The day started with breaking and entering (a misdemeanor I believe), where we had to jump a fence at PB Rec Club to gain access to our courts at 7:30 AM. We quickly jumped right in to competition, beginning with a round robin seating round. Pete, Bing and Rudy made up Group A. Ant, Jantz and myself made up Group B. Pete swept Group A, going 2-0, Bing 1-1 and Rudy 0-2. Ant, Jantz and I all split, going 1-1 each, but margin of victory declared me the top dog and gave me the first place seating coming out of Group B. Jantz secured the number two spot with Ant rounding out the third. Back in his comfortable roll as the darkhorse, an upset was never out of the question for the DJ Darkhorse. Unfortunately for him, the stars did not align and the darkhorse just remained in the dark. After getting kicked off of our first courts (who knew you could reserve public courts???), we changed venues to the Avalon (where we broke in again...for those of you keeping track that's a total of 12 misdrs. on the day) for the actual tournament.
It was here that the man challenge ran into it's first non-sports related challenge. Peter had to leave. With the tourney set, we were faced with the decision to postpone to a later date (an option nobody wanted), set up matches between each competitor seperately at different times on different days (possible but not without it's problems), or forfeit Pete at which point he earns a 1 (last possible option). The decision was made that if Rudy lost in his matchup, we would postpone the rest of play until Friday morning, a time that only clashed with Rudy's schedule. Pete left and Rudy won. With the shit hitting the fan, the challengers were faced with the dilemma: Postpone the entire tourney for one missing man or go on without him? Discussions were brought up and a vote was made.
The Case For Peter: He earned a number one seed in the tourney and would have competed for a top spot, he made the effort of showing up at 7:30 to play, he needed to work to bang out some rent and couldn't drop his shift, he was in number one and giving him a one would look like we were taking the bitch way out and gaining on him in points by ways other than beating him (this reason being the biggest reason I believe on why we pushed back numerous events in the prior weeks).
The Case Against Peter: We took a hard line against Bing and Rudy in Week 1 when we could have let them play golf at a later time, but insisted on giving them zeroes for missing; the double standard was obvious, we all need to bang out some rent and still took the day off for the challenge, Rudy skipped class to compete, meaning that of the six competitors, we would be forcing five to bend their schedules to one; completly bush league, we had already pushed back two competitions for Peter (mini golf on kart day because he had to work a day shift and mini golf on frisbee day because he had to work a day shift; both days every other man was ready to double it up) and postponing a third seemed ridiculous and one sided.
The vote was unanimous, Peter was given a 1 for his absence and the tourney played on....for SEVEN HOURS!!!! I don't know if you have ever played anything for seven hours, but I don't care what it may be. Modern Warfare, Beer Pong, guitar, the skin flute, Scrabble. You do it for seven hours and something will be hurting. Of course we forgot water, sunscreen, food. Two of those things are essential to life. At the halfway point, Jantz made a trip for Gatorade and Energy Bars. Bing and Rudy played a marathon set, going into a tie breaker game with Rudy finally winning 7-6 (15-10). Ant was smoked by me in the first round of the tourney and immediately bounced from the competition by Bing 6-0. He can thank Peter for the 2 he got instead of the 1 he would have earned by being the first eliminated. Jantz beat Rudy and then continued on his streak by beating me 6-3. What was amazing (or as I like to call it spineless and totally bitch) was that I was winning 3-0 to start the set. Jantz then begins to taunt me, running the baseline shouting "Over here!" before each serve and nicknaming me "Double Dan" in reference to the amount of double faults I hit (for the record, I may have double faulted alot but I also screamed 15 aces by my competitors, which was 12 aces more than the rest of the challengers combined). Basically, I let him get into my head and he took the next SIX GAMES from me. Bing beat Rudy, handing him his second loss thus eliminating him and met me in the consolation bracket, where I handled him easily 6-1 (the highlight winning a game by acing him four times in a row). The win set up a rematch between Jantz and myself (the third time we'd played). We battled back and forth, with Jantz finally taking the lead and winning 6-4.
When it was all said and done, we had played 7.5 hours in the blistering soCal sun on little water and no sunscreen. Our backs were scorched, our hamstrings tight and our forearms sore. Feelings were hurt along with our backs, but in the end one thing remained.....we competed, we battled and we had fun.
The Results
Jantz-1st place, Z$-2nd place, Bing-3rd place, Rudy-4th place, Ant-5th place, Peter-6th place
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