Big Doubles Win!

I am so excited.  Last night, Joan and I played #1 doubles on our 3.0 team against the #1 team.  One of the women we played, Marva, is someone we've played many times before, usually with the same partner, and we've lost.  Sometimes we manage to win a set, but we always lost the match tie-breaker.

Last night we won!!!  Everything really came together for it to be our night.  First, Marva was not playing at the top of her game.  She usually has a killer first serve, but she really wasn't hitting that.  Similarly, her forehand groundstrokes are usually really strong, but she was missing those.  Second, she was not playing with her usual partner.  Her usual partner excels at taking balls out of the air, making lobbing a challenge.  Her partner last night was no slouch (and I found out today that this was her first defeat in this league), but had a much softer serve and could not take balls out of the air with much success.  She let all the lobs hit the ground.

On our parts, Joan and I both played really well.  The strength that Marva still had going last night was her excellent poaching, so we realize right away that we had to keep the ball away from her so she couldn't do that.  We hit tons of lobs and some angles, making her partner really work.  My lobs were really on - I hit the baseline with them so many times!

The first set was neck-and-neck until we got to 6-6.  In the set tie-breaker, we were still staying pretty even until we got to 6-6, then we won the last two points to take the set.  In the second set, we used the same strategy, but we were expecting Marva and partner to adjust.  They just didn't.  We made even fewer errors, and ended up winning the second set 6-2.  What an awesome feeling!

This is the 7th time I've played Marva in doubles since the beginning of 2013, and I've lost every time until now.  After the match, Marva even said, "Well, you finally beat me."  She was very gracious about it.  She can afford to be - her team is already locked into first place in the league and will advance to play-offs.

This morning, I did P90X2 Plyocide, without the foam rolling or neuro-integrated stretching.  This is definitely a good workout for me - I know the jumping has helped with my tennis, and it should help running, too.  It's been good to get back to it after a bit of a break.  I burned about 195 calories.