Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Spring Hill tennis

 After a two year absence this year I was able to return to Spring Hill to play some tennis with my high school tennis coach, the guy that taught me tennis and a winning attitude in 1959-61 at Greenway High School, Paul B.  The girl from Pengilly (PW) who graduated with me in 1961, and thus is quite familiar with the old coach, and I, took a road trip up the coast 143 miles to his retirement community in Spring Hill.  He's recently remarried and we were able to meet his new wife, and his new home.  Both nice.

He arranged two tennis matches with some of the tennis players in the area - one for Tuesday at 2:30 (the heat of the day) and one for Wednesday at 9:30.  Both were played at Bob's private court in his orange orchard.  On Tuesday we played Ken and Reuben a close three setter 5-7, 7-5, 6-4.  It was close and a lot of good clean fun.  PW stayed for the match and took some photos of the action.

This picture was taken just before we left Paul's place for our return to Santini's place in Port Charlotte.  We were happy to have survived the tennis and that were able to play the game we love one more time.

TT and Paul after the two matches that each lasted two and a half hours.


This was action shot in the orange orchard by  PW during the Tuesday competition.


Paul, TT, and Ken after Tuesday match.  Reuben had gone by this time, but he came back for more tennis on Wednesday below.


The Wednesday match wasn't as close, but we managed to win the third set 6-3.  Unfortunately we lost the first two sets 6-1, 6-4.  I guess we outlasted them, but it is important to note that Bob is the owner of the court and was fresh - having skipped the Tuesday action.  Also Rueben is 60 and Bob 67, so we were playing much younger players.  Reasonably good excuses, too, in my opinion.

Paul, TT, Reuben, Bob after the Wednesday match.


All photos by PW.

4 comments:

Gino said...

Bouchard looks good. As do you all.

Jimi said...

Thanks, I appreciate any compliments at this age, as much as I appreciate being able to play. I think Paul would agree.

Santini said...

Your photographer PW got a bag of oranges from Bob for being the best spectator there. Apparently you guys didn't draw a big crowd, though from the photos, pretty good tennis was played. I liked some of the action shots she took.

Jimi said...

Some of those photos may be posted on "The Best of ..." blog posting later in the year.