Had a much better day on the court today against Z. Took him 6-3 and then maybe 3-2 in a blitzkrieg round of speed tennis we played at the end when we discovered we had 20 minutes left after the first set. This is after a run of bad play. He took me 6-2, 2-1 earlier in the week, and Patrick had done something similar to me the week before.
Before Z went away to take kids to college, things had been going well. I was on a good run, winning pretty consistently, vexing him, but then I had descended into the bad patch and the voices started chattering in my head, as they do sometimes, telling me I'm not good enough to win consistently. Today I shut them up and focused on keeping the ball in play and giving him opportunities to beat himself, instead of trying to beat him. So I won. It is, frankly, not as much fun as going for winners more often, but it feels good to win and to have effectively exercised self-control.
Speed tennis is awesome. We get lots of exercise and, oddly, in some ways I hit the ball more consistently because I know that I have the excuse of it being speed tennis if I fuck up. So I am looser.
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