The Doubles Conundrum

It was Pro To Go, aka Chris Phelan who laid down the truth for me.

“For guys our age, doubles is our future.”

Now, PTG might be 50 but he sure as hell isn’t 65, like I am. My natural response was, “Yeah, fuck you, buddy.”

Thing is, I really like PTG. He spoke a good deal of truth to me about my tennis game. I’m not sure when, but I know I will make it back to visit him next time and I’m in the desert.

But, what he said implied I was rapidly getting too old to play singles. That’s what generated my somewhat tongue-in-cheek FU.

Right or wrong, I still believe I can play singles. I know there are guys at my club who are 65 or older who persist in playing singles. But, when the opportunity to join a Tuesday mixed-doubles group was presented, I jumped at it. The experience would be good for my game.

It’s fun and unconventionally challenging. The other guy doesn’t hit the ball real hard either on his serve or with his ground strokes. I can hit pretty hard on both fronts and occasionally do. But hitting consistently hard is a horrible idea when it comes to mixed. Male players have to constantly judge just how hard they want to hit a given shot while visually scanning the other side of the next.

If a female player accidentally (or purposefully) hits an opponent with the ball, she might offer a smiling apology, but she probably won’t mean it. If a male player accidentally grenades a female he will instantly apologize and swear to all manner of excuses.

I’m so sorry — I totally missed that. It was supposed to be between the two of you! My Bad. Won’t happen again. I’ll be more careful. I promise.

For the record, I am completely OK with this double standard. Still, it is an ongoing challenge to judge exactly how hard to hit the ball and at whom when playing mixed doubles.

Last weekend, the females of our group played in a doubles tournament down in Orange County. When I asked how the tournament was, they turned sad. Turns out they lost in a tiebreak. In my mind, this was a big success. Forcing a tiebreak means they were competitive throughout the match. Whether or not they came out on top at the end of the 7-point tiebreaker was far less meaningful in my mind.

We sometimes finish our hour and a half session with a few games of the men versus women. But, most of our time is spent playing mixed. But, since the women had worked so hard prepping for their tournament, they decided they wanted to play against the men from the get-go. And this was fine by me. It wasn’t like I expected the men to win or that I expected the women to win. It was enough to be confident things were unlikely to end with another heartbreaking tiebreak.

1-0 Men

2-1 Men

2-2 Men

4-3 Men

In between games my guy comes up to me and says, “I’m not hitting my returns hard enough.” I nodded and told him it could be a tricky balance. But, I thought it was Ok for him to hit with a bit more pace. As I said before, he is not a hard hitter.

5-5

6-5 Men

Then my guy lost his serve, by overhitting as you might have guessed.

Tiebreak.

During the tiebreak, I was hoping the women would find a way to pull it out while trying not to hit obviously stupid shots. The tiebreak sea-sawed back and forth, just like the rest of the set but it ended 7-5 men. Ouch. My guy and I tapped rackets in muted appreciation for our play. For the women it was an obvious reminder of the USTA tiebreaker they lost over the weekend. I hoped they could find a way to be happy for the way they played if not the outcome they had hoped for. Tt