The Corporate Challenge racquetball tournament was fun, but went down pretty much as I expected. I had a great first match, defeating my opponent 15-2, 15-5 and pretty much controlling the pace of the play.
The second match, against the doubles champion I mentioned below, didn’t go so well. He annihilated me in the first game 15-0 with a level of power and accuracy I’ve simply never faced before. He hit one backhand passing shot that I could theoretically have gotten to, but by the time I could get my racquet around on it the ball was already past me. I’ve never faced someone who could shoot faster than I could react — reaction time is kind of my thing in racquetball. Not against this guy.
I don’t know if it was fatigue or charity — probably a little of both — but I did manage to score 5 points against him in our second game. I suspect that if he had gone full out he’d have held me scoreless in both games — he was that good.
I had my folks down for the weekend as it was Thomas’s birthday, so my folks and Robin and Thomas got to watch me play. Thomas was pretty pumped afterwards and wanted to hit the ball around some, so we did. He’s got good natural talent; it didn’t take long for him to be hitting the ball pretty reliably with the racquet. We’ll have to see about getting him some lessons at some point.
Anyway, it was fun and very educational. Mainly what I learned is that I need to step up my playing a lot if I want to get to a point where I can even make this guy break a sweat against me. Maybe when I get 100% confident in my knee again I’ll try to sign up for another league.