We both had a good sleep in the Walmart and I was off before Bernie. He was awake, but not in any state to get to the courts with me by 8am, so I left him some directions and head off. Stella had booked us an early court session for a hit and was already in the clubhouse when I got in, dressed head to toe in a complete tennis outfit, colour matching and all. She definitely looked the part. I still couldn’t figure out how old she was, maybe in her 60s trying to look like she’s in her 50s?
Out on court 8, we started hitting around and it was soon obvious that we were pretty evenly matched. We both have the shots but are both lacking in consistency. We went through the motions practicing, finishing with a few serves then we got into a match. Just after we started, Bernie showed up, sitting courtside to watch our game. He was just in time to see my first ace, right down the tee!! I won the first set 6-3, the highlight was when I was down in my server’s game in a deuce on the ad side and won three points in a row to win the game with two aces and an unreturnable serve. My form was coming back!
At the start of the second set, John and Chester were also spectating and John even managed to give me some subtle advice from behind the fence, which is highly illegal having coaching mid-match! The second set I won 6-2, which means I had my first tennis win in over 7 years! Stella and I were just getting into our rhythm, the points getting longer and less mistakes coming up, it was getting good! We carried on into another set, not wanting the fun to end, but it was short lived. Before we’d finished the first game, four oldies walked over with their jug of iced water, clearly making a bee line for our court. Our time was up.
Back at the clubhouse, we asked if there was another court available and no dice, so we sat outside on the patio and chatted a while. Stella is in real estate so she had a few appointments to see to the rest of the day and she ended up giving me the number of a mortgage broker, trying to convince me that I need to buy a property in Florida. Never miss an opportunity! Stella went off to start her workday and I had a shower at the club’s facilities.
I found Bernie and told him I was off to do some laundry at the coin laundry around the corner and offered to do his as well. It took him forever to dig out all the clothes that needed washing from his car, being delayed by talking to a man in the carpark and also because there is absolutely no organisation within that small MG. Eventually I made off with a van full of dirty clothes (many of them reeked of cigarette smoke). It cost me $4.50 to do a quadruple load in the one machine. In the mean time, I went to the nearby supermarket and was astounded to find a dozen eggs for 98c! Back at the Laundromat, I transferred everything to a huge dryer and continuously fed coins to it for at least half an hour before I gave up and decided it was dry enough. The few things that were still wet I hung up inside the van.
I got back to the courts around 12:30pm, just in time for Bernie’s 1pm match. I scoffed down some cold pizza for lunch, which was brilliant second time round and had to save some for Bernie’s lunch. I met up with John and we started watching the game on centre court, which was bloody good tennis. I think the age group was 55s and the man with a pony tail, the number one seed, was winning easily, but his opponent was not making it easy. John and I were ecstatic when Bernie and his number one seed opponent were put on the court next to centre court. It meant we could watch both matches from our vantage point.
Unfortunately Bernie’s match was very one-sided. The number one seed was a tall guy in very good shape and had beautiful form. He was confident in every shot and came into the net any opportunity he had. Bernie did his best to tactic his way out of it, but he didn’t have the serve to intimidate his opponent. He kept his spirits up the whole match regardless, despite the 6-0, 6-1 score. His time in the tournament was over.
John and I wandered over to Court 12 to watch Rich, a friend of Bernie’s I’d met at Payne park and he was having an easy win against Mike who had some knee problems and couldn’t move very well. Very nice guy though, they were both very chatty to us between games. Bernie came over and joined us and we all walked back to centre court to watch some more action.
On centre court was an 80s match and a short, stocky guy was one set up and it looked like it might go to a tiebreaker in the second. We all hoped for it and we got our wish. The stocky guy had four match points in the tiebreaker which he squandered and he eventually lost the set. The Canadian (his opponent) won the tiebreaker 15-13 and the second set. The stocky guy was devastated, he was sucking air big time and moving very slowly around the court and rightly so, he’d had so many opportunities to end the match in his favour! Brilliant tennis.
It was around this time that I decided I would be staying until the finals because if the calibre of tennis continued like this, I would be thoroughly entertained.
Having watched so much tennis, John and I were itching to go and have a hit, so we found a hard court nearby in one of the housing complexes and got into a coaching session. John is absolutely magic. With just a few tips, he was bringing my game right back. I was relishing the movement, really running around and having some good rallies with John. This was awesome fun! We carried on until about 5:30pm and sauntered back to the club. We found Bernie, got some drinks and I heated up some pasta for our dinner. We had a picnic on the patio with pasta, a salad for Bernie and some bread and butter to fill us up properly.
We hung out and talked until about 8:30pm, then it was time to think about camp. We made a plan to camp up at John’s place, me in the carpark, Bernie sleeping out on the patio. John wasn’t sure if security would balk at my car in the carpark by the pool, but I was happy to give it a go. I left the boys to it and had a good long chat to Dad until I was thoroughly sleepy.