Tennis: SSC open grade 'A' tennis tournament

On Saturday the 18th, My doubles partner Hemaka and I played our qualifier match for the semi-finals. This gave me the chance to work collaboratively with Hemaka. I have successfully been able to address one of my CAS goals which was to take part in three tournaments, so this makes it 1 out of 3 so far.
We were up against some very skilled players as we had expected. Of course, we did not expect to win against them because the amount of time and practice they put in to the sport is much much greater than we put in to it. Yet we showed perseverance and commitment to the match and improving our techniques as we played. We did lose heavily unfortunately-although coming very close at certain points such as having three deuces  in the first three games. Since this was my first ever tournament, I was under a lot of pressure and while playing, I could see myself making very stupid mistakes that I usually do not do when playing matches with students from my tennis lessons and I also saw my partner not performing his very best either. However, the important thing is that we gave it a shot, we hit the ball hard, served to the spot most of the time and at the end of the day of course, the better team won. The two players we were up against even gave us some pointers after the match to do better in the next one, this was very helpful and so I really tried to take as much of their knowledge as I can so I can use them in my next tournament/match.

What I learnt:
So over all, this was merely my chance at experiencing some real world tennis first hand and challenging my self to take on the pressure. As this was my first tournament, I was very nervous during the match and as I said before, I did not perform the best that I could. However, as we played on the pressure slowly began to fade away and I started to feel a lot more comfortable with the environment. This increased my awareness of my strengths and areas for growth, both in my physical skill and mental capability for improvement. I feel that this is a great achievement for me because I am now able to put aside my fears of all the eyes looking down at me and taking on competitors who I have never met before. Though we lost very badly, We kept our heads up high and soon, even began to laugh about the whole thing. I hope to continue showing dedication to the sport and to always show sportsmanship during a competition.

The tennis court at SSC, as seen from the balcony