Team Zombie

As my first serve landed long, for about the 30th time that day, I paused and stared across the court at my opponents. I cracked an involuntary smile and shook my head in disbelief at what was almost certainly about to happen. As General Cornwallis fictionally said, "How did it come to this?"

My partner, up near the net, crouched back into position and I tapped a soft second serve into play. The receiving player trundled forward. He looked like a lanky robot whose batteries were slowly dying; his mechanics were perfect, but at full speed he was about as swift as the average power-walker. He played the ball cross-court back to me. It was pretty soft and I barely even had to move, but enough was enough. I converged on the ball and smacked a forehand back across the net, hoping to get at least one more winner and preserve a smidgen of dignity. I hadn't closed off the top of my racquet though and the ball sailed, nearly hitting the fence before taking a bounce.

Game-Set-Match.

6-3, 6-4

I had just lost to a 65 year old in straight sets.

Yes, it was my first official match in five years. Yes it was doubles, and my partner was himself around 50 and not all that great. Yes, that 65 year old was the captain of his team and probably one of the better sexagenarians on the planet, harboring near flawless technique. But still, in my athletic prime I had just lost to someone three times my age!

And yet, the first thing my partner, whom I'd just met, said to me after the games was, "Wow, great game partner, looks we have a rising star on our hands!" There was not a trace of sarcasm.

Welcome to Team Zombie.

I cannot tell you why we are called Team Zombie. I overheard our manager explaining the origin of the name once, but I got distracted and missed the story. So, I asked him myself a week later and, again, somehow lost focus during the two sentence explanation. It must be one dull tale.

The morning of my first practice with the team, I was a bit nervous as I got out of my car. Primarily just because it was an alien setting and I didn't know what to expect, but also a little because I was worried I wouldn't be up to par with the other players. I hadn't played competitively since high school, where I had been a fringe varsity player on a team that was good, but not great.

But I got apprehensive for a different reason as I looked across the parking lot and saw a rusted out pick-up truck pull in. There were two men inside, one younger, one older. We'll call them Joe and Alan. Joe, the older one, he was 58 to be exact, got out of the driver's seat and immediately began taking a long pull on his cigarette. He was wearing holey sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and a baseball cap and bearing a mustache. Alan got out of the passenger's seat, nearer me. He was sporting a six-pack in lieu of a shirt, and black athletic shorts.

"S--t! It's early!" groaned Joe.

"You're tired? I just went to bed four hours ago!" retorted Alan, "I'm still drunk!"

They slung their racquet bags over their shoulders and walked off toward the courts. I let them get a healthy lead and then followed their path.

Upon reaching the courts I felt a little more relieved. The rest of the players seemed less gruff, though no less colorful. Apart from me there were two other 20-somethings. Alan was one of them, and though a bit of a party boy, he was actually pretty nice and probably ended up being my best friend on the team, more than anything due to our age. We were also probably two of the three best players on the team and thus liked to scrimmage each other a lot for the competition. The other 20-something was the team captain and the manager's son. He was mentally handicapped.

The rest of the roster, there were about twelve of us in all, was rounded out by a group who ranged in age from late 30's to early 60's. Half of them were overweight. One or two of them had never played tennis before in their lives; they would routinely lose 6-0, 6-0. By midway through the season about a quarter of our team was sidelined with an assortment of chronic back ailments. In perhaps my favorite touch of all, Joe, who it turned out was Alan's dad, would actually smoke during the changeovers of his official league matches, while still wearing those same raggedy sweatpants. He was my partner once, and although we most likely lost due to him and his terrible stamina, I was just too entertained by the spectacle to be upset.

The manager, also pushing 60, wasn't actually a player on the team but was mainly there for the sake of his son. He had a full white beard and wore sunglasses and a Payne Stewart hat. He was some sort of Environmental Studies professor and very talkative; he would routinely espouse his ultra-liberal politics as casual asides in regular conversation. No one really seemed to disagree with him much, but I just find that sort of veiled confidence amusing, especially when it comes out of nowhere. ("Of course gas prices wouldn't be what they are if Bush had never cleaned up his drinking problem!") Though it also might be a tad hegemonic.

Suffice it to say this rag-tag crew wasn't quite what I had been expecting. With abundant free time, and expendable income, for the first summer in years, I thought it would be fun to start playing again and signed up for the league via e-mail. Since I had never played competitively before outside of high school, I was put in the lowest level (and this really is where I should be). I was placed on my particular team just because they happened to have a roster spot open.

As evidenced by my first match, the whole league is full of similar characters, but no one team was quite so exotic, or quite so terrible, as ours. Any semblance of technique I acquired during high school had disintegrated; I got by almost exclusively on my youth and the extra range afforded by my above average height, and yet, as described, I was one of the best players on the team. We finished last in the standings and I personally only won one match the whole season, a far cry from high school where my combined 3 year winning percentage was around .800. Most of my matches were doubles, which I enjoy more, and of those, most (not all) of our losses were probably due to me getting dragged down by a partner. Yet, while somewhat frustrating, mostly it was just fun, especially when the opponents weren't over-competitive jerks.

Besides, my one win was pretty glorious. It was only my second time playing singles (the first time I was trounced, as I said I definitely belong in this league), and it was a make-up match for the last meet of the season. All the other matches in the head-to-head had been completed and we were tied 2-2. I was playing the #1 singles slot, slated against their presumed top player, whose only loss that season had been to the undefeated best player in our league.

It was one of the hottest evenings of the year, during the dog days of August, and we played the longest match I've ever participated in. I was scarfing down water during changeovers and ran out before the end. Perhaps in some weird psych out move, I don't think my opponent had a sip of liquid the whole game, I honestly don't know how he was functioning. I was getting goose-bumps and shivers, one of the first signs of heat exhaustion. I cruised by him in the first set 6-3 and thought I was in for a quick day. Then, completely adapting to my serving style, he crushed me in the second set 6-1. Determined not to go winless for the entire season, I dug in my heels and adapted right back.

Now every point was taking an eternity as we had figured out each other's tricks and were afraid to take risks and make unforced errors. What's more, each game seemed to go into multiple deuces, further prolonging the struggle. My legs felt like jelly and for the first time in my life, I took off my shirt during a match, as it had become a wet sopping rag. At the end of the set we were tied 6 games to 6. In the tie breaker we were playing more conservatively than ever, terrified of making a mistake. After a string of drawn out points, he had taken the upper hand 7 points to 6. You play to seven but need to win by two. I was down to my last strike. After a couple safe returns from both of us, he went in for the kill, charging the net after he had forced me to run pretty far to one side. I lobbed him, and it was a thing of beauty, arcing just over his out-streched racquet and landing safely in play near the baseline. The next point was virtually identical. Now it was 8-7 and I had the upper hand. Perhaps eager to get it over with, he tried the same strategy for the third consecutive rally, charging the net after firing a strong forehand down my line. I had a bad angle to lob, so I scorched a shot at shoulder level to his backhand. He couldn't react quickly enough and the ball bounced just inside the line. 6-3, 1-6, 7-6 (9-7)

All in all it had taken over two hours. My calves were twitching ceaselessly for the duration of the evening, it felt like an electrical current was running through them. I spent the rest of the night downing liquids, eating, walking on egg-shells, and stretching my calves. In bed, I continued the stretching, terrified of a cramp. Then, in the middle of then night it struck both legs at once. It felt like a demon had possessed them and was contracting the muscles with all his might. I bit my quilt and silently dug my fingers into my mattress, just waiting waiting waiting for the pain to subside. The next morning I was limping everywhere, and my right calf was so tender I was afraid to drive to work for fear that pressing the pedals would trigger another cramp.

Was it worth it? Yeah. But I think I'll bring an extra water this time around. Bring it on 2012.