Due to unavailability of our de facto chauffeur yesterday ( 赶场 .. did I tell you that all my players are super hot and in demand??), so I offered to drive. But my teammates politely told me no because, well, my car isn’t posh enough for them.
Sight.
One of the couples even bought a mini van – their kids are all grew, mind you. Guess my little diggy car isn’t really up to their standard.
So that’s an embarrassment #1.
The embarrassment 2: my ancient tennis racket. After I broken this one in the autumn, they breathed a relief thinking finally I’ll buy a new one. Ha .. I have two, inherited from my kids. To appease them, I forced Pumpkin let me use hers. High five, good Mom.
(The embarrassment 3 .. had been fixed.)
The embarrassment 4 .. ok, I shall stop here. The list is long.
Having just lost badly last Tuesday with only 3 more matches to go in the regular season, we were under pressure heading into our 8th match on Friday night. I don’t really recall anyone on the team, except: they’re the #1 team at the moment in our division with 59 points; I vaguely remembered they have a giant man player who’s really really good. And .. I was told that they were the team who filed complaint against us that resulting four bump ups last season. (The complaint did not disclose the identity of the team/individual instead the coordinator filed.)
Kai and I played the second string on Court 9. The guy aced me on his second serve to start the game. Then Kai lost his serve. Within a few minutes, we were down to 0-2.
2-2
..
5-3
5-6
Then we found ourselves down 0:2 in the tie break .. finally we won the first set tie break. It was a very exciting set. We both had our chances and misfortunes. I had two bad line call on his serve (too fast for my aging eyes!!) and Kai corrected me. Glad he did. (.. actually the second one wasn’t an out call but my grunt!!)
We started the second set down 0-2, again. Errrrrrrr… Then the guy came over to our side questioning his first serve, which was clearly out. He pointed to a mark that’s closer to the net when his ball landed actually closer to the service line. I even gone as far to ask the girl, who replied that she didn’t see it. In any case, the match was well played. And he never once hit hard at me, which I appreciated very much.
During the second set, their guy on Court 8 had the cramps and my girl was on the floor giving him medical treatment. Glad she did. Good sportsmanship should always come first.
Court 10 was the last one to finish. They were down 1:4 in the third set tie break but came back to win at 10:8. Lum has cold so she wasn’t moving well. She said she was extremely tired during the second set.
..
About our 7th match on Jan 14.
This email started on a total different subject but then my teammate replied with the following ..
.. .. Opponents were kind of tricky and did a lot of talking so after they won the first set, they kept talking so we ended up in second set at 5/5. At one point I had to say let’s play.
..
“Oh no ..” As I was reading it because I had exact experience when I played them on Nov 7, the first match of the season. The girl was teamed with a different partner. After they won the first set, they began talking excessively on their own serve and on ours when they would turn their backs to the net. We just had to wait. At one time, I called out.. “please let us play ..” The girl held up her hand, “just a second.”
Tennis is really being played in good faith. I really don’t appreciate such conduct.
I said nothing after the match, because I was new to the timed match format and we finished just as time was up. I probably should have.
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