Ainey-le-Chateau: Day 2 and more...

During our long drives throughout the small highways of France we've been listening to Andre Agassi's autobiography entitled Open on audiobook. We recently listened to a section where Brad Gilbert, Andre's coach during his 20s, says that over the course of a year there are 5 days where Andre will wake up and he will be unbeatable. In his case he is obviously talking about tennis, but I think it applies to any task in which one excels. The other 360 days you don't have your best game, but if you are patient and smart you can still function at a high level. Yesterday, was without a doubt one of the latter days. In fact, yesterday was probably one of my worst 5 days of the year.

The pool at what has been our awesome campsite for the last 3 days.

It all started with my semi-final matchup. I was playing Frankie. This was the third time we've played each other in as many tournaments, and unless we both make it to the finals of some difficult tournament, this will be the last. At least as far as I'm concerned. I would rather default than face the prospect of playing Frankie again. There are many terrible things about playing against Frankie that didn't really come to light in our first match, began to rear their ugly head in the second, and were wildly evident in the third. First, we are both super competitive and want to win. Obviously when we play each other someone has to lose and is generally a bit unhappy the rest of the day. Second, and I assume Frank feels a similar way, beyond my desire for personal success I really enjoy watching Frankie play well and win. But when I play people my goal is to make them miserable. Clearly these goals conflict with one another. Finally, what I hate watching is when Frankie gets frustrated. Again, I play my game with the intention of trying to make my opponent want to quit tennis. And again, we have conflicting desires.

The trophy presentation being set up. 

As the match began things looked bad. We were both playing poorly and frustration levels rose quickly. On serve 2-3 in the first set we sat down on the changeover, exchanged glances, and both muttered something about how miserable this was. As the set continued both of us badly wanted a quick end to this painful affair, but as the the tennis gods would have it, every single game went to deuce. It seemed like we were both trying to lose just to end this god awful match as quick as possible, but it's hard to lose on purpose. And so every game, and I mean every game went into a never ending cycle of deuce. I finally won the first set 7-5 and hoped, no I prayed, for a quick second set just because we were both so miserable. We were so miserable that people stopped watching our match, the first time people have stopped watching either of us play during our time in France, because it was so evident that we were suffering badly. The locals thought we were hungover from the night before, but that was far from the truth, we just hated being pitted against one another. You can't fight a war, which in many respects is what a tennis match is, against your best friend. 

In the second set we suffered a similar fate. Deuce. Ad-In. Deuce. Ad-In. Deuce. Ad-Out. Deuce. Ad-In. I was so close to just retiring and saying my wrist hurt too bad to continue because of the misery. The only other time I've enjoyed my time less on a tennis court was during Frankie and I's doubles match at the NCAA Individual Championships in Kalamazoo, Michigan earlier this year, and that was only because my injury wasn't letting us perform at the level I knew we could. Eventually at 5-4, 30-40 I had a match point and was thanking the man upstairs this was over. But it's not easy to lose on purpose and Frank somehow scrapped out the next two games to take a 6-5 lead. If this was going 3 sets, I was going to quit. I hate quitting so, so much. But I would've gladly quit to end this match. But I held serve and we went to a tiebreak which I won 7-3. A 7-5, 7-6(3) victory that lasted well over 2 hours. 

We immediately left the club and it took several hours before we were able to laugh about what had just occurred. At 16:30 I played in the finals against an older 3/6. My morning match depression quickly found it's footing in my head and I couldn't hit a ball in the court. I looked like I'd picked up tennis a few weeks ago and only competed recreationally. Fortunately for me my opponent had gassed himself in his morning match and couldn't understand how I was shanking so many balls yet still beating him. After I won a 7-5 first set, in which he'd had a set point, I cruised through the second 6-2 after he all but gave up. I quickly accepted my trophy and prizes and we got the hell out of there. I love tennis quite a bit, but man yesterday was just a weird day. It's not often you win two matches, a tournament, and a nice cash prize and feel utterly crappy about it. But alas, this post has made it seem like we're far more depressed than we are. In fact, we're doing fantastic. 

A cool castle we encountered while driving.

We were supposed to head south this morning but out of no where we found out that Eminem has a concert in Paris on the 22nd. Eminem is one of Frankie and I's childhood rap heros that probably won't be touring much longer so we figured why not go see him. Plus my good friend from Pitzer, Jesse Gaddy, as well as 2012 Claremont-McKenna graduate (as well as 2008 Cate School graduate) Julian Martinez are in Paris so we thought we'd spend some time with them. We got some dinner with both of them and wondered around the city seeing some sights including Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower. Tomorrow we want to go check out Roland Garros and do more exploring. We were supposed to play our next tournament on the 22nd, but we'll pull out of that one and instead play again on the 24th. Later.

Notre Dame. We didn't have too much time to investigate, hopefully tomorrow.  

The Eiffel Tower. Much more impressive than I suspected. Did you know the chief engineer Gustavo Eiffel had an apartment at the top of the tower when it was complete? How awesome is that.

-Max.