First Serve

Doublefault is a challenge for a 60+ year old to compete in the Pan Pacific Masters games in 2024. This is the first episode and serves as an introduction to this journey.

Doublefault a journey to the Pan Pacific Masters games 2024

Transcript

Hi. Welcome to Double Fault. My name is Andrew and I'm on a journey to compete in the Pan Pacific Masters Games in tennis in November 2024 on the beautiful Gold Coast in Queensland. So come with me as I up my skills and get ready for this great event. The Pan Pacific Masters is open to all comers over the age of 35. It groups athletes into age groups. I think they're five years apart. There's track and field, soccer, baseball, dragon boats and all sorts of sports represented. And yes, tennis. At the time of this podcast, there are 557 days to go before it starts. I started playing tennis at age 61. I'm now 63 and I'll be aiming for the 60 to 65 age group. But depending on how I feel, I might have a look at other opportunities. So maybe I'll even try another sport. I always fancied myself as a bit of a sprinter. Anyway. One of the ranking factors in tennis is something called UTR or Universal tennis ranking. I'd like to get the mine up to at least five or more to be competitive. I'm currently 2.3, so I'll be looking to play as many games as possible in the next year in an effort to get that up through accumulated practice, hard work, fitness and weight loss. My first goal is to make that UTR 3.0 or better in the next six months or so. Looking at the top players in my age group for Australia, I can see the top 15 range from utter eight to utter 9.6, which is quite a bit out of my league.

I don't think I'm quite ready to get up there even in the next year and a half or so. The top 100 starts around UTR seven and just a few below that down to the top 111. There's a 4 or 5 in there. I think it's doable. I think I can I can make that. And that's the kind of players I'm hoping will show up at this Masters event. I played mature age competition, football or soccer, if you want to call it that. 15 years. I've been injured almost every year. I've done hammys, calves, Achilles shoulders, fingers, black eyes, knees. Right now I'm sporting the Achilles problem thanks to a social game of soccer. I played it four months ago. Those injuries just don't get better any quicker when you get older. So I'm kind of pulling out of competition soccer altogether and focusing more on tennis. Soccer is really started to cause a lot of pain for long lasting injuries. And I said to my wife, you know what, I'm sick of getting injured. I'm going to go play tennis. And she she said, you know, you've never played tennis before. I go, well, you know, I played squash. How hard can tennis be? The racquets Bigger. The bulls bigger. How can it be right now? Don't get me wrong, I love to play a game of football. I'll keep playing social. I love going out and have a kick with the guys and a beer afterwards.

I love the social atmosphere. I love the chats and barbecues, but the injuries and the never ending anger on the field during a match just wears you down. That competitive spirit, though, I think that's going to help me in the run up to the games. So about a year, about two years ago, I had my first lessons. I had three personal 45 minute lessons because, you know, now it's too expensive. And I just wanted to try it out a little bit to see if I'd actually like it. And I really enjoyed it. That coach who was with me on the court at that time, he was very patient with me through some balls at me. I hit them forehand and hit them backhand. He helped me out with my grip and had a look at my swing and shook his head. I think I hit those things mostly all over the place. But, you know, I really loved it and just the thought of it is great. Nobody swears at you, nobody tries to kick you. The coaches are friendly. I found out the club actually runs something called squads, which is like a class. You know, you get up to six players in a court with a coach and he runs you through some basic exercises and some drills and games. And it turned out to be so much fun. So I was chatting along there for about six months and yep, I got injured, but only from falling over and losing some skin on the court surface and nobody even laughed.

Those courts there, artificial grass, which I would probably call Astroturf. They sprinkle sand on the surface, I think, to keep the plastic grass strands from flattening out. Anyway, falling on that stuff, you'd think it wouldn't be too bad because it's reasonably soft underfoot, but it's like sandpaper and it takes a lot of skin and you bleed and it takes a long time to heal. And I'm pretty bad at bandaging myself and would bleed on the bedsheets, which makes for an angry wifey. And it wound up with me washing the sheets a lot, but I haven't had one of those for a while. It's actually funny, you know, you fall on on the surface and it's always the same place to get injured. With me, it's the back of my right hand, my right elbow and my right knee. And it's just the same place over and over again. I've done it about 4 or 5 times now, but I've been pretty good lately. I've got some better shoes which are more suited to the surface and they split less. So I think I'm also getting a little bit more skilled, I guess, on the field. Sorry, on the court, it's not a soccer pitch and I think I'm a bit more wary of, you know, falling over and hurting myself. Now, squads, they come in different varieties. There's beginners, which is obviously where I started. Then there's intermediate, then they go advanced.

So it wasn't a beginner squad for a long time. And I found out the club was running a competition and I thought, You know what, the competitive part of soccer and the mindset that I have from years of playing competition football came up to the fore and said, You know what? I'm going to give it a shot. So I played my first beginner competition. It was a format of, you know, it was a format of play as many games as you can for an hour, and whoever won the most games won the day. And it was a round robin, I think of about 5 or 6 players. And I went out there, you know, and one of the first things you find out when you're playing competition tennis is that if you don't have a serve, you really don't have much of a game. And my serve was absolutely the worst beginner serve ever because no one ever teaches you that in a group class. So, you know, I lost a lot of games, but I got a utr. It was pretty low utr, and I got myself a couple of hitting partners and found myself some cheaper options for court rentals like the some courts around the area where you get to use the court free for a member. So I've got two of those things now and I got myself a big bag of balls and, and I started learning to serve and I started teaching myself how to serve. And, you know, you teach yourself something and you don't know what you're doing.

You wind up with a lot of bad habits. And I would go out and hit bag after bag after bag of balls and I'd watch YouTube. You know, YouTube is the coach. Everyone uses it. My serves, they actually got a little bit better. But it took a long time. And in June of 2022, you know, my my utr was around 1.85. And I just said, you know what? Maybe it's just time to get some coaching for service. So I got a personal coach for a few lessons and did a half hour a week for about 4 or 5 weeks of service practice. And the coach was really good. He eased me into it, gave me a small change every time, and I went out and practiced that thing and it got better and improved and improved a lot. And then then I found out about another competent different area and I joined that one as well. So I started playing two competitions and the original competition restarted as a fast four format rather than number of games in an hour, which is it's like six, it's like four four games in a set rather than the usual six six. And the other competition was, was actually three normal sets and you had to play them all. So three. Three sets up to six games and it was over the course of two hours, which is a long night. I think I played one game that went for 2.5 hours and you know, I just got clobbered in that comp, you know, six love, six love 616 love ad-nauseum.

And I was the bottom of the ladder for the first term. And there was a big gap between me and the next ranked, next lowest ranked player. But I kept it up anyway. You know, one of the clubs I played at had a couple of ball machines, so I'd hire one of those every week to get a practice. When I couldn't get a hitting partner, my original comp restarted and I actually won that competition. I bought a better serve with me and I won my division and I won myself a Wilson Roland Grand Garros bag. How good is that? So my first ever tennis win that I actually won something for. So, you know, the tennis went on and then it started raining in Sydney and Sydney all of a sudden had its worst, wettest summer in history. And it rained and rained and rained and rained some more. But, you know, I kept on playing. I kept on training. Even in the rain, I would go out and hit bags of balls and those things would spin rooster tails of water in the air. Very pretty to watch and a good indicator of the spin. But like it was like hitting a brick covered with a wet towel. I was so heavy. You know, the club got drowned at one stage under a meter or more of water and both ball machines got wrecked so we couldn't use those anymore.

But, you know, my competition was getting mixed results. I felt like I was playing better and I was still losing sets, but I was actually winning a few games in the sets. Um, lots of games were actually washed out also, and classes and hitting partners were washed out and I had lots of service practice. So that just, I think, you know, service practice gets better so, so slowly. But I kept at it and then the weather dried out. And then some some weeks I was playing 15 hours a week. But mostly I play. Even now I'm playing around ten hours a week. I've got 4 or 5 hitting partners and we play before work at 630 in the morning and in winter it gets it gets pretty cold. You know, those balls don't bounce very, very well when the when the outside temperature hits about 5 or 6°C. But, you know, I kept it up. I had some very patient hitting partners who were willing to come out and have a hit before work, which is nice. And I found a couple of walls to hit against for practice. So, you know, there was no ball machines. Walls use a wall and that wasn't a bad option. You know, you get to practice your forehands and backhands and all the rest of it and get a good workout while you're at it. I'm currently still running around on a bad Achilles thanks to summer soccer. And when that heals, I'm going to get stuck into sprints and foot work and I'm getting more into stretching and I'm just really trying to work on my health now and for the next few months while I'm up in my game and up in my skills, I'm going to start wearing a headset to my games and recording what happens during the game so I can review it afterwards and I'll post abbreviated versions of that in my little podcast as well.

Anyway, it's been raining most of the morning and looking outside it looks like the rain stopped and the sun's coming out, so I might just grab a bag of balls and go to the court and do a bit of service practice. So how about you come along with me and we'll do some serves, Maybe we'll do some wall work as well. So we'll see you on the court. Okay, so here we go. Not sure how this is going to work, but I'm going to give it a shot. I've got my open mic attached to my shirt and I'm going to ride my scooter to the tennis courts. So I'll probably be a lot noisy and might not be a lot of use to anyone. What I've got in the back of my scooter, I've got a bag of about 75 balls in there on my back. I have a couple of tennis rackets, and over my shoulder I've got a ball picker upper a tube, which I've made myself out of stuff from the local hardware shop.

So let's see how this goes. Trip to the tennis court takes about ten minutes. The roads have dried up, so hopefully the courts will be dry as well. We'll find out soon enough, I guess. Anyway, nearly at the courts. Sun's out. It's not too cold. I reckon it's about 22. 23 degrees, maybe. Here we go. Okay, so here I am at my local courts. It's a beautiful afternoon. The sun's shining, and we'll do some drills against the wall and some serving practice. I've just got a few minutes to go. There's some people on my court at the moment. I'm coming down here just really to work on my technique, serve just to loosen up a bit. Long, slow, easy stroke, not overdo it, and we'll try and get some accuracy in there as well. So I set some targets up on the court. I'll hit some balls against the wall to warm up a little bit at first and we will see how we go. I think it's been a nice afternoon to just potter around the courts and spend a good hour getting some practice in just a few minutes to go before the courts are open. One of the things I'm going to practice is I'll have a game against myself where I'm serving against a non-existent opponent. So only single faults count as a point and we'll divide the service box up into two with some cones and I have to hit the side of the service box that I'm aiming for.

Or that's a fault as well. So I could wind up losing a game that I'm playing against myself. Not sure how I'll feel about that, but makes it a little bit more challenging and adds a little bit of entertainment value to the exercise. I'm going to get my kit together and wander on over there and look look needy and hopefully they'll pack up and let me on the court. So I've got a bag of about 80 balls here. I've got a ball pick up tube that I've made myself from ingredients I purchased at the hardware store. It's a little heavy and I'm probably be a cheapskate for doing it, but hey, it works. Okay, so I'm going to make a box on the wall here with some blue painter's tape I've got. I usually make the box about 30 or so centimeters on the side. Excuse me. Target. Really? Most of the time I miss it. But, you know, otherwise you've got this big surface here and there's no real. Point to it. So here we go. I'll put my markers in the service box. Hopefully I won't kick them over while I'm. Hit the ball against the wall. Just try and hit these markers. And every marker I hit, I would get a beer. And really, I was getting mighty thirsty. It's quite hard to hit these little things. So now I'm just going to play this game like this. Hey, here we go. We'll work first. Forehand. Forehand. Forehand. Forehand. Backhand. Backhand. Backhand. Bullhead, Forehand.

 I always judge myself by how many balls are on this side of the fence versus the other side because they hit the net, there's no chance of going in and just doing a quick count there. There's a lot of balls this side of the net number of balls I have, my bag kind of varies between around 70, maybe a little bit more than that. So around about 80, sometimes 85. So I think there's 87 balls in there at the moment.

Put the ball bag was looking quite full. So that was a great session. It was beautiful weather out there. And I'm surprised to see so many people out there on Anzac Day holiday. I think I lost my game six three for the serve game. I played not too sure how I feel about that. I feel like I've lost to myself. I normally try and hit a cone and this is the first time I've really split the service box in half and tried to hit one half or the other of the box. I tried to keep it loose and the serves felt really good, you know, even the misses felt pretty good. Anyway, it's time to ice and stretch my injured Achilles now. It feels a bit achy, but it's not too bad. I think it's on the mend. Think it'll probably be a few more weeks before I can go out for a run or something. But at the moment it's okay Just having head around the courts. I was supposed to have a game coming up tonight. I kept the intensity down a little bit on the serves so as to save myself, but I just had a text from my opponent and unfortunately she can't make it So good side is I win by default, by forfeit. The bad side is it really felt like a game. It's a bit of a shame, but you know, it's the first would have been the first game of the semester and I'm a bit disappointed, but there will be another game next week and I'm in two competitions, so eventually I'll wind up with that situation where I'm playing two competition games a week and I played this morning as well with a regular hitting partner, which was nice.

We actually wound up to be a draw. We both won one service game and lost all our other service games. So even though I did actually win six games to five, technically it was a draw because we both won one service game. He he really likes to hit hard and I was really in the mood for a solid hit as well. And I think the harder he hit the more of a chance you get of hitting the ball into the net. It was okay. The guy usually beats me and I'm okay with the result. A draw is better than normal, I guess. And you know, that just about wraps it up for today. So join me next time for my first match of the new semester. That'll be next Tuesday night. Hopefully that person will withdraw. In fact, the person I'll be playing next Tuesday beat me last time I think 616 love six two. So it was a bit of a thrashing and it's been, I think probably about a year since I last played this woman. So it'll be really interesting to see if I've improved over that period of time. That competition is being changed a little bit. It's now 226 game sets with the. Tiebreaker if it gets to that. So I'm hoping that I'll be a bit more successful with this opponent than the last time. Anyway, I'm Andrew, and this is double fault, and I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening. Bye.