Racquetball Revisited

I decided to glean a lesson from my shutout last week in the first game, and asked Bob to let me hit the ball around for a few moments before we started the first game today. I guess it worked somewhat, since he only got 5 straight points before I got traction and started to catch up. I won that game, and the next as well, bringing us to Bob - 14, Joel - 13.

A few other notes-- since Thursday Bob had obviously either read about or been told about the technique of hitting the front wall at an oblique angle, to cause a lot of sideways bouncing, and supposedly make the ball "die" and be harder to hit. It didn't really work very well.

Also, I told him about some things I read last week in the official rules on the web: 1) A serve is good as long as it passes the "receiving line" (dashed line) without hitting any surface, and then hits the floor before hitting the back wall or more than one side wall. That last part is the key: we had been ruling all serves that hit the wall before hitting the floor as faults. 2) In amateur play, a two-point lead is not necessary to win a game. Not that big a deal, but could shorten some games, obviously.

I feel like I really pay a price for winning some of these games. My left shoulder is sore, and I didn't even smash it into the wall today. Just lots of hard swats on the ball. And my left hip is also sore, of all things. I guess 36 really is over the hill.