Lost

Your fairytale comes true. This slogan has been unsettling me the whole tournament. I don't know about you, but when I think about fairytales, thoughts about the scary mouth of the grandmother, the stick through the bars of the cage of Hansel and Gretel come to mind.

Combine this with my inadequate preparation, and before you know I knew it I caught myself thinking: Your nightmare comes true. My nightmare was a match packed with service games with double faults, beautiful backhand strokes into the fences and unmerciful smashes into the net. That nightmare did not come true, but there certainly were some moments when I was reminded of it.

There were also nice experiences. Audience! I had not stop to think for a minute that there would actually be people that would come to watch us for their pleasure. And lesbian people too. When the match started, the bleachers, or rather the bench, was totally occupied. They did start with the booze, rather fast. Glasses of rosé and trays full of white beer were passing us by. But at a certain moment they were all gone. Could be that a beginners' women's doubles team is not all that exciting. Those rallies that hardly last longer than two strokes, the serves into the net, the strange antics in which one of good will could recognize a backhand… I would also take to drinking.

Alas, I was the one on court. Our strategy was "ball over the net". That strategy failed pitifully, the ball was out lots of times and our opponents were much better at "ball over the net". They could do it longer. That was not hard. Afterwards, it appeared that they too had had a strategy. Pass the net player high. They had been afraid of my volleys. That was a surprise. I must have hit most of the balls at the net in such an awkward way, that I had no idea where it ended up.

If I had practiced more than twice, if Jacky had not been exhausted from the enervating three-setter she played earlier that day, if we would have been ten years younger and if tennis wasn't such a difficult game. Yes, if…then we would have won. But no, we lost. 6-4, 6-3. Now we will play in the consolation rounds, which sounds a lot better than "losers". Consolation, that's what we need.