Tennis for me was simple as it seemed to be but…

I woke up early, put my jogging wear on, placed the tennis rocket on my bag and fetched Jenny from her place to Neil’s house. Yesterday, we called for a tennis play that would be played this morning. We left the motorcycle at Dwight’s place and started hiking up the hill of Ipil Heights. It was around 4:30 am when we got to the base of the hill. We jogged up right away on the inclined road. It was my first time that I made it all the way up. Then, we started on hiking again till we reached near the National High. After some deep breathing and ample stretching, we started on brisk walking along the slope, and when we were around 70 m to where there’s a rugged path, we jogged up again. It was calorie-burning as I almost run out of breath having got to the top. Then we walked up further till we got to the highest point. Then we walked downhill to cool down. We were half way through the concrete road and decided to jug up again. It was still dim when we got to the tennis court.

As soon as there was some little brightness, we started on smashing the tennis balls with our rockets against the tall wall with imprints: “Go Tennis with Hofer”. It was difficult to hit back the balls since it was still not that bright. In my case, I got the ball flown out of the wall and I had to tediously find it each time it got out. Anyway, when the dawn completely broke, we got started on playing at the court. It was my first time to hit balls inside a court. Tennis was simple as it seemed, when I saw almost every game of grand slam events on TV. But it wasn’t easy at all. There were many approaching balls, which I failed to even hit. But as the game progressed, I got my timing, which is an important element – move back a bit and smash on the ball! I could not forget how I hit the ball with my forehand, and got it all the way in, really fast. Neil, who has been playing tennis, even marveled at what I just did. The playing got me really sweat a lot. After we felt we had enough, we walked downhill and took our usual refreshment at our “suki”.

I am looking forward to playing tennis. My father was a player himself. The rocket that I used, Dunlop (McEnroe Series) was given to him by his playmate, Dr. Vicajoy.