5 posts tagged “tennis”
email from my brother tate:
Thanks man!!! Ya, sorry to hear about your back. Hopefully you can recover quickly and get back out on the courts. No worries about the shoes. They are actually an early round test pair hence the all white stealth coloring. The next round is much better so I will make sure to get you a pair. I’m off to Europe on Saturday for a couple of weeks ending in Paris to catch a couple of first round matches at the french open. Rough job, but someone’s got to do it. Wish you could check out a slam someday. Pretty amazing to see them in person. Maybe wimbledon or US open.....
Take it easy and thanks for thinking of me.
All expenses paid by Nike plus they pay him a pretty nice salary!!!! Where did I go wrong.
This is my home court, where I take my clinic every Saturday, where I share my lesson with Holly every week and where I play the majority of my tennis. I have never been away from it for more than two weeks in a row, and that was always due to rain or to having to pick up someone at SFO flying in from Mexico. Now that I've already been off the courts for two weeks and am looking at three or four more at least, it is difficult. Especially when the weather is beautiful like this. I miss you beautiful blue tennis court! The good news is that my back is feeling tons better, the physical therapy is really helping, and dad returned from a weekend in Portland with a new pair of Nike tennis shoes (still in testing phasse) for me. So when I hit the courts sometime in mid June, I will be ready to go!
I don't know if you know, but I am obsessed with my Saturday morning tennis clinic, followed by my shared lesson. Four the last four years, the same group of about 5-6 of us take a 7:30am clinic at the Hopkins courts in north berkeley. it's fun and competitve and i really like everyone who goes, as well as our coach. heck, it's about the only social activity outside of work that occurs in my life. i'm pretty obsessed with it, i look forward to it all week and the excitement builds all day on friday. this time of year is very difficult for me, because there is always the possibility of getting rained out, and missing class is a very depressing thing for me. but there is an even worse thing than getting rained out: the possibility of getting rained out. if it is pouring rain all day friday, and rain is forecast all night friday and into saturday, i can resign myself to the fact that the clinic will be rained out, and at least look forward to the prospect of sleeping in, rather than have my alarm clock go off at 6:30am on a saturday morning. but if there is a chance of rain for friday night or saturday morning, i spend all day friday stressing about it, looking up at the sky, checking the weather updates. i wake up during the night, listening intently for wicked raindrops. the alarm goes off saturday morning and i put my glasses on and go to the front window to check the street for wetness. there is nothing worse than waking up saturday morning hoping to head up to the clinic only to see the streets too wet to play.
i monitor the weather forecast all week, and this week has looked good for a go tomorrow morning. all week it has just been predicted to be cloudy/foggy friday into saturday, but this morning, they had to add HEAVY DRIZZLE to the forecast. that makes the anxiety set in for me. if the drizzle is heavy enough, the courts will be too wet. and we didn't have a clinic last week because the coach was out of town. i really can't go two weeks in a row. so i did something that i normally wouldn't do, i emailed the weatherman at channel 2, steve paulsen, to ask about the chances for a 7:30am tennis class were and he wrote this back to me within 30 minutes:
Brad,
As a 3.5/4.0 tennis player myself, I commiserate with your hope of no drizzle. Berkeley is definitely in the window for some drizzle tomorrow morning. Let's say, at worst, you'll be delayed, but I still say you'll be able to eventually play. Here's the officeial prognostication and I agree with it:
OF MORE SIGNIFICANCE FOR OUR AREA WILL BE A DEEPINGING OF THE MARINE LAYER AND STRENGTHENING OF ONSHORE FLOW AS THE TROUGH APPROACHES LATE TODAY AND TONIGHT. THE RESULT WILL BE A ROBUST INLAND INFLUX OF LOW CLOUDS TONIGH...LESS DENSE FOG AND DRIZZLE NEAR THE OCEAN .
So you might get lucky and only have thick fog! I think you'll be okay. Heck, I'm at 9 AM so I don't want any drizzle either! Thanks for the note,
sp
I think that is most impressive, and even though Sal Castaneda is an annoying moron, I will continue to faithfully watch the channel 2 news every morning.
I basically spent my entire weekend playing tennis. Which cuts both ways. I love playing tennis, so that aspect of it was obviously great. However, it seems my weekend just disappeared because I did absolutely nothing else. The weather was amazing, and after a slow start on Saturday, by yesterday afternoon I was playing at the top of my game. After the World Team Tennis finished up out at SF State, and despite the fact that I SWORE to myself I would go home immediately after WTT and put in some more pavers in the vegetable garden, much to my delight my secret love Mike asked me if I wanted to play a set. I love playing against Mike - our games match up really well and he really forces me to think each point out and brings out my best hitting. It was one of the best sets I've ever played, even though mike won it in a tiebreak (7-5). I got home at about 3:45 with plans to work on the vegetable garden until six, but instead I made a jerk sauce and got some chicken marinating in it then laid down for a nap on the back porch, in the warm sun, with tito sleeping right next to me. then I woke up, watched the end of the basketball and assembled my jamaican jerk chicken skewers with alternating chickent, pineaepple cubes, and red bell pepper pieces. I'm generally not a huge fan of fruit for dinner, but these skewers, I have to say, were one of the better things I've cooked in a while. But now it's monday and another long week has begun.
And speaking of tennis, can someone please get Rafael Nadal out of those ridiculous pirate pants? I'm so sick of those. At the very least, can someone get him to quit picking his underwear out of his ass between every point? I know that the pros have rituals they do before every point (hewitt adjusts his shirt, roddick pulls on the brim of his cap), but a ritual deep ass pick before every point is a bit much. I'm just saying.
this is the time of year i am in tennis heaven. there is tennis on tv every weekend and most weeknights leading up to the US Open, when there is tennis on all day and most of the night every day for two weeks! and this year, i am taking the two weeks of the us open off for vacation, so i will be watching a lot of tennis.
also, it's the time of year for my favorite gltf tournaments, the holloran and the geezer (over 35). the holloran is this weekend at SF State, i'm playing in the 3.5 division. i've been playing incredibly well lately, all the lessons and clinics and matches are really paying off. my excellent new nike tennis shoes that i am testing a prototype of (and designed by my little bro tate) are excellent shoes! i swear they have totally upped my court movement to another level and they are incredibly comfortable. last saturday i was playing the highest level of tennis i have ever played. it felt really good. hopefully i can keep it up for the tournament on saturday, my first match is against the #4 seed, marty tilzer. i have a history of losing in the first round of every tournament, but at this years USGO, i actually made it to the second round, so that is another positive sign.
i've gotta run now, picking up the ingredients for scampi over cous cous for dinner, and the tennis from cincinatti starts tonight at 7pm.
