I really hate that I am so competitive sometimes. It takes some years off my life I think. I obsess over it and when I do not perform I just lose it. The image of this racquet is not distorted, this is what it actually looks like now after the final point.

Today I played Mike S. This is the 2nd time I played him. The 1st time, which I blogged about, was last season. I won that match 6-1, 6-3. The match was his first K-Swiss match, it was at night, was very windy, and I played very well. I was prepared for that match and came to it with an open mind ready for any opponent. I played aggressively and won.

This match I was 20 minutes late to start (my fault time change and other stupid reasons). I did not prepare for it as I should have. I played 3.5 hours of tennis the day before and the day before that I moved my office. I expected to win as I did before. What I got was a 3 set battle in which I came out the loser. The images here tell's the tale, I made lots of errors.

Mike's weapon is that he returns most shots. He does not hit hard or play extreme angles or anything like that. He moves well and gets the ball in. There are lots of opportunities to hit approach shots and then close with winners. For me this is a problem right now it seems. First I was missing my approach shots, I knew this was and issue going into the match and struggled with it. Then when I did get the approach in or hit a shot to get him off balance I would not finish the point. There were many shots hit long and quite a few overheads in the net. I cannot count the number of relatively easy winners I missed in the middle of the court.

This was my match to lose and I lost it. I kept falling into his game which is to just get it in. Not the game you want to play against this opponent. Putting pressure on him worked when I was able to execute. Next time I play him it will not be 3 sets, I will go down swinging for winners at the net or win quickly.

 Final Score: 7-6, 6-4, 4-6

P.S. I also seem to have an affinity for jamming toes, this is the second time this has happened. This is the 2nd toe over on my right foot. I jammed on Saturday during the 1st match with no blood and then during the 3rd set I jammed it again chasing an overhead which made it bleed. Only a matter of time before the nail falls off, good times.

Ok so only my coach and Mom likely read this blog so keep this in mind when reading if your not one of these people by chance.

 This past 2-3 months since the end of the last season have been a real busy time for me. I tried to train for the season and I lost 25 lbs to help my game. The problem is I have not been able to get lots of match time in. I had a buy the first week of the season and had to travel last week so I am behind on matches. This means playing 2 matches this weekend.

Let me begin by getting all the outside excuses out of the way:

1. Have not been playing matches
2. Moved my office the day before, very sore.
3. Courts were full of people, lots of distractions
4. Teenagers yelling obscenities during the match
5. Really hot girls playing tennis 1 court away from us
6. Played in the morning, I was tired
7. Stupid statistics coach told me, awful Approach shot stat in my head
8. This player is the reason for me being in 3.0 1 more season
9. He rubs it in between games telling me about how out of shape he is and all his injuries

Ok I think that is all the outside excuses, if any more come up during the blog I will let you know.

So 1st match was against Doug L. I played him at the end of the last season. He is an older guy (55+) who has lots of experience playing and if he was 10 years younger would likely be a 4.5 player. His weaknesses are his server, playing the baseline, and moving a lot. His strengths are ball placement, playing the angles, and drop shots.

As you can tell from the description above I had lots of running to do and many approach opportunities. He hits lots of drop shots and short balls and uses his placement ability to put the angle or passing shot by you. The best way to beat him is to hit good approaches and move him into the corner. The approaches cost me LOTS of points in this match. I do not know the stat but in my mind I would think it was 80% of them I missed. I come in fast, don't stop, and then go for a winner. This results in hitting long most of the time, over 10 shots I would likely break it down like this 7 long, 2 good, 1 in the net.

This was the come back match for me. It seemed I had to be down to get hungry enough to win. Set 1 I was down 0-4 at one point. I came back to force a tie break but lost it. Set 2 I was down 2-5 and came back to force the tie break and won it. I fought off 2-3 match points. Set 3 I got down 2-4, then 4-5 and fought off 2 match points. Finally over coming him to win 7-5 in the 3rd. I could tell it was over when I got him to 5-5, after he had so many chances to win.

When coming back and fighting off those points I focused on not swinging so hard and hitting everything deep and cross court regardless of what he did. Now I don't know why I can't do this the entire match knowing it was a winning formula but I just didn't. He would hit the short ball and I would come in for the kill, see red, and hit it to the fences. When playing baseline shots with him he would never last more than 2-3 shots before hitting it into the net.

Final score: 6-7, 7-6, 7-5. Match lasted approximately 2.5 hours.

I know I have not blogged about Week 6 yet, well I played this week before 6. The guy called me and wanted to play early so here I am. I play Week 6 tomorrow.

This week I played Jeremiah. He is new to the league but apparently played a lot when he was younger. First thing you need to know about him is he is 6'6" and in good physical condition. Even if he could not play tennis very well he would have been tough. That was not the case though, he was a player.

He knew how to come to the net and worked it often. When someone that size is at the net it seems nearly impossible to get something by them. During the 1st this seemed to get to me quite a bit. I normally do not play my best during the first set and if forced to make really good shots I tend to make errors. This was essentially the reason I lost the 1st set 4-6.

Throughout the match the thing that helped me most was his service game. He had a on/off style serve. It was either coming at you at 80+ mph or it was not going in. He doubled a lot. During the 2nd set I started to get a nice game going and at one point was up 3-1.

I started hitting my serves with a little more pace which also helped. I had noticed he was slicing my serves hitting sort of a drop shot return on them. Something you don't normally see but again because of his height he seemed to pull that shot off quite a bit. He would also follow this shot in so as your running up to hit this slice he is standing there casting a shadow over the ball. This made it even harder to hit a nice shot back, the angle made it impossible to hit an overhead so you were constantly forced to make some sort of passing shot. Hitting it harder on the serve seemed to foil this shot more often than not, also over time in the match I just started following my serve in a few steps as seemed to never hit a deep return. I won the 2nd set 6-3.

 During the 3rd it seemed like I was going to run away with it. I was up 3-1 again. Then out of no where his serve seemed to come back to him and he really began burning them in. This flustered me a bit and I ended up giving up a service game to him also. Finally though I managed to finish it off on serve and win the set 6-4.

Final 4-6, 6-3, 6-4. Nice 3 set battle, I am sure I will play him again if he stays in the league and he will be much tougher the next time.

The single biggest thing that I enjoyed about this match is that I adjusted to his slice return and over came it. Last season during the 1st round of the playoffs I faced an opponent who did the very same thing. I never seemed to adjust to it and lost in the first round. This time was different - woot!