Tennis Tournament Time

 Cameron found out from his tennis instructor that there was a Junior USTA tennis tournament this weekend at Eastlake in Elkhart.  He was highly interested in playing, so Doug called to get more information - amount of matches, age groups, COVID restrictions, etc.  Once he was satisfied with the answers I signed him up with the added bonus of finding out that the boys would actually be playing Warsaw.

Cameron was excited about the tournament.  He hadn't had an official match since the end of September, but he had played with his teammates after school and had been taking tennis lessons weekly since the season ended.  He was definitely nervous, but highly interested in testing his skills on the court.  His first match was at 6:15.  His glasses had broken at school earlier in the day.  After realizing that I wouldn't be able to easily fix them, we frantically searched the house for his spare pair.  He said that he could play without them, but I knew that he had really appreciated them during the regular season.  That's when we decided that the best option was good old duct tape.  It worked well and he was able to wear them throughout the night.

Doug took Cameron to the first match and called to give us updates.  Cameron had lost the first three games in the first set, but came back to tie it at 5-5.  Doug was extremely impressed with his serve.  Cameron went on to win the first set 7-5 only to soon find himself down in the second 0-3 again.  He couldn't quite recover this time losing 4-6.  The third set was a tiebreak with first to ten games winning the match.  Cam and his opponent went back and forth until Cameron finally went up 9-8 only needing one more game to win the match.  Thankfully, he held serve and moved on to the second round at 9 p.m. this evening.

Doug called at the end of the first match to see if we wanted to watch Cam's second one.  Meg and I drove over and arrived just before it started.  Cam's opponent was better than the first one he played and it took him several games to adjust to the new pace of play.  Once he figured him out, however, Cameron began to give him a very competitive match which did not reflect in the 6-0, 6-2 loss.  We celebrated his return to the court with a late night dinner of Buffalo Wild Wings.