Pacific Life Open

For the past three years, I've done my best to get out to Palm Springs in the middle of March for a little bit of tennis. This was my third year out to the Pacific Life Open tournament and I'm starting to consider it an annual event for myself. However, the fourth annual trip is going to have a lot to live up to after the awesome time I had this year!

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This year a group of friends and I were fortunate enough to get credentials that allowed us into the player's lounge at the tournament. Being a pretty big tennis fan... this was awesome! Not only were we within an arms length of practically every top 25 player on both the ATP and WTA tours... we got the chance to meet and talk with players such as Andy Roddick, Dominik Hrbaty, Xavier Malisse, Fabrice Santoro, and... Andre Agassi!

We actually got to spend a lot of time with Andre's strength and conditioning coach Gil Reyes. He is such a great guy! He treated us like we were his best friends for the entire time while we were at the tournament... and we were so appreciative! He helped make this year's trip something that none of us will ever forget. (And hard to beat in future years!!)

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Besides the time we spent at the tournament, we also had a great time at the hotel we stayed at. As you can see they had some great grass tennis courts... that we spent way too much time out on. I've posted some pictures on my website... but there might be some software version issues. If you can't get a clean version of the slideshow on the site... you can also check out the pictures here.

The Leslie Allen Tournament

Well, this last weekend was bookended by two different rain storms... but there was perfect tennis weather in between. Saturday and Sunday in Santa Barbara turned out to be perfect days for playing tennis!

I haven't really been out playing that much primarily because of what my schedule has been like for the last few months... too many other things to keep my occupied. However I can't really complain too much about how I played. I still ended up losing in the semis to someone who I should have been able to beat. Too many unforced errors!! Which is exactly the way my opponent plans on beating people. After this loss, I'm convinced that I don't have the fundamentals down on even my best strokes. Against players who return with no pace, I should still be able to place the ball into the corners with pace and follow it in. I definitely didn't do this on Sunday. Now I've got something to work on out on the practice court!!!