Have arrived in Farmington, which is actually very pleasant. Somehow I had this image of dust and tumbleweeds. My hotel room looks out over the Animas river and the weather is fantastic. Dick and I both had singles games scheduled for 6:15pm, and we were both here on time. But it turned out that both of our opponents were coming from Albuquerque and were students at UNM. One of them had a class that got out at 2:30pm, so they were expected to be late (and were). I didn't end up playing until almost 8pm.
The thing about playing competitively in a tournament that is different than just playing casually at the YMCA after work is that it feels like there's more riding on the game, and pressure to at least try to win... so I tend to come out with full cannons and really flatten the ball when I ought to be playing more of a position game. So after running up a score of 8-0 against my opponent with most ace serves, I managed to totally blow out my elbow, which is what happens when I hit the ball too hard. I also really tired myself out and I was huffing it, which I shouldn't have been after just a third of one game. It was OK, though, because I managed to play a good slow lob game after that and my opponent was a little weak in the left corner against high arcing shots. Final scores for the match was 21-12, 21-10, so I won. Yay!
Now, coming into this tournament, I thought that maybe my curse of bad tournament outcomes was going to continue because they had, at the last minute, combined the B and C bracket, meaning that I would be mixed in with B players who would totally dominate me. But I got lucky in the first round and got a kid who was definitely a less experienced player than myself. Then, I looked at the bracket and discovered that my next opponent had a bye in the first round. This would have been a disadvantage for me if we had played tonight, as he would have been fresh... but our game isn't until tomorrow. Also, as I just found out, the guy is 80 and largely immobile. So... if I can manage to pull that one off, I'll be in the finals for B/C singles. But there I fully expect to find a B player who is 8'6" tall, weighs 300 pounds, and occasionally pops the ball on particularly vigorous shots.
Anyway, first up tomorrow is Dick and I's doubles match, which I think we can win. I didn't see our opponents play today but they looked rather... old. I just have to keep my adrenaline under control and not play a power game, seeing as I'm probably looking at a minimum of four matches (of 2-3 games each) tomorrow—I'll need to conserve my strength.
