The Whupping at Westhoff Park
On a sunny day in early March 2021 we headed out to find a forgotten court. We are still in the throes of the Covid-19 pandemic with vaccines on the way but not widely available to our age group. First stop was to stop at Scott’s dad’s house where Stan was able to lay down some of his expertise as a ReMax agent to counsel Scott’s Dad on valuation of his house and future improvements necessary to maximize value. Since it was the beginning of March Stan brought some Bulgarian Martenitsa to celebrate. A Martenitsa is a small piece of red and white yarn that you wear from March 1 until you see a stork, swallow or a blossoming tree. We put our Martenitsa on immediately and began watching out for storks.
Once we finished up with Scott’s dad we headed out of Westhoff Park located in O’Fallon Missouri. The park was named after former O’ Fallon mayor Paul A. Westhoff who served in the early 1900’s. The park has a lot of amenities for residents but we were drawn to its three tennis courts. The park was extremely busy this March afternoon and we were lucky to obtain one of the three tennis courts.
With a spin of the racquet the match was quickly underway. Stan won the toss and chose to serve so Scott swapped ends of the court putting Stan in the sun to serve. This did not work as Stan started out the match working on Scott’s pandemic weight gain by hitting several stunningly effective drop shots. Scott went to the sun side and also held for a score of 1-1. The remainder of the set was all Stan hitting great body serves and tracking everything down while Scott’s normally reliable forehand produced error after error. First set to Stan 6-1 Stan provided some mid- match refreshments in the form of hard Kombucha.
The second set is where it got a little interesting. Scott held to start and then his forehand returned and with great service returns he was able to break Stan and gets out to a 3-1 lead with a stellar lob that went over Stan’s head and bounced on the baseline and out of his reach. It was at this point that Stan invoked the legend of his 100 kilometer hike to the Buzludzha monument as an 11-year old boy. His father took him on a hike that terminated at the soviet monument at the top of 4728 foot mountain. Stan even still has the T-Shirt from this hike and promptly pulled it out and put it on – it still fits. Then he proceeded to tell Scott that he was not going to lose this match because Bulgarians had been dealing with adversity since the beginning of time.
Sure enough Stan wins four games in a row to go up 5-3. Scott holds serve to get back to 5-4 leaving the match up to Stan’s serve. Unbelievably at this time Stan brings out an underhand serve which works and holds the game to win the match 6-1, 6-4.
Afterwards we looked for a place to grab a beer and some food and located a place called Petrichor Brewing a few miles away. Scott drove his fully charged electric Nissan Leaf there while Stan had to take his petroleum burning Volvo to refuel and then met Scott at the Brewery. As Scott got out of his car a masked man yelled Hi and to his surprise it was Trevor Reese fellow tennis player who works at the Library Branch across the street from Petrichor.
Petrichor was a great finish, we had beer and burgers sat outside with no masks and made friends with some bees and a fly. It almost felt normal. A great day. Westhoff Park gets a 10 for location and condition.