More than just a massage at the tennis club

I started playing tennis when I was 4. Both my parents played tennis, although just recreationally. And, in the summer in particular, our entire life revolved around the tennis courts, both friendly competitions and the social life at the tennis club. Our tennis club was a little bit like country clubs are in the US, a place to meet friends, make connections, and learn the codes of the upper middle class.

I’m Belgian by the way, from the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium. But my mom is from the French-speaking side. So, I grew up in a completely bilingual environment, speaking Flemish at school and French at home.

As time went by, I became a good tennis player, a very good one actually. When I got to high-school, my parents and I started having serious conversations about whether a traditional high-school would still work out for me if I wanted to pursue tennis competitively. When I became a junior, I left my high-school and started taking online classes, through a remote learning program tailored for student athletes. It allowed me to participate in international junior tournaments, which became more and more demanding, while studying when I had some downtime in-between tournaments.

I turned pro shortly after finishing high-school. Turning pro in tennis is not as clear cut as football or basketball in the US. In these sports, either you get drafted or you don’t. It’s pretty black and white. In tennis, you ease your way into small tournaments where you make almost no money. And you work your way up from there. Or you don’t.

Being a professional tennis player sounds glamorous. Novak Djokovic has made $175 million over his 20-year career. And that’s just the prize money from tournaments. You can add to that the millions in sponsorship deals and TV commercials for luxury watchmakers and men’s fashion brands. But professional tennis is a textbook example of income inequality, with a few stars racking up millions at Grand Slam tournaments and an army of anonymous players struggling to make ends meet in second tier tournaments.

Players in the top 100 are automatically qualified for the four Grand Slam tournaments, which guarantees them half a million dollars a year, even if they were to lose in the first round all four times. Players in the top 200 have to go through the qualifying rounds first. But even if they were to lose in the first round all four times, it’s still a guaranteed six figures for the year. And at that level, hotels and plane tickets are also paid for. But once you’re outside the top 200, earnings drop precipitously, and the day-to-day reality becomes very different.

I just turned 21 and I managed to break the top 400 earlier this year. When you start as a young player, you play what’s called Futures tournaments, the lowest level on the pro circuit. There are hundreds of these small tournaments around the world every year. The problem is that money is tight at that level. Very tight! Futures have a prize money of $15,000 that gets divided between 32 players. And when you start, you first have to go through the qualifying rounds. And you don’t get paid if you don’t qualify. If you reach the main draw, you only make $150 when you lose in the first round, the fate of half of the players, and $250 if you lose in the second round, the fate of another quarter of the players. After paying for hotels, food, and plane tickets, you’re basically in the hole.

A lot of players at that level have to give tennis lessons on the side to make ends meet, to mid-age housewives at posh country clubs or to bored teenagers who’d rather be watching TikTok on their phone than playing tennis. But while you’re busy giving tennis lessons, you’re not training properly. And if you’re not training properly, it’s harder to win matches and go up in the rankings. Lucky players can always rely on the bank of mom and dad, which has been my case until now.

I mostly play tournaments in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Germany. That way, I can easily take a train back to Brussels as soon as I get eliminated and avoid unnecessary hotel nights.

This constant travelling makes it hard to hold on to a steady girlfriend. There is this belief out there that athletes get a lot of sex because they can get any girl they want. Didn’t Tom Brady marry one of the hottest supermodels on the planet? But my sex life has been pretty dull so far. I’ve only slept with two girls in my life. The first one was the girl who took my virginity. And I took hers too. Her name was Else. I was camping with a couple of buddies the summer of my 18th birthday. And there were these four girls who were camping in the tent next-door. One afternoon, my buddies went grocery shopping while the girls went for a walk on the beach, except for Else who stayed behind. We hooked up and I banged her in my tent. I didn’t last more than 30 seconds. I got overwhelmed by the thought of finally becoming a man. And I was also in a hurry, scared shit that my buddies would come back early from the grocery store and catch me banging that chick in our tent. Just a few strokes and I couldn’t help it but fill up the pouch of my condom with my boyjuice. And I started to go soft shortly after. I don’t think I even managed to make Else climax, although she was kind enough not to say anything and embarrass me even more than I already was. Our quicky happened the day before the end of our camping trip, and I never got the chance to redeem myself before we all went our own separate ways.

Then, last year, I had a steady girlfriend for six months. Stella was her name. But we broke up a couple of months ago. She just couldn’t handle the demands of me being a professional player and the constant travelling from tournament to tournament. She claimed I wasn’t making enough time for her. That’s too bad because I liked Stella. And sex with her was good. Her pussy was always tight when we had celebratory sex after I came back home from a tournament. It was kind of like the warrior’s spoils for me. At least I knew she wasn’t getting banged behind my back by another guy with a horse cock.

Although sex with Stella was fun, I wish she was a little bit naughtier at times. It always felt like she thought sex was dirty. Don’t get me wrong, she enjoyed the tingling of my hard cock in her pussy. But she seemed to despise manjuice. She always claimed I was a messy cummer and would dirty up her bed sheets. She was fine with sucking my dick, but the second she tasted precum, it was time to roll the condom down on my shaft and wrap up my dick before getting inside of her. I always felt like my condom was like the plastic sheets you put on the floor to prevent stains when you’re painting the ceiling. Once I had blown into the pouch, she insisted I tied a knot on the condom before my juice had any chance to drip out. Out of sight, out of mind! Cumming inside her mouth was not even an option. And it’s not for a lack of asking.

Stella wasn’t really a screamer, but I liked the high pitch sound she would make when I brought her to climax. I always felt on top of the world when I extracted that sound out of her mouth and would normally cum within seconds after that. I always put Stella’s pleasure ahead of mine. I don’t know if it’s my competitive side or if it’s just a guy thing. Or maybe I got scarred for life by my premature release with Else on my first time and I’ve always tried to overcompensate after that. Making Stella climax was always my main driver, even more so than my own orgasm.

But ever since we broke up, it’s just been me and my right hand. If I was looking for quick anonymous sex, it probably wouldn’t be that hard to find random girls in every port. Girls like my wavy blond hair, that I let grow almost to shoulder level. But I try to stick to a very regimented lifestyle, with minimal drinking and partying. Tennis is the center of my life at the moment, and I can’t afford any distraction.

The next level up from Futures tournaments is called the Challenger Tour. Money is still not great at that level, but you can at least break even. I started making it to Challenger tournaments more regularly this year, although I still have to go through the qualifying rounds first. The Holy Grail is to eventually reach the ATP Tour, where you start making serious money. But I’m still a long way from there, and I may never even get there. Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz both won their first Grand Slam before turning 20. I’m already 21 and I’m still stuck in the depths of anonymity.

My next tournament was going to be in the Czech Republic. It was a Challenger. The good results I achieved on the Futures tour over the last few months, even winning my first pro tournament and breaking into the top 400, have allowed me to aim a bit higher than before. My ranking was still not high enough to enter the tournament’s main draw directly though. So, I first had to go through the qualifying rounds. But at least, at the Challenger level, players get paid for the qualifying rounds, even if it’s only a couple hundred dollars.

I started to get excited about this tournament when the weather forecast indicated it was likely to be rainy that week. That tournament was on clay. And when it rains, the clay becomes heavier, which makes the ball not bounce as much. And less bounce fits my playing style better.

But little did I know how rainy it was going to be. On the Sunday when the 1st round of qualifying was supposed to take place, it rained steadily all day and the entire Sunday schedule got postponed to Monday, which is when we were initially supposed to play the 2nd round of qualifying. When there are serious weather delays, tournaments usually have a Plan B, which consists in moving some matches indoors. But the weather forecast had called for the rain to stop mid-morning on Monday and then the conditions getting dry in the afternoon. What the forecast didn’t see coming though was that it didn’t just rain on Monday morning. We got a torrential downpour with a month worth of rain in the span of an hour. By the time the rain subsided, the tennis courts were drenched and completely unplayable. The tennis club of that small Czech town didn’t have the infrastructure to tarp its clay courts, the way you see on TV when it rains at the French Open. After the storm, the ground crew worked tirelessly to try to get the courts back to an acceptable state, but at some point, they realized there would be no tennis played on Monday either. By that time, it was too late to reschedule matches on indoor courts and the entire schedule got postponed again. Now, the schedule was seriously behind, and we were going to have to play both the 1st and 2nd rounds of qualifying on the same day, to try to make up for lost ground.

On Tuesday, the sun was finally out, and the schedule was jam-packed with matches on every court, starting as early as 9am. My 1st round match wasn’t scheduled until 11am or whenever the 9am match finished. My first match was against a lower-ranked player. I won the first set, but he fought really hard to stay alive in the second set, and I ended up losing that one. The third set was neck and neck and went all the way to the tie-break. Luckily, he kind of collapsed under the pressure. But we had spent three hours on the court, and I still had a second match to play after that.

My second match was supposed to be against the top seeded player. But luckily for me, he lost in the 1st round to an 18-year-old Czech player who had pulled off the upset. I was banking on the fact that this young Czech player would have a hard time handling the aftermath of having won the biggest match of his career. It often works out that way in tennis. After pulling a big upset, the underdogs often collapse in the next round, even against weaker opponents.

The match before ours lasted forever, and it was already past 6pm by the time our match finally began. Although I ended up winning in the end, the match was a lot tougher than I would have liked. Neither of us was able to break the other’s serve in the first set and he won the tie-break. But I was able to wear him down and win the next two sets. Even though I was tired, following my first match, he was even more tired than I was. His 18-year-old body was still too frail to last the distance and he started cramping up, to the point where the physio had to come to the court twice to stretch his legs. By match point, we had spent almost three hours on the court and finished right around sunset. Another fifteen minutes and our match would have been interrupted by the night.

My body was aching after spending six hours on the courts and I felt like a 70-year-old. I really needed to see the physio, but there was a 90-minute wait because of all the matches having been played today. I couldn’t get a spot until 10:30pm. And instead of the cute blond female therapist I had spotted earlier, the only spot left was with a big hairy guy. But as long as he knew how to stretch my aching muscles, I didn’t really care at this point.

While waiting for my physio appointment, I went to grab a bite at the cafeteria. In addition to being sore everywhere, I was also starving. I got a call from my dad. Since my second match was after work hours, my dad was able to watch it on the Internet and had tons of advice on how I could have handled several key points better. My mom also congratulated me, but without lecturing me like my dad just did. In addition to my parents, I also received tons of texts and Instagram messages from friends and family and also from some of my 3,000 Instagram followers, most of whom I’ve never even met. It’s always nice to receive that level of support when you’re on the road by yourself.

The physio was running behind, and it wasn’t until 10:45pm that I was able to finally see him. The tennis complex had most likely been built during the Soviet era and the massage room was far from the luxury spas where most people get massages. There were no scented candles, no essential oil being burnt, and no Enya chanting in the background. The room felt more like a county jail: grey concrete floor, cinderblocks on the walls, pale light, and just a portable massage table in the middle.

‘Hi, my name is Marek’, said the physio.

‘Nice to meet you’ I replied. ‘I’m Alec’.

‘I know who you are’, he said in his broken English, ‘I only started work at 1 and I was able to catch the beginning of your first match.’

‘You are my last patient of the day’, he added. ‘So, we can stay as long as you need’.

‘That sounds great!’ I replied, as the 30-minute slot I had booked would never be enough, given how my body was aching everywhere.

There was no proper changing area. Marek indicated I could strip in the corner of the room, leave my stuff on the empty plastic chair, and grab one of the towels on the stack next to the chair. It all felt very impersonal, but I’m used to the barebone life of playing in small tournaments. I can only imagine that the massage rooms at Wimbledon are more inviting than that. But I couldn’t care less at that point. I just hoped that Marek knew what he was doing and would be able to stretch my aching muscles.

Marek was a muscular guy, which I guess is kind of important in his line of business. He was one of those guys who could probably bench his own weight in his sleep… with only one arm. He had big muscular arms that filled up the sleeves of his shirt nicely. You could also see the outline of his big pecs underneath his shirt. Marek didn’t look Czech at all and didn’t have the blond hair and blue eyes of most Eastern European men. I would not have been surprised to find a physio like him at a tournament in Turkey. But his accent gave away that he was indeed local. He had brown eyes, dark hair on his muscular forearms, a short but thick dark beard, especially his mustache, and a copious amount of chest hair that I noticed underneath the collar of his shirt when he bent over to massage my smooth torso. He kind of looked like a James Bond villain and you certainly didn’t want to mess with this guy. He looked like he was in his late 30’s, if I had to guess.

I never shave during tournaments. I also try not to jerk off either. I had read somewhere that it was bad for the nerves. As tournaments progress, I get a bit scruffier every day. But since I’m blond, my stubble doesn’t really show until day 2 or 3 and it would probably take me a lot longer to go full-on caveman. And by that time, I’m normally eliminated already. But I can hold my own and grow a nice beard, although not like Marek. And for some reason, my mustache doesn’t connect to the rest of my beard. Because of the 2-day rain delay, I already had a 3-day stubble. But even then, I still looked twinky compared to Marek who was masculine as fuck.

Marek worked pretty much every muscle on my body. And I needed that. He started with me laying on my stomach. He worked my neck, my shoulders, my back, and progressively worked his way down to my thighs and calves. Although I initially wanted the cute blond female therapist, there is no way she could have worked my muscles the way Marek did. His strong arms and fingers dug deep into my tissues. Although it hurt at times, this is what my body was craving for.

After he was done with my calves, Marek told me to flip over, so that he could work on the front part of my shoulders, on my chest, and on my arms. He stood behind me and started massaging my upper body. His strong hands felt so great on my aching pecs. Although he wasn’t fondling my nipples or anything, Marek was still touching them while digging deep on my pecs. My nipples have always been super sensitive and, when I jerk off, I always use my free hand to play with them. While Marek worked on my pecs, I felt my cock getting stiffer, tenting the towel a bit. Marek must have noticed the look of panic on my face when I realized how noticeable my bulge was getting.

‘Don’t worry about it’ Marek said. ‘It happens all the time. I need you to relax.’

My cock must have interpreted Marek’s words to ‘not worry about it’ as getting the green light to go wild. And my cock quickly went from half-mast to a raging hardon. It was now throbbing under the towel, lifting and lowering it with every throb. If the whole stack of towels had been laid on my mid-section, my cock would still have been able to lift it all. The up-and-down movements of the towel made my hardon even more distracting than if I had been naked altogether.

Marek was probably thinking the same thing and said: ‘We’re all men here. We don’t really need this.’

He grabbed the towel and tossed it on a chair. My rock-hard cock was now exposed in its full glory, straight as a flagstaff in a military base courtyard, my dickhead hovering a couple of inches above my treasure trail. Although I wasn’t sexually attracted to Marek or anything, my mind started wandering, trying to figure out what Marek’s cock looked like, in comparison to mine. I have no real sense of where I stand on the totem pole. Last time I compared dick sizes was when I was 15, at tennis camp. Me and the other guys in the dorm room whipped our teenage cocks out and passed on a ruler. I was 5 inches at the time and ended up in the middle of the pack. But that wasn’t even a fair comparison since we weren’t all the same age. Some of the guys had barely started growing pubes and still had a boy-size dick while others were already well on their way to manhood. Nowadays, I believe my 6-incher puts me solidly in the middle, at least in length, even if I might be a little bit skinnier than average. Given his stocky build, I could only imagine that Marek’s cock was bigger, and certainly thicker than mine. This caused my cock to get even harder, kind of like if my cock was puffing its chest to try to keep up with a stronger rival.

Marek continued working on my pecs and my arms. At times, his eyes were just inches from my throbbing cock. But he ignored my hardon and kept doing his job like a pro. My skin was on fire from all the rubbing of his strong hands, and it felt like all that heat was being channeled toward my rock-hard schlong.

There was now a thin filament hanging from my piss slit to my treasure trail, with occasional droplets of precum slowly dripping along the filament. The spot where the filament ended on my treasure trail was now soaking wet. Without saying a word, Marek grabbed a towel with his left hand, grabbed my hardon with his right hand, held my cock straight up, and used the towel to dry out the precum puddle on my treasure trail. No guy had ever grabbed my hardon before, not even my doctor. This sent an electric shock throughout my entire body and caused my cock to leak another droplet of precum, which Marek sponged out with the towel.

After Marek had put the towel back on the chair, I thought he would go back to massaging my arms, but instead, he grabbed my hardon again and started jerking me off, without saying a word. His fingers on my dick sent shivers throughout my entire body and I even gasped a little. He gave me a quick look to check if I disapproved of this. Although I didn’t move my head one way or the other, my eyes must have spoken on my behalf and let Marek know I really needed him to put an end to my dick’s misery.

Marek had a stronghold on my stiff cock. His powerful hands were working wonders on my manhood, the same way they had been working wonders on my aching muscles. It had been months since my cock had been stroked by something other than my own hands, and it felt awesome. And Stella never manhandled my cock with as much strength as Marek. I was now laying on the massage table, eyes half-closed, completely relaxed, savoring the incredible feeling of Markek’s digits on my shaft.

Marek’s technique was a bit different from mine when I jerk off. Although his fingers were stroking my shaft up and down, the same way my own fingers would, he was staying higher up on my pole, rubbing my foreskin against my dickhead more so than I would myself. Although it felt different, it still felt amazing. His strong fingers were also applying more pressure than I normally would. I hurt a little bit, but no more than it hurt when he was massaging my aching muscles earlier. And I knew the initial pain would eventually give way to pleasure. This man’s fingers had the magic touch, on my cock, just like anywhere else on my body. And my cock kept leaking precum on that same spot on my treasure trail that Marek had just cleaned up a minute ago.

At one point, Marek stopped stroking my cock. He laid his left hand flat on my blond pubes, pressing hard on my lower abs. I’m not sure how the pressure points beneath my pubes are connected to my cock, but they must be somehow because the pressure felt awesome.  While still pressing on my pubes with his left hand, he formed a circle between my cock and my balls, using the thumb and index finger of his right hand, and started pulling on my ball sack to stretch it away from my body. It hurt a little, but it was a good hurt. After a few pulls on my ball sack, my balls were now hanging lower and ready to flap around when he’d start stroking my shaft again, which he did shortly after.

When I was banging Stella, it was always all about her, not about me. I always felt the pressure of trying to satisfy her. I was so focused on bringing her to climax that I didn’t focus on my own orgasm as much. But with Marek, there was no pressure at all. It was all about me: my dick, my needs, and my pleasure. And I could enjoy his magic fingers on my cock without worrying about anything else. And his fingers truly were magic. I wanted to cum. I needed to cum… so bad. And I knew I would be getting there quickly.

After a few more strokes, my muscles started tingling, and my heartbeat accelerated. I knew I wasn’t going to last much longer. I was in such a state of awe that I brought both my hands to my nipples and started fondling them. Any appearance of a medical physio treatment had gone out the non-existent window of the prison cell-like massage room. But it felt so good, after my hard day spending six hours on the tennis courts. Having both my nipples being played with at the same time felt amazing. When I jerk off, I can only fondle one nipple at a time, since my right hand is busy servicing my cock. But here, I was enjoying quadruple stimulation, with two hands fondling both my nipples, Marek’s right hand stroking my cock, and his left hand tickling my lose balls.

After not even a minute of all this stimulation, I felt a tsunami of jizz building inside my balls, a tidal wave that no sphincter or willpower would ever be able to stop. I tried relaxing my dick muscles. That’s normally my go-to move when I try to make the sensation last longer. But Marek kept jerking my shaft, and the tsunami kept building up and started travelling through my piping. My breathing intensified and I yelled in French:

‘Oh putain, j’vais jouir!’

It’s funny how, when in a crunch, you find out which language comes to you naturally. When he noticed I was about to shoot, Marek clamped his thumb and index finger around my cock and balls, forming a human cock ring that trapped all the blood in my shaft. And with his other hand jerking my dick, he shortened his strokes, staying at the very top of my shaft. And squeezed the tip of my dickhead.

I remember once hearing a boring conversation between my cousin and my uncle, who are both engineers, about fluid dynamics, something about the diameter of a pipe impacting the pressure and the flow rate. Well, I was about to experience firsthand how reducing the diameter of my pipe was going to increase the velocity of my release.

And my cock exploded like a pressure cooker, a ballistic missile shooting out of my piss slit, my jizz flying right over my head, and landed on the concrete floor behind the massage table. As this happened, an electric shockwave went through my entire body. My muscles tensed up, my toes curled up, my eyes rolled inside my skull, and my mouth opened. And I let out a loud ‘Aaaarrrggghhh!’, while experiencing the most powerful orgasm of my short sexual life.

But I didn’t get much time to reflect on this as I felt the second volley flying out of my cock and crashing on the stubble on my chin, followed by a third one, and a fourth, and a fifth, all landing on my chest and on my stomach.

I kept yelling ‘Oh putain! Oh putain!’, while my spent cock was begging for mercy. But Marek kept jerking it and managed to milk more volleys out of my balls. And my moaning slowly turned into whimpering, as I was lost in a daze of orgasmic euphoria that I wished would never end. I bet Marek was proud of himself, making me whimper like a little bitch. The same pride I felt when I extracted a similar sound out of Stella’s mouth. Except that Stella was a girl. And girls are supposed to make girly sounds. But I’m a dude, I’m supposed to control my emotions better. But I couldn’t. He made me whimper.

After what must have been a dozen volleys, my dick eventually stopped shooting. Marek kept his grip on my shaft, but stayed still, and my muscles started to relax. My dick was spent, and my stomach was drenched in white jizz. Five days’ worth of Belgian juice being milked out of my cock. You would think I had just been gang-banged by a platoon of cum-filled Marines. And my jizz started dripping on the side of my stomach and onto the towel underneath, with more jizz pooling into my belly button. Stella was right: I’m a messy cummer! But I couldn’t care less. I was in a state of absolute bliss. Lying flat on the massage table, fully relaxed, completely fulfilled. This is what the mountaintop guru must feel like when reaching Nirvana. I had never felt so serene in my life.

I just laid there on the massage table for a minute, recovering from the incredible high I had just reached, while my cock was starting to deflate. Marek had walked away to the corner of the room and casually took a sip out of his water bottle, like if nothing out of the ordinary had ever happened. He then walked back toward me with a glass of water in his hand and handed it out to me.

‘Thanks!’ is all I could say.

‘You’re welcome’ he responded. ‘It looks you really needed this!’ he joked.

‘Apparently so’, I responded.

He then grabbed the towel that he had used to soak out my precum earlier and started sponging out all the jizz on my chest. He then handed out the towel to me and I continued cleaning myself up, scraping out the jizz stuck in my stubble and foraging inside my belly button. Meanwhile, Marek had grabbed another towel and was busy cleaning up the mess I had made on the concrete floor, right where my initial cum shot had landed.

I sat up and stayed still for a minute, my softening cock hanging in-between my legs.

‘Is there anything else I can do for you?’ Marek asked.

‘Not right now’ I responded, still in a state of shock.

‘I hope your muscles feel better’ he said. ‘All your muscles!’ he added with a smile.

‘Yeah. Thanks’, I responded. ‘It was incredible!’

I walked back to the corner where my clothes were and just put on my tennis shorts and shirt. I figured out I could free ball for a bit, since I’d be showering soon anyway.

‘Thanks for everything’ I told Marek as I shook his hand.

‘I hope you get some rest’, he said. ‘And good luck with tomorrow’s game’.

‘Thanks’ I replied.

I grabbed my tennis bag, and headed back to the hotel, which was only a 5-minute walk from the tennis club. Back in my hotel room, I stripped down and took a long shower. I normally don’t like it when the water is too hot. But tonight, I was craving for a steamy hot shower, the hotter-than-normal water relaxing my muscles some more and rinsing out the dry cum off my stomach.

I brushed my teeth and went straight to bed. The alarm clock on the nightstand flashed exactly 0:00.

I had the best sleep of my life that night. I hadn’t bothered setting the alarm clock, since my match wasn’t scheduled until 5pm. But I was shocked to see I had slept almost 11 hours. My body needed that after playing two long matches on the same day yesterday.

I grabbed a big breakfast, which doubled up as my lunch, and I headed back to the tennis club. While walking to the tennis club, I couldn’t help but replay last night’s events in my head. This was clearly not Marek’s first time milking a patient like that. But it was the first time anything even remotely sexual had ever happened to me at a tennis tournament. No other player had even alluded to anything like that ever taking place.

At the tennis club, I found another player to hit the ball with and waited for my first-round match in the main draw. My opponent was outside the top 1000. He was a local player, only 17-years-old, who had received a wild card from the tournament organizers. I believe it was his first time ever at the Challenger level. All his matches until now had been at the lower Futures level and at the junior level.

Although I considered myself lucky to face a guy who was so far behind in the rankings, these kinds of matches can sometimes be tricky since this guy had nothing to lose. Besides, he was a lot more rested than me, not having spent six hours on the courts yesterday.

Although I ended up winning the match, it was a lot tougher than I would have wanted. After losing the first set, I was able to wear him down and win the next two sets. But we spent almost three hours on the court, yet again! That meant more energy wasted, which I really didn’t need at that point. He put up a good fight, and he had the local crowd behind him. This was just an early round match at a small Challenger tournament. So, we’re talking about a crowd of 50 people, not 5,000. But his friends and family were quite vocal and applauded every single point he won, while nobody hardly ever clapped for mine.

After the game, I went to sign up for the physio. And luckily, Marek was available.

(To be continued…)