Senior Tennis and Fitness

Our age 60+, 4.5 doubles team came to Daytona late Thursday; and four of us went over to the USTA complex for a travel-weary loosening up hit… getting ready for our weekend of high level doubles competition.

On Friday, we had our first match – against the strong team from the Tampa/St. Pete region. Our lineup was:
• Court 1: Dick Valentine and Matt Davie
• Court 2: Tom and me
• Court 3: Spike Gonzalez and Ali Moezzi

In our opinion, Tom and I faced the toughest team (Bill Christianson and Tony Ruggerio who says Hi to Joe Macaleer) and had a hard-fought match that they won in straight sets. The difference? They were just a little bit better, steadier, and faster-handed than we were.

Spike and Ali won easily on court three. While Dick and Matt lost a very close 6-4, 6-4 match on the first court. So we lost our first match 1-2.

In the afternoon, Tampa/St.Pete played and beat the Jacksonville team 2-1, by nearly identical set and game scores as they beat us.

Saturday, Day 2

In the morning, we faced the Jacksonville team for the first time. We talked at dinner and our lineup changed from Friday, moving our winning #3 team to #1…
• Court 1: Spike Gonzalez and Ali Moezzi
• Court 2: Dick Valentine and Matt Davie
• Court 3: Tom and me

We set our sights at winning all three courts, which would put us at 1-1, compared to St. Pete’s 2-0; but in a courts-won would be a tie at 4-2 each.

Tom and I had to wait over an hour and a quarter to finally get on the court; and we played a team made up of a big server, who played #1 court Friday, and a control player, who was on court #2.

Spike and Ali won easily at 6-2, 6-2; while Dick and Matt pulled out theirs 4-6, 6-4, (10-7). So it was up to Tom and me to pull off the morning’s sweep.

We had several breaks of serve back and fourth and came to the critical game of the match: me serving at 4-5 in the first set, having lost my serve the first two times… and going down 0 – 30.

Somehow, we were able to pull out that game! Each team then held serve and we went to a first set tiebreaker. Critical points: their big server serving at 3-4 in the tiebreak and DOUBLE FAULTS both points! We win the tie breaker 7-4.

And then, we focused and stayed on top of them to take a fairly easy second set, 6-2.

Lunched, showered, and resting… getting ready to go back out on the courts for the BIG REMATCH against St. Pete… we need to take it 2-1 to take the lead going into Sunday.

PS Our team Captain, George Morton is playing on a 4.0 team out of Naples; and they are in the lead in a larger five team (?) field.