After my match with Tabares, I struck up a conversation with one of the roving umpires, the one who had spent most of my match against Tabares sitting in the chair above the net.
“You played a great match,” he said to me in the lounge afterward. “You ran down so many balls in the first few games that I thought you had a shot.”
On the plane ride home I realized the kind of roller coaster the tournament had been. I had gone from telling Troy I thought I would have to default to holding my own (sort of) against one of the top players in the country.
I thought about my journey in Nationals. Ten years earlier, Goers was involved in another scary moment on the national circuit for me. That time I thought my life was in danger.
I had gone into that National 35 and over clay courts more prepared than ever. The event was in Daytona Beach. I took two weeks off and spent a week training for it at Saddlebrook.
I spent that week playing six to eight hours a day in the steaming heat. I was sore but the heat cured me every day. The only problem was staying hydrated. I could only drink so much water and drank a lot of Gatorade during the day and Diet Coke at night.
I lived on cereal, pasta and salads. For all the poor preparations I had for tournaments in the past this one I felt I was ready for.
I drove from Saddlebrook to Daytona Beach.
The facility hosting the tournament was brand new and there did not appear to be a building or tree for miles. Forest fires a few months earlier had made the land barren. It was like parachuting into a little tennis-only universe.
My first match was against another New Yorker, a guy who plays in many National tournaments, but is nowhere near National level. I beat him 6-0, 6-0.
My next match was against Goers, who I was meeting for the first time. But I had scouted his first match and noticed that he was a lefty who ran around his backhand. My strategy was to try to get to that backhand. And make him run.
We played a long first game with him holding. The second game was also long, with him breaking me. I was discouraged, but thought if I could just keep the games long he would tire. It was a total misread.
He held to win the third game. The fourth game was a war. I saved a break point to bring it back to deuce when I could not catch my breath. And my chest was hurting.
Was this some sort of asthma attack? A reaction to chemicals that they may have used in the new construction?
I did something I never did before or since at that moment. I intentionally bounced the ball on my foot so it would roll back to the fence. Then I slowly walked back to the fence to pick it up.
I tried to catch my breath. I could not. I lost the next point. Then the game. I still couldn’t breathe. But I was still moving and sort of playing so it couldn’t be too bad I thought. I tried to play through it, but I started going for crazy winners and did not have a chance.
The breathing didn’t get worse but the chest pains did. I even started to think I might be having a heart attack.
The match ended and the breathing went back to normal. But the chest pains continued as I drank my Gatorade. The next day it was a dull ache but I tried to practice. The chest pains came back instantly. Now I was scared. I stopped playing and even though the pains went away they would come back with even the mildest exertion, like when I took a shower.
I was fine as long as I did not exert myself in any way, but something was definitely wrong. So I drove back to Saddlebrook. I thought about seeing a doctor, but I was so much into my training I thought it was more important to consult the coaches at Saddlebrook. I told them I was still getting chest pains in the shower.
They told me to see a doctor. I flew home and looked up a doctor. I kept thinking here I am in the best shape of my life and I was going to a doctor because I couldn’t exert myself.
Aside from my back issues, which I saw the chiropractor for, I had not been to a doctor in years. I looked up my health plan for one that was nearby.
I was in his office the next day.
I described my symptoms. He said he wanted to test my lungs. He gave me a contraption to blow into. I blew into it. He looked at it.
“This can’t be right,” he said looking at the result. He adjusted it. Shook it in his hands and appeared to tighten a loose screw. He gave me it to blow into again. He looked at the result.
“You have the strongest lungs of anybody who has ever come in here,” he said. I almost jumped for joy. I am in great shape, I thought. Wow, I had accomplished my goal.
Then I thought a little bit. The people in his waiting room look to average about 80 years old so maybe he wasn’t saying that much about me.
Then I thought a little bit more. If it wasn’t my lungs, it must be my heart. I started to break out into a sweat.
He brought the nurse in to hook me into a heart monitor. Eventually, he came in and leaned over the machine to read the results. He was shaking his head. I was a goner. I was expecting to hear I was dying.
He turned around. “You have the heart of a marathon runner,” he said.
I was shocked. I went from dying to being in top health in about 15 seconds. But the question was still there. What was wrong with me?
I was confused and still a bit scared. He said he would run more tests and get back to me.
That is one of the weirdest times of life. Waiting for tests to determine whether you will die very soon or be considered in top athletic shape. Not only is there the range of emotions, but there is the reaction to the range of emotions.
“If I am healthy, boy it was stupid to be so worried and depressed about my fate.” Or “If I am dying, it would be really arrogant and reckless to be going on with my life as if nothing was wrong.”
The tests finally came back.
I had something called acute esophagitis. All the dehydration and rehydration with Gatorade and soda had caused my esophagus to get ripped apart. I was given pills and told to drink nothing but water and stay away from spicy foods. I felt better instantly.
And at that point I started to treat nutrition as important as physical training. Or at least tried to.