Women's Open

In preparation for my tournament next week (first in about 6 months) I signed myself up for a Women's Open this weekend just to make sure I knew how to play and score a match. Now, it definitely wasn't a big tournament (only 4 entries) but hey, a match is a match right? The tournament site, was held in beautiful Palm Beach Gardens at the Ballen Isles Country Club. (Fun fact alert: Venus and Serena live there in one of the million developments there.) But the site was wicked nice. It has about 20 clay courts and some hard courts, a large club house, swimming pool, and golf courses spread throughout the development. So you get the point, it's nice. Anyway, back to tennis, in my first match I played a girl from the Bahamas. I've never seen or heard of her so I didn't really know what to expect. We both checked in at the tournament desk and the tournament director runs through the list of saying we play 2 out of 3 sets, tiebreakers at 6-6 the usual. Then I hear we'll be playing a Coman tiebreaker. I was like what? I have no idea what that is! (I found this hilarious because I was joking around with friends a few weeks back saying that I hope the rules and scoring hasn't changed since my 6 month absence. Well, apparently it has!) I don't know if it's new or I've just never had to play it, but it's just like a normal tiebreaker except you change ends after the first point and after every 4 points, which I have to admit is a bit lame having to change sides so often. But oh well I didn't have to play a tiebreak anyway. I won my match 6-2 6-0. I wasn't that nervous during the match but I could tell after not playing for so long my feel on the ball was off. (My drop shots were like lobs landing at the service line, and my hands at the net were like that of a brick layer's hands, not soft haha.) But as the match went on things seemed to settle down and I played pretty well for my first match in months. My next match was ok I guess. I won 6-0 6-0. The girl I played wasn't very good, so I guess you could say I practiced my serving and returning during the match. But I finally played some matches and that's all that matters. I can't wait for next week when I play a 10k in Amelia Island and another the week after in Virginia. Those matches will be much more difficult but I'm looking forward to playing again. For now it's just baby steps and like my dad says it's all practice until I get to the US Open. Haha. I'll be sure to write during Amelia Island, so adios until then.