Still, it was a nice 6-3 scoreline in my favour despite me losing my first and third service games. When I held for 5-3, I knew that my only chance of winning was to break him; I did not trust myself to serve it out. With a combination of his bad play and my amazing luck which saw 50% of my mishits landing in, I eked out the win in the end.
There is definitely something about a matchplay situation that tightens me up. It makes me overthink all my shots; it makes me over-tentative on everything; and it makes every shot that I hit more important than it really is, such that I lose a lot of the natural flow when I'm just hitting the ball back and forth. This isn't just a result of my concerted effort to play more conservative; I definitely noticed tonight how I was half a second slower in my back swing for my backhand when I was playing that set compared to when I was hitting for fun - and half a second counts for a lot in a game where timing is so utterly important.
Anyway, I'm really tired now. I've been reading my entries from my LLM days and reminiscing (can't believe I needed Google to spell this word for me) the fuck out of them. I just think that I should stop getting annoyed at myself when I'm playing tennis and I miss easy shots, but a leopard can't change its spots and all that.
Also, when practising my serve, I accidentally hit myself on my left leg because I am such a mug. A big bruise formed instantly. It's 50 times the size of a massive mosquito bite. I have honestly lost count of the number of times I've done this stupid thing - fucked up a serve and ended up hitting myself with the racquet and leaving an awful blue-black mark on my skin for days, even weeks. I'm not sure what it says about my health and body that I bruise so easily.
I'm gonna text my boyfriend and sleep. I've vowed not to check Camsis (Cambridge application tracker) until Friday, so at least I won't be in a bad mood for a while. Bleah.
