It has been a day since I finished playing an epic tennis match which lasted for 3 hours 45 mins. Yes, you heard it right! It was the singles finals of the IISc Tennis Spectrum tournament featuring students, faculty and staff members. My opponent was Guhan who is an M.Tech student here. It was a memorable match which I will remember for quite some time.
The match was physically brutal (for me, a recreational player). But it has left sweet memories, since it has pushed me to the limits of my physical and mental endurance.
During the Semis, I gave myself a 30% chance of winning, since skills wise my opponent had better skills. I tried to hit more rallies to the baseline to keep the point neutral and let him make the mistakes. I sprinted for every unreachable ball to somehow put the ball in his court. Though he won the first set, by the middle of the second set he started getting flustered and by the end of the third set I won the game :) This itself was a huge victory and I celebrated as if I won the tournament. Little did I know the finals was going to be epic. Next day after semis, I have to travel and couldn't take any proper care of my hydration which resulted in my sugar levels drop to 80. Doctor had advised me to take rest and Guhan was kind enough to postpone the match by a few days.
On the day of finals, I did my usual yoga practices and went to the court with lots of bananas, ORS and Nimbu pani. The game started at 7pm. During the first set, I played some of my best shots, yet I lost the set 3-6. Unlike the semis, I tried to play more aggressively here. Came to the net more often, it sometimes worked, many times did not.
His kick serve was tough to handle in the first set. But from the 2nd set the serve didn’t have that punch which made my life easy! In the second set, one game has 7 Deuces. Managed to win the second set with 7-5. By now, it's already 9:30 pm and it's gymkhana’s closing time. I was okay to play a super set and finish but Guhan insisted on a third set. I was visibly tired by then. During the break I did some naadi shuddhi to reset fully.
Again, in the third set I am down by 1-3, did some more nadi shuddhi in the little break and found a last gush of energy. I came back and blasted some flat serves which landed perfectly and won the game to make it 2-3. Somehow the opponent lost his rhythm here and made the score 3-3. By now, my mind is not taking too many instructions. Thanks to Haritha for pointing it out and reminding me continuously that I should play more shots to his backhand. The flat blast serves which I never knew existed came to my rescue again. The score went to 5-3 and I heard a pop sound after hitting a winner, you guessed it right my strings are broken. As you know, a recreational indian tennis player will never have 2 racquets of the same type, and I had to play with Haritha`s Yonex Ezone 100
(missed my pro staff 🙁). With this much lighter racquet I had to come up with a new strategy, so I played the next two games without trying any fancy shots and relying on my long rallies. Won this set, with a 6-4 score, the moment he hit the ball out it’s a sigh of relief :)
With family members cheering on the sides, I have touched victory !!
I loved playing against Guhan. His years of training showed up in how organized he was in planning his serves and setting up the rallies. Didn’t look flustered and was very consistent throughout the match. The intensity was clear in his eyes. As I said before, I think it was his stamina which let him down.
This academic year there were three tennis tournaments on campus and I won all three of them 😀 Typically the semis and finals are best of 3 sets. An interesting and common pattern in five of those matches was that I would ALWAYS lose the first set!! Then the comeback would start to win the remaining two sets 🙈 I think somewhere students are losing mental focus or getting physically tired after the first set. They should do more strength training, running or even better Yoga 😀 Because skills wise they look better equipped at this point.
The effectiveness of Yoga shows up very easily while playing a sport. Years and years of doing Yogic practices and sadhana is the main reason this has been possible. I bow down to my Guru and all the gurus of the past for making the technology of Yoga available 🙏. Pranayams ensure the breath lasts longer, Angamardhana gives resilience to the joints, Samyama practice lets you pay close attention to the ball and cut out outside noise. Last but not the least, Yoga has given me the right perspective on how to play the sport (and in general in life as well :)): to want to give my 100% to win but being OK with the outcome once the game is over! I am sure these are very superficial benefits of Yoga but what to do, my current experiences are limited :)).
