After the previous weekend of back to back 3 set battles I was definitely feeling discourged with the beginning of my season. The shadow of those matches loomed over me as I approached this new opponent. This week I assurred that I was well rested and prepared for the match at hand. I played Justin at the St. Pete Tennis Club. I had not played there before and it was nice to play somewhere new. Of course on Sunday most of the courts were full and there were lots of younger people playing some competitve tennis. I felt old.

I arrived on time and began warming up. I always suck at first and during the warm up Justin was hitting very well. He hit nice ground strokes that were landing deep in the court. They had lots of spin and bounced high. I was concerned. I noticed he was a lefty and made a point to mention it to him during the practice. I like to do this so my opponent knows I am thinking about it. I took control of the practice session though and worked on some vollies and then serves. 

The first set we started by winning on each others serve. I was winning on his because his service game was really off. I do not know the count on double faults but it was pretty high. On my side I was getting my serves in early but my strokes were not good initially. I kept falling away from shots and seemed to land a lot of balls in the net. At one point during the first set he was up 3-2, I knew this was a critical time in the match and pushed myself to tighen up.  I started putting some more pace on my serve and changing between a flat and spin serve. This seemed to work. Also I noticed that he had the most trouble with serves hit right at him. This realization was an important one during the match and I did not lose on serve after noticing this point. Even if this theory was not entirely true the fact that I was focused on this new aiming point seemed to imporve my overall server percentage. I managed to crawl out of the 3-2 deficit and win the first set 6-4. 

The 2nd set I was able to control the points fairly well. I got a lot more approach shots in this time then last weekend and I would charge the middle of the court. This seemed to work most of the time. The more deliberate my move to the middle the better as he seemed to look up and hit an error in many of these situations. He pointed it out to himself a few times saying "I took my eye off the ball...", of course I was listening and kept doing this. The times it did not work seemed to be when the approach was poor and/or I moved too close to the net. I also was not getting my racquet squared up at the service line and a few times and missed because the ball just bounced off the angled racquet face. I did not do this in practice but it seems to come up in the match. The points I lost during this set were close for the most part. I know the last game I was up 40-0, all from serve points which were not returned in, then I lost 2 straight points and was at 40-30. I psyched myself up to get a good first serve in that was directly at his body and the match ended on an error into the net. I won the 2nd set 6-3.

Final was 6-4, 6-3. Hopefully Justin will call sometime and we can practice. I think he had an off day and I had an on day which sometimes happens in tennis. I think if we were both having an on day then we would have played 3 sets...not sure of the result though, guess we will have to wait and see.

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!

Today I played Jay (Mike) at his home court, Bardmoor. Me and him have quite the history which you could read on this blog. I have played him 3 times now. I won the 1st, he got the 2nd and today he won the 3rd meeting.

Mentally I had really put too much pressure on myself for this match. I knew it was going to be tough and I wanted to win badly. We played in the morning which is not something I prefer but that was not really a major factor. During the first set I was really nervous, I was playing sporadically and I my backhand was very bad. I do not think I got 1 backhand in during the 1st set. The points were close and there were several Deuce games but in the end I failed to win any games.

During the 2nd set I changed my grip on my backhand to a flatter, safer slice type shot. This seemed to help a lot. I won my 1st service game and broke his serve early. At one point I was up 3-1 during the 2nd. Things started going south for me though. He seemed to catch on to the aggressive play and was hitting lots of good overheads. Most of them I just did not even try to get because they looked close but I don't think he missed many. There were some which I stepped back and got out of the air but not too many. I really could have won this set, it was just a matter of 1-2 points honestly. I think losing the first set so badly effected me mentally and him positively as well. At 5-5 he managed to break my serve. During the 6-5 game he got some lucky shots in and I made some errors at the critical moment.

Could I have won ? The answer is most certainly Yes. I need to work on my backhand even more so I have enough confidence in it during big games like this. I recall having a similar problems during the playoffs. It is the shots you are not good at that break down badly during the pressure matches. My other shots were pretty good, there were times I was not stepping up to the ball and played too safe so this is something else I need to work with.

I lost 0-6, 5-7 ouch!

BTW, his wife was there watching again but she was not a factor at all. She stayed well off the court and never caused a disruption of any kind.

Well I been real busy with work and have not had time to blog lately about tennis, so now I am catching up on 2 weeks. Here goes Week 4...

I played a new player to the league, Craig T. He started the match by telling me he was overrated and was almost apologetic about it. Anyway the match started real well for me. He had trouble with my serve and his was not going well. Every now in then he would get a hard low serve in that was difficult to return but mostly he was hitting 2nd serves and they were not very hard. He made a lot of errors also. The first set was very fast, maybe 20 minutes and I had won 6-0.

During the 2nd set I got a little cocky. I lost 3 games right off the start. I am not sure what was going on but I just lost my concentration. I did manage to tighten up after these games and win the 2nd 6-3.

I think he will be a tougher opponent after he gets some time playing in the league. He definitely started hitting better during the 2nd set.

I played this match during Week 2 on last Saturday morning. I was really looking forward to this match as I played Gustavo who beat me last season in the final week of regular play. He has a nice forehand and hits it low and hard over the net. This time though I was ready for this shot...

The first set my serve was not too good. I was getting warmed up and seemed tentative when hitting it. Gustavo took advantage of this and it was really what lost my first set. 3-6.

Second set I was determined to win. I started serving much harder and it made all the difference. I began winning my service games more easily and this seemed to frustrate Gustavo. Another thing I focused on was hitting it deep with lots of top spin. This was a tip from my friend Derek. The ball would bounce high and kept him from hitting his hard forehand back to me.

I love playing him, we are really very evenly matched. This time I came out on top 3-6, 6-3, 6-4.

Well I am officially on a roll! I won my 2nd week as well 6-1, 6-3. Very weird to have the same score 2 weeks in a row.

 I played Jack who is new to the league. I think he is much better than how he played. While we were warming up he was hitting nice shots, deep with lots of spin. When practicing serves I think he missed like 1 out of 9. I really thought I was in for a long night after warming up. 

 Everything changed once play began. He almost never got his first serve in. His 2nd serve was soft lob over the net. His returns were almost always inside the service line and soft. I spent 80% of my time coming to the net. I came to the net off my first serves, his second serves, and anytime he hit short.

My biggest question is how did I lose 3 games in the 2nd ?  Well I think it is just cockiness on my part and him getting warmed up. I seem to do that frequently. If I win a first set in a big way I slack off or go for too many crazy shots in the 2nd and begin losing points. With this league all about points every game counts. My goal is to move up again to 3.5 and in order to accomplish that I need lots of points. This is something I need to work on. 

Let the games begin!

 This season will mark 1 Year I have been playing in K-Swiss - woot!

 What an exciting season I have this year. Only 2 players in my division are from last season so I will get lots more experience playing new people. 

I played my first match last Wednesday evening (9/24) against Mike S. This was his first match in K-Swiss. We played at Treasure Island public courses which are right on the water. It was real windy. Mike seemed nervous and made lots of errors. My game was very good as well. I came to the net a lot and had good success there. He always seemed to be either standing too far inside the base line or was just out of position. During the 2nd set the wind worked to his advantage and he began to play better. He managed to win 3 games in the 2nd set. 

There is no telling how good this guy really is, with the wind and being his first night in the league a lot of pressure was on him to perform. I remember my first match and it was tough. 

 I started out on a win: 6-1, 6-3 

Well technically I had my first losing season in K-Swiss. My win percentage was 43% overall. I had many close matches during the season. 2 tie break match's and another which was pretty close 3-6,3-6 match. The good news is I did make the playoffs. There were so many people that were disqualified for being underrated and the fact that they have 30 spots in the playoffs means you have to be ranked below 35 or 36 to not make it in. I ended up 21 out of 62. This makes it clear that I am in the correct division though. Falling just above the middle of the pack means I am in the right place.

Below are the screen shots from K-Swiss site showing how it all played out.