In my continuing attempt to meet tennis players and find a good, regular game of doubles (or singles), I joined a tennis league at the club I joined, Lansdowne Lawn Tennis Club.
The October league is the Floodlight League, on Monday night for men (5 weeks). Each team has four people, and each match has three courts - one court of doubles and two courts of singles. The wrinkle is that the allocation of people to singles and doubles is done randomly. Because you have no idea whether you'll play singles or doubles on a given night, you have to be mentally prepared for either. This is more difficult than it sounds.
The league has 5 classes; class 1 is the best and class 1 the worst. Any guesses where Lansdowne LTC put me? Yep, class 5. However, the level of play was not bad, and, to be honest, I can lose to a mediocre player just as easily as a good player - ask my teammates back in the U.S.
Although the tennis wasn't great, my teammates were great guys and it was an enjoyable experience. However, the weather was not great. The first week it was super windy - I lost one point when the wind blew the ball two feet wide as I was about to hit it. In my next match, it rained throughout, and the rain picked up in the third set. Why win in two sets when you can stretch it to three sets in the rain. Which remind me, the courts here are astroturf with sand underneath, so they are playable in a light to medium rain (or at least good courts are).
Match #3 was near the airport (our opponents were actually called Aer Lingus). In fact, the directions were to head toward long-term parking. Fortunately, we found the courts before ending up in long-term parking.
Matches #4 and #5 had good weather (as did #3, actually).
Our last match, the quarter-finals of the playoffs, had good weather. I just played poorly, so my partner and I lost a doubles close match (7-6, 6-3). We lost as a team, too, alas. This was particularly disappointing, as we would have been moved to class 4 next year if we had won.
It's an interesting system. Rather than having rankings, the top teams in a class get moved up a class (say from 5 to 4) to the next class and the bottom teams get moved down a class (4 to 5). I like the system.
The only flaw is that all new teams are automatically placed in the bottom class, which creates a strong disincentive to forming a new team. For example, they have a senior league - over 35. But Lansdowne LTC only has one team, and I'm not quite good enough to make that team. But I don't really want to try and form a new team and start off in the worst class.
Last, the league has a tradition, like some of the leagues in the U.S., of socializing after the match with tea and sandwiches. Our team did pizza and beer (in addition to socializing), of course.
It was a lot of fun socially, but the quality of tennis was quite uneven. I'm not sure what I'll do next year.
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