The Forehand Challenge
Social media posts can certainly cause some controversy. In the spring of 2017 Scott made a Facebook post stating that nobody could beat him playing to his forehand. Immediately Mark Zolman who has quite the forehand stepped up and said he was up to the challenge. Stan wanted in on this battle as well since of course Bulgarian forehands are the best.
A period of negotiations began which labored on for months. Which court?, can you hit a backhand?, what parts of the court?, how many people playing at once?… The final decision was made to play on clay at the Highlands with the rules being as follows:
Regular scoring and serving.
Balls could only be hit as a forehand
Court definition was the deuce side including doubles alley.
All points served and played to the deuce side.
Winner is the first to win 10 games with everybody playing same number of games
2 players at a time with one rotating out after every two games
On a perfect Sunday evening in July we assembled at the Highlands and completed a short warm up on the green Har Tru surface. A quick spin of the rackets determined that Mark and Scott would begin the Forehand Challenge.
Mark started serving and won his game at love by breaking out the serve and volley tactic. Scott fired back on his serve by winning his game at love. Stan stepped in for Scott and split games with Mark. As Mark stepped out he had a 2-1-1 lead.
Scott came in and split with Stan leaving everybody tied at 2-2-2. We remained on serve until 4-4-4 at which time the crafty Bulgarian began to formulate a winning strategy. Even with the narrow court Stan began to serve to the T for an automatic winner and then in rally mode he would go wide to the forehand and then blast the next ball to the middle of court forcing his opponent to hit a backhand and automatically lose the point.
Using this strategy he vaulted out to an 8-4-4 lead. Mark and Scott both won two games each off of Stan using some extremely deep long and physical rallies to get to 8-6-6 putting Scott on the court with Stan. Stan promptly broke Scott following his new strategy. 
Stan then closed out the match by firing a couple serves right up the T forcing Scott to hit backhands. The Bulgarian Forehand was victorious and will forever rule the Highlands!
We have previously covered The Highlands in our blog Bulgarian Down! A great after match spot nearby is one of our favorites Layla located in The Grove just a short drive from here.