Sore winners

It never ceases to amaze me how, after I’ve lost or my team has lost a match, the opponent can make excuses that he or they didn’t play well. It’s just amazing that someone can be so self absorbed and totally lacking in humility that they’re insensitive to everyone else around them.

Now I’m not one of these overly sensitive guys who looks to be offended all the time, far from it. I’m just as likely to be a crushing bore when it comes to relating my successful exploits to others without being asked. But I also try to give my “all” every time I’m on the tennis court, every match, every set, every game, every point, regardless of the score. I’ve played matches that lasted nearly 3 hours after which my opponent will say “I didn’t play very well today” when they’d beaten me!

Saturday, our team lost four out of five points to a team that’s one of the best in our division. In fact, they were the best team we faced last season, when we managed to take 2 points from them, which was why they had their best possible lineup on the court, a fact that their captain more or less admitted to me earlier that day. Yet there he was as noon approached, when it looked like our team would finally win a point at line 5, lamenting the fact that the USTA 4.0 (e.g. over) rated man that he’d slotted into his last pairing to guarantee their sweep hadn’t recovered from his back issues and that, if he’d known that, he wouldn’t have played him today. In other words, “even though we’ve humbled your team today by taking the first four lines (dropping but a single set), we wanted more”. Of course, I’m sure that it never even occurred to him that I didn’t have my best lineup available to play that day, that I’d had to add a new player to our team that week just to have enough players to keep from having to forfeit that line 5 to them.

Don't be a sore winner.