My TennisDC season ends with heartbreaking but encouraging loss in the tourney semis

My spring TennisDC 18+ singles league has wrapped now that I bowed out in the semifinals. After perhaps my best match of the season in the quarterfinals, a 6-3, 6-4 victory at Fort Stevens (see one rally that I lose in the video above), the semis would prove to be a more difficult and chaotic battle. 

On Wednesday night, I took the first set 6-4 and felt I was continuing to play the same steady, solid type of match as the previous one. My serve has been greatly improving this summer and I was getting everything back and not missing. I wasn't going for big winners. Rather, I noted that my opponent was making errors, so my plan was to play defensively and just keep the ball in play.

He had a 5-3 lead in the second set when his errors started happening again and I was grabbing a second wind in the brutal heat of the Turkey Thicket courts. I evened things at 5-5 and then he suggested we suspend the match. Granted, despite the heat, the after-dinner masses had transpired and people were patiently waiting for courts. The claustrophobia was made even greater by the hordes of people playing pickleball right next to our court and, of course, the Summer of '23 style heat. I agreed to pick up the match later, although in retrospect trying to win the next two games and the match might have been a wiser strategy.

Regardless, we met back up Friday morning. The courts were already scorching even though we arrived before normal work hours in an attempt to get a result as early as possible. The previous session had gone two hours and this one would prove to stretch over an hour, and although the heat no doubt affected me, his youth probably meant it was rougher on me. I definitely felt less strong and less able to always get the ball back as consistently as I had been.

We broke each others' serves after reconvening at 5-5 in the second set to make it 6-6. The tiebreaker was a neck-and-neck barnburner. In fact, it was almost like I was playing myself. His style was very similar and the overall score in points must have been completely even. He was able to sneak out the tiebreaker 8-6.

Since we were running out of time before we both had to get to work, we decided to settle it with a 10-point tiebreaker rather than a full third set. It looked like I was going to pull it out when I was up 6-4. But then I double faulted and he called up a couple winners out of the depths. He came back to take the tiebreaker 10-7.

Despite the loss, I was really happy with my performance. In the Spring 1 season, I wasn't even trying to win but rather I was getting back in match shape after a few years away from singles competition. But this was Spring 2 season and going 6-2 and making it to the semis was a greater jump in performance than I expected. Hopefully I can win the Fall season.

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I tried a cool app with a free one-month trial this season called Swing Vision. You can see what the video looks like in the photo above. It records matches or practicing and analyzes how you're doing. I wasn't going to pay a $150 yearly subscription for it, but I may buy a monthly subscroption for $25 later down the line if I want to check in on how I'm doing. 

Here are a few screenshots of the kinds of stats it collects, from a little more than one set in that quarterfinal match win:

Pretty cool stuff!