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.