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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.

The two sports I do most are running and tennis. Tennis is a holdover from my teen years, when I took a lot of tennis lessons from ages 13-18. I pretty much stopped playing in college, then picked it up again a few years ago. I really enjoy it, even moreso than running, but it’s an expensive hobby and it’s hard to find places to play and people to play with. But I do love it.

I’ve been taking a tennis class at Harvard for the past few weeks, and I’m having a great time. Each time I improve a bit, which I guess comes with just starting to play again. Last night, my serve was just killer. I haven’t really tried to serve big so far this year, but last night we were practicing our serves, and I decided to go for it. To my surprise, a lot of them were going in. When we started playing matches, I kept going with a big, flat first serve and a slice for my second serve. My results were mixed; there were some games that we lost because of double faults, but there were other games where I didn’t have to hit ground strokes at all because my serve was so overpowering. I also learned that a big slice serve can be as effective as a big flat serve, because you can place it better.

I’d really like to join a competitive league or a ladder or something so I can play matches. I know there is an MIT tennis ladder, and there is also a for-pay league called Tennis Northeast. One of these days I will get up the initiative to actually sign up for one of these.

I’m sitting in the last talk from this year’s ASPLOS. There’s an open network here for conference-goers to use. Maybe 1/8 of the people in this room are currently typing away on their laptops. I’m sure this has been done, but I’d like to set up a packet sniffer and just capture data on what other people are doing. I bet you could get all kinds of secret data (passwords, etc.) from people using non-secure communications methods, even at a conference where everyone should know better.

Let me give an example. On my laptop, I use Thunderbird to check both my Tufts and Comcast emails. Comcast allows you to check your email with a plaintext username and password, or you can use SSL to encrypt it. People *should* use SSL, but they probably don’t. When I checked after checking my email the first time, I was broadcasting my username and password in plaintext. Very bad. And I use that password elsewhere. I fixed it, but anyone within range of my laptop’s radio could have logged that info.

I bet other people here are also leaking more info than they realize. Cookies, for example. Many websites have automatic login based on cookies, and the cookies are sent in plaintext. I could capture those cookies and use them to impersonate others.

Lots of interesting security problems here. Would be interesting to present the findings at the same conference where you gathered the data.

Andre Agassi played his final match today, losing to qualifier Benjamin Becker, 7-5, 6-7, 6-4, 7-5. Andre was having a lot of trouble moving because of his back injury, yet he was somehow able to stay in the match. He was in obvious pain out there, but he kept fighting.

With tears in his eyes, he addressed the audience after the final point: “The scoreboard said I lost today, but what the scoreboard doesn’t say is what it is I have found. And over the last 21 years, I have found loyalty. You have pulled for me on the court and also in life. I’ve found inspiration. You have willed me to succeed, sometimes even in my lowest moments. And I’ve found generosity. You have given me your shoulders to stand on to reach for my dreams, dreams I could have never reached without you.

“Over the last 21 years, I have found you and I will take you and the memory of you with me for the rest of my life. Thank you.”

Watching Andre deliver this speech, choking back tears, while the audience stood and cheered… it was one of the most moving things I’ve ever seen. Andre is my tennis hero, and I’m sad to see him go. But I’m also happy for him, that he went out fighting, that he can now spend time with his wife and children, that he can throw himself into his charitable foundation.

Thank you, Andre. We’ll miss you.

Having watched Agassi play this week, I’ve got an itch to play some tennis. The Tufts courts were closed all month, which kept me from playing regularly, but they reopened today, so hopefully I can get some games in next week.

Before those matches at Harvard, I had been playing twice a week at Tufts with people in my department. Those were a lot of fun. I’ve also played several times with Cath’s friends from her program, which is also fun. Then at the matches at Harvard, I met a guy is about my level and lives in Cambridge (the guy who wanted to play me on the last day). I’ve been playing with him on weekend mornings at MIT, and he’s great to play against because he’s just slightly better than me. Not so much better that it’s no fun for either of us, but enough that he challenges me to play better. The MIT courts are crowded, and you really have to get there before 9 am to get a court, so I’m hoping we can start playing at Tufts and not have to worry so much about getting a court.

For the winter, I’m considering joining an indoor tennis club in either Winchester or Woburn. I was talking to a woman at the Harvard thing (She was very good, much better than me; we played on the last day and she beat me 6-2.), and she said these clubs have winter leagues and are not that expensive to join. I’d love to do that and play through the winter. I’m planning to check them out this weekend. Will let you know how that goes.

It’s been a big day in the sports world, and I’ll start with the Agassi-Baghdatis match last night. Baghdatis is ranked 6th in the world and is seeded 8th for the tournament, so he’s no pushover. He made it to the Australian Open final this year, where he took a set from Federer, and to the semifnals at Wimbledon, where he lost to Nadal.

For the first two sets, Agassi had everything under control. He had a break in each set and won them 6-4, 6-4. He looked confident and was playing well. But Baghdatis came back in the 3rd set and won that 6-3. 4th set, Agassi went up 4-0 with two breaks, but somehow Baghdatis fought back, winning the set 7-5. In the 5th set, Agassi looked bad and Baghdatis had all the momentum. Agassi served first and lost his service game, but then he immediately broke Baghdatis back to get them back on serve. Then Baghdatis started having cramps in his legs. He had to take an injury timeout and get treatment, yet he was still able to hold serve. With Agassi serving at 4-4, Baghdatis’s cramps returned, and he fell to the ground clutching his right leg. But he could not receive treatment because he had already taken his injury timeout. He got up and hopped to the baseline on one leg, trying to walk off the cramp. Incredibly, he was able to fight off break point after break point. The game went to eight deuces before Agassi finally won it. With the cramps, Baghdatis was finished, and Agassi broke him at 6-5 to win the match.

I watched the whole thing from 9 pm to 1 am last night, and I have to say it was one of the best matches I’ve ever seen. The crowd was fully behind Agassi, but you have to give Baghdatis a lot of respect for what he did out there. He rallied from 2 sets down, with the crowd against him, and very nearly won this match. He refused to give in and played incredibly well despite not being able to move. He played his heart out, and probably would have won had the leg cramps not floored him in that 5th set. Just an incredible match from this guy.

I’m happy to see Agassi win, and it looks like he’ll have an easier match in the 3rd round against unseeded Benjamin Becker (no relation to Boris). But Baghadatis played a great match and showed the heart of a champion.

Edit: Bill Simmons has a great take on why everyone needs to watch these last Agassi matches.

Because of my knee injury, I’ve been playing some tennis this summer. For some reason, tennis doesn’t aggravate the knee, which is pretty surprising. Anyhow, I played a lot of tennis as a kid, to the point where I was taking lessons and clinics and such, playing probably 3x a week for a few years. I got to be pretty decent, but I never did much match play. Mostly clinics and lessons.

Two years ago, I took a clinic at Harvard with Catherine. I really enjoyed it, and later that summer I did this match play thing they had set up. You just showed up, and they matched you with another person to play a set. Usually you would get to play 3 different opponents in one evening. It was a lot of fun, especially since I don’t have a lot of experience playing matches against strangers. I lost most of my matches, but I felt that I had played respectably.

A few weeks ago, I got an email from the tennis camp saying they had a tournament this week. For $15 you could play every evening Monday-Thursday. Same deal as before, where they set you up with an opponment, and you play a single set. 3 “matches” every night. I didn’t go Monday, but yesterday I decided to give it a try. I showed up and was matched against an older man, who was OK but frankly I thought I was better. He beat me 6-1, with me being extremely nervous and making lots of errors. My second match, I beat this guy about my age 6-2, with him being very inconsistent. I didn’t play particularly well, but I didn’t have to in this match. My final match that day, I played doubles and we lost 6-2. But that match I served pretty well, and I was feeling more confident.

Today I went back and was first matched against one of the guys I had played doubles against yesterday. I lost my first service game, again because of inconsistency, but after that I settled down, and I didn’t lose another service game all night. At 2-3 I broke him back, and at 5-4 I changed my strategy to go for bigger shots, and I won the set 6-4. My second match, I played a young guy who hadn’t played in a long time but who had clearly been very good. When I was hitting around with him, I had trouble staying in the rallies with him. So when I served first, I decided I was going to serve big since I didn’t think I could beat him by just hitting the ball back. Well, my serve was on tonight, and I won that first service game. It turned out that this guy was wildly inconsistent, and I ended up winning 6-0. More importantly, I was just killing my serve, and this set gave me a lot of confidence in my serve. The final match was a doubles game with me and this woman against the inconsistent guy I had just played and his friend. His friend was quite good, and our strategy was basically to keep it away from him. In this match, my serve was just nasty. I was hitting a big flat serve for my first serve, and a slower slice for my second. By the end, I was so confident in my serve that I was going for big slice serves, just trying to throw off the pace a little bit. My ground strokes and volleying were only OK in this game, but my partner was good and my serve was great, and we won 6-3. After the game, the better guy on the other team came up and asked to play me tomorrow. Regardless of the outcome, it’s flattering to hear that he wants to play me.

This was one of the best nights of tennis I’ve had in a long time. I don’t think I’ve ever served this well, and that confidence transfers over to the rest of your game. Every few years this happens: I start playing tennis again, I get really excited about it, and circumstances change and I stop playing. It’s hard to play in Boston in the winter, but maybe I can make it happen this year. We’ll see.