It has been four years since I posted in this blog. Four years. It sounds like an eternity. Folks have started and earned a college degree in that time. Presidents have been elected to a term and elected out of office in that time frame. One could fly to Mars and back to Earth twice in four years. Four years.

The last four years have been a bit of a whirlwind for me. 2019 saw me slow down a bit on the tennis court to about twice a week as my body started to break down a bit (I developed patella tendinitis in both knees) and my Friday night private drill group fell apart and faded out of existence. I have found that my body needs a recovery day between tennis days so my drill options became limited and three days in a row leads to several days of recovery if I am working my shifts and cannot dedicate some time to recovery techniques.

2020? Well, it started badly in January as I became sick with what in hindsight was probably Covid, but at the time, tested negative for all known flu strains. That caused me to miss a few weeks of tennis as it impacted my energy level and it was a struggle just to get through a work day. I got maybe a month or so of tennis in before the mid March lockdown began and my club closed down for a couple of months. By the time the club re-opened, both my wife and I are in professions that we can not work from home and required us to be in the work place interacting with large groups of people. We decided to put tennis on the back burner and limit our interactions to our work places and each other. That was 2020.

2021 started the way most of 2020 went. Once we were both vaccinated (two weeks after the second shot in April), we decided to return playing tennis at the club. It was not a pretty sight. I had gained a bit of weight after more than a year without tennis and my fitness level had definitely declined. I felt like a beginner again. Forehands into the net or long on a regular basis. Backhands flying every which way but straight. I limited my drills to the 2.5/3.0 level for several months until I could gain back some resemblance of my former self.

By the time 2022 rolled in, I was finally starting to regain some confidence in my game and had resumed one of my favorite drills at the 3.0/3.5 level. We both had tested Covid positive in January causing us to miss a couple of weeks, but our symptoms were mild and we were able to resume playing tennis post quarantine. As the punishing Texas summer is coming to a close, I finally feel like I am back to the level I had attained pre-pandemic.

Sky Dog Tennis is still alive.