Opponent: Shaun "TheShaun"
Opponent Rating: 3.0
Date: Sun 23 Sep 2007, 3pm
Location: Vancouver, Stanley Park
Surface: Hard
Result: 6-0 6-0
Shaun very kindly showed up to play me despite having a bad shoulder that messed up his serve, and having already played his regular hitting partner in the morning. By contrast I was 100% fit after a morning on the sofa (they show English football in Canada!) and then a leisurely walk to the park along the sea wall (really beautiful).
It was a great public facility - lots of good hard courts in a nice setting. Our court was surrounded by trees with the only downside being that we had to kick as many leaves off the court as we could before getting started.
Shaun was struggling just to roll his serves in consistently with his injury so I was getting a good start on most points. We had some long rallies and close games, but in the end I closed out a 0 and 0.
It turns out that Shaun took ten years off the game and has only been playing again for a few months since. He spent some of that time professionally driving racing cars. The closest I ever got to that was picking up a speeding ticket on the way up to Seattle, in what was apparently a "safety corridor".
We met up for a beer in town that evening, which was a lot of fun, and Shaun gave us some tips on places to go. Vancouver seems like a cool place so it's nice to be out of the car (we had to drop it off in Seattle) and just relaxing here.
We fly to Toronto on 26th Sep. Nothing arranged for Toronto or Montreal yet. Get in touch if you'd like a game there. Otherwise I've got a break now till Boston.
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