Here we are in January, with a new tennis year stretching before us.  What will it bring--exhilarating victories or disappointing defeats?  Most likely there will be a few of each, only time will tell, but my goal is to do a little better in leagues this year, and make it to the Grand Prix again in tournaments.

It would be hard to top the success of my mixed 8.0 team from last year, which made it to Districts, but my team last year was so good that I couldn’t crack the starting lineup and although I was the captain and very involved with the team, it’s more fun when you actually get to play.  So this year our team is not as strong, but still doing well and in the playoffs.  We’ll face some tough opposition, so it may not happen, but I’d sure love to get back to the Districts as an actual playing participant!

Adult league is much more dicey.  My team last year just missed the playoffs, by one individual match win.  I was kicking myself over and over for two different close losses I had had during the season, both of which could have gone the other way and put us in the playoffs (I also had two blowout losses, but those didn’t bother me much, because we were never even in those matches).  This year’s team will have pretty much the same players as last year’s—can we win the close ones and make it to playoffs this time around?  Maybe, maybe not, and even if we get to playoffs we probably won’t have a Districts-caliber team, but I look forward to the hunt.

In tournaments, the goal is always the Grand Prix.  Last year, due to a combination of injuries, other commitments, and poor play early in the year, my partner and I got a really late start in the Grand Prix race and didn’t have any points until June.  We felt like we had to enter every tournament we possibly could because we had fairly uneven results during the early part of the summer, and were still not completely sure of having enough points to make the Grand Prix until we hit a hot spell later in the summer.  This year we’re going to try to play more early tournaments so as not to be scrambling so much at the end of the tournament season.  But funny things can happen in tournaments--you can hit a hot team in your first match and be out on your ear with no points before you know it, so sometimes it’s try, try again with lots of tournament entries before the points start adding up.

The only thing I can say for sure about this year’s tennis is that barring injury or other unforeseen circumstances, I’ll be out on the courts playing!  Win or lose, it’s still the best sport and the activity of choice for my leisure time.  How about you?  What are your tennis goals for the year?