Safe As Milk

May 7th is a day that holds a couple of key memories for me, sports-wise.

Bartolo Colon’s only career home run cemented his status as a folk hero for the New York Mets and for me as a fully-portioned gentleman athlete. I still get some goosebumps when I watch it.

May 7th was also the date for the one of the greatest comebacks in the history of sport. Liverpool erased a 0-3 deficit in the 2nd leg of the Champions League semi-final to win over Leo Messi’s Barcelona, punctuated by Divock Origi scoring on Trent Alexander-Arnold’s corner taken quickly.

I still watch this a couple of times a year. It gets me every time.

I’ve been catching an earlier game on Thursdays, instead of playing in the standard 8pm start. It generally gets me home earlier, unless I stick around to watch the 8 o’clock guys play (and then meet them for a beers afterward)

I need to figure out how to translate my indie service game to outside. I was smashing the ball again, and I can’t seem to do the same outdoors.

We lost, which was kind of a bummer, but one of the other players was a 3.5, so I’m not taking it too hard. I fell into some old, dumb habits. I’d like to play a match where most (but certainly not all) of my shots are the “smart” play.

I had some plans fall through so I was a late add into a game with some 3.5 players looking to tune up for our club’s member/guest tournament in a few weeks.

My partner was another 3.0 who I only just met but we had complimentary games so we clobbered our opponents, 6-2, 6-4, and the we played a 10-point set to use the rest of our time and we beat them 10-5.

We played inside and my serve was hot. I need to find a way to transfer my inside serving to outside play. I’d be a real tennis player if I could get that going.

Broke the seal on the spring USTA season with a reasonably comfortable win, 6-2, 6-3, playing line 2 doubles. I’ve learned a lot about my doubles game over the last couple of years.

I’m good at the net but slow as hell, so if I can partner with someone who has decent ground strokes and can run, I trend toward success. That was the recipe this weekend.

Playing outside this week was also a huge help. There’s a big adjustment from the brightly-lit and windless indoor courts.

Easter Sunday morning was a great time for tennis. Some inside doubles with a couple of the guys.

Service game was streaky, like always. Ground strokes are still a mess from the re-tape of my racquet handle. I’ll try to fix that before I play again this week.