Aku menang. Once.

I've been rejecting late night supper or dinner invitations from a lot of people recently. Nas, Nazir and Nas to name a few. The reason being tennis. You know how all of us has a passion for a particular sport. Nas - Hockey, Nazir - Fencing, Mus - Cycling (apparently), Faliq - Frisbee and Suff- Spankwire. Mine has to be tennis. It's the only sport which is up there with soccer in terms of adrenaline, excitement and its challenges. For me at least. Between the two, I cannot and will not want to choose one over the other.

I've been training hard for Sunig this year in hope that I can do well in the competition this year. The Singapore tennis arena, being so small, means that the usual suspects are expected to dominate the scene every year. There is a certain Kamil Ghazali who still gives me nightmares of his 6-0 thrashing in mini-tennis 11 years ago, sheesh kurang ajar betul.

So Sunig (Individual) took place at NUS last week and as expected, there were a lot of familiar faces around. I played Singles and my first round opponent was Nicholas Poon (SMU). Match started at 9pm cos this matrep had some school stuff to settle. That was after everyone has left except for the SMU and SIM contingent. The spotlight was very much on us since it was the last match of the day. He was a big guy whose weapons lie in his serve and his forehand so the gameplan was to get him moving and attack the backhand side. I got off to a good start and held a considerable lead until the later stages of the game where I was trying to serve off the match. Probably a bit of complacency on my side which saw him tying the score at 8-8, so it went to a tie break. At this point I was just frustrated at myself for not seeing off the match much earlier. The tie-break was nerve wrecking la and it was close at 5-5 until I secured the final 2 points to clinch the victory. The ending was a bit anti climatic ah because I didn't celebrate much despite the climax that built up to it.

So the 1st round win felt like a monkey off my back. I was going into the 2nd round(Quarters) feeling confident but my performance on court showed otherwise. Opponent this time was Desmond Tan (NUS). For some reason I was nervy and felt very tight on court. I couldn't get any rhythm whatsoever and before I knew it, he was running away with the lead. I was down 2-5, 3- 6 then 4-7. Somehow I managed to catch up to 6-7, 7-8 and then 8-8. Another tie-break but for all that comeback, I got whacked at the final hurdle and lost.

My teammate ,second from left, won Kamil 9-8. So ya that makes him a tennis noob

It was very disappointing and I couldn't live with the fact that my performance fell short. This I feel is the difference between good players and great players. The ability to produce the goods on court when it matters. And based on this alone, I have somewhere to go.

Ok la I know no one asked for a tennis update but this blog is dead so might as well ah.