North Richland Hills Open.

This weekend I'm playing in the NRH Open, which I've played the last few years. This morning I played the #1 seed, who I have played before, named Dane. The first time we played he ran me ragged over the course of 3 sets and I had nothing for my next match. Thankfully, I learned from the past today and was able to attack, attack, attack. I won 6-1, 6-2. After the match, I chatted with him for a bit and found out he used to be a professional table tennis player, which makes a LOT of sense and explains everything I've ever wondered about his tennis game, which is fairly unique. More than any other player I've encountered, he loves to get into massively long forehand cross-court rallies and could literally do it all day - hence why I got so worn out the first time I played him. Today I tried serving and volleying a bit, which wasn't working too well because my volleys felt off, but my groundstroke attack was sufficient to get the job done without burning excessive energy.

In my second match, I played my friend Asod. Asod and I became hitting partners immediately after he dispatched me in my first tournament this year, the Fort Worth Spring Open. I believe I have written about that match before, but as a refresher it was a long three setter where I had ample opportunity to close it out in the second set, but blew it, then just had nothing left in the 3rd. Today was a bit of the opposite; I won the first set off one break, and he came back and played an extremely solid 2nd set, pushing it to a 3rd. I broke the first game, then after the side change we both started to show wear and tear with my horrendous 3 double-faults in my service game, followed by two for him. At the changeover, I was certainly thinking back to our first match and how I had nothing left in the tank in the third, and decided I'd have to be scraped off the court with a shovel today before I let that happen again. I basically gutted it out and ended up winning the next 4 games to take the last set 6-1. It was a great match, though, and I always really enjoy playing Asod. He is fairly rambunctious, but in a positive way - he never lays down, never plays "hack tennis," and gives props where props are due - a great guy and a great player.

So, tomorrow, I play in the final (yes, it was a small draw) at noon. Hopefully I'll be able to get some energy back overnight and my feet won't hurt so much in the morning.

I hope you all are having a good Saturday. As I think about Scatterbrain, a more appropriate term right now is "Scattered Weather." Over the past two weeks, we've had approximately 10 days of sun and humid heat, 2 days of scattered thunderstorms, and 2 days of violent thunderstorms where funnel clouds have landed, various houses around the metroplex have been ripped apart, and the TV has swapped out to a 3-hour "Weatherthon." Right now it looks like we have a standard-issue thunderstorm, so hopefully no need to seek shelter in the closet at the moment.

Stay dry, everyone, and let's hope that tomorrow I can take care of business!