I just noticed I never wrote about my tennis playing this summer. I did write about the clinic I take every year, but usually that’s all I do and everything fizzles out soon afterward. This year I finally took some initiative and signed up for the partner program at Tennis Northeast. You pay $20, and they give you access to a list of other people who have also paid $20 for the privilege of being listed. Then you email whomever you want to set up a match.
From this partner program, I’ve met more people than I have time to play with. I have a weekly match set up with another Tufts grad student, and I sporadically play with other people from Tennis Northeast. I’ve been averaging 2-3 3-set matches every week since mid-July.
At first, I was playing really poorly. I lost something like 8 matches in a row, and I felt my ground strokes, and my forehand in particular, had left me. I took a lesson with a kid from the Somerville High tennis team, and he really helped me. For the next few matches, I focused on my ground stroke form and tried to ignore whether I was winning or losing. Since then I’ve been playing much better, and my forehand has become much more reliable.
I also reworked my serve a bit. At the beginning of the summer, I was hitting a flat serve for my first serve and a slice for my second. At some point, they started becoming unreliable, and upon chatting with a helpful opponent, I switched everything up. I started hitting a slice for my first serve and a kick for my second. The kick in particular is much more reliable than my slice second serve, and I’m able to hit it with decent pace because of the greater margin for error. My first serve is not as powerful, but it goes in more and I can place it better. Today, for example, I double-faulted only once in the 3 sets we played.
So, long story short, I’ve been playing a lot of tennis this summer, and my game has definitely improved. Tennis Northeast has been a great way to meet people to play with, despite having to pay for such a trivial service.
