ate some quick food at the tennis club before going back to our club, where we had a few more beers to celebrate my birthday with the other players from the club who played in other club matches around Hamburg. A quick sleep and I was off to Portugal for ITF $25k doubles event with a partner I’d never met.