Master's champion

Was out in Regina this weekend playing racquetball. I played singles, and lost in the semi-finals of A, and I played 35+ doubles with Dave - although they had Bill written down on the draw by mistake - leading to "Bill" jokes all weekend long.

We won our first two matches in a four team round robin draw. One win was in a tie-breaker, and the other was in two straight games.

In our third and final game today, we start a bit slow, and the other guys are able to win the first game: 15-12, I think. In game two, I realize that the guy on my side is just killing us with his forehand shots when I try to kill the ball up the middle. So, I try keeping it to his backhand, hitting the ball down the left side wall. This works well, and we win game two going away, 15-7?.

In the tie-breaker, it's close early on, but then we put together a streak, and take a 8-2 lead. But after losing serve at 8-2, we never served again. They came back and won 11-8! Ugh!

Making it worse for me was that all their serves were to me. They got to 10-8 with the guy on my side serving lobs to my backhand, and somehow we just couldn't get a point for love nor money. Then after winning a rally to get them half down, the second guy comes in and also lobs to me. I hit an ok shot down the line, but it comes into the middle a bit and the guy serving kills it to win the game and match. Sigh.

I was really disappointed and felt I let Dave down. To have that large a lead and not win was deflating. The final record in our division had three teams at 2-1, including us, and one at 0-3. I wasn't concerned about where we finished after that loss.

So I go and have a shower, and sit in the great whirlpool that club has. Really enjoyable. Then I go to their little bar and try to order some food. The person working says they are short of food but someone's gone to get groceries. So, I'm not sure whether to order or wait or what Bob, the guy I drove out with, wants to do.

Now twice disappointed - by our loss and by the lack of food at the club - I figure I'll go look at the final doubles standings to see where we finished with the thought that we'll be 2nd or 3rd.

BUT NO! We finished first! Ha!

I had a good laugh at that.