Well I moved up to 3.0 for more of a challenge and that is what I got on this match. This was a 3 set battle with the winner being the person who physically out lasted their opponent. Unfortunately that was not me

I played Tony and we were very evenly matched. He was pretty fast on his feet, especially for his size. He was taller than me. He got a lot of balls in and every now and then would hit a real nice forehand which I could just not get too. His serve was not too good as he missed a lot of 1st serves and his 2nd was always something to win on. This kept me in the running more than anything.

I seemed to get easier returns with my spin serve so I kept using that throughout the match. I tried the harder serve a few times after he broke my serve but found that he returned those even better. I think he plays people with hard serves as he mentioned he plays a lot of doubles. The high bounce - deep serve worked best.

Most of my loss in this match was attributed to my backhand. He would hit a nice deep ball to my backhand and I would either miss it short or just get it over the net. When I just got it over he was fast enough to capitalize on this.

The thing that did work for me was hitting deep balls right down the pipe to him. He was normally only good for a 3-4 hit rally and then he would normally try some hard return and hit it into the net. I recognized this but failed to execute the method consistently because of my weak backhand and getting tired toward the end of the 2nd and 3rd set.

I got his number and look forward to playing this guy again in the future. I do not have to play him again this season but I definitely want to get some playing time in with him as we are very closely matched.

Final Score was: 6-4, 3-6, 4-6.

 My next match is against a guy who beat Tony 6-1, 6-0. It is his first season in the league, Tony says he better than a 3.0 player (clearly).  I also have a match coming up on Wednesday 6/18 against a guy I played last season and had a 3 set battle with, that one I came out a winner lets hope I do as well this time.