Today I had round 2 with my friend visiting from HK, the one who beat me hard 7-0 [and i score less than 5 points per set...] last Saturday morning, i couldn't return any of his serves. [usually its more like 50-50 to me or even 60-40 for me]
We played in another venue, in front of the coaches, after each of us taking a 1h lesson. As soon as the lesson was finished we were ready for matches. I really wanted to do better than last time, and anyway it couldn't be worse. We agreed 4 sets win , like in WTTC
The 1st set, i was a bit tense, but I could return much better his serves, I wasn't moving so well and had some problems my 3rd ball attack, but it was clear that I was the better player in rallies, and that if I could attack first, receive correctly and control his first attack, i had great chances of winning the point. The first set was hard fought, i had a few set points first that i didn't convert, then he had a few set points, but rather luckily i managed to get it after a long deuce.
However, in the second set, i was still nervous, made some poor returns, which give him some easy kills, he played a bit better, and he got it. In the third set i was more positive from the start, started receiving and attacking better and won easily. In the 4th set, i was cruising ahead 8-5 and a bit overconfident when i missed a rather easy ball. That affected me mentally because i missed 2 receives and then played bad the next 2 points, he was 10-8 with his serve, but luckily he messed up, with one serve miss and then a bad choice on his next serve (a serve that i knew better how to receive), and i got it 12-10.
So i'm 3-1 up but it could have been 2-2 or 1-3, he's affected mentally I believe from here. I become more confident, my serves and 3rd balls get better and better. I win easily the last set.
He wants to continue, so we go for another match, and i beat him 4-0 merciless in total domination this time. His confidence is going down, he's making more mistakes while I play better and better (more consistency, better serves, better receives, better 3rd balls....)
So 8-1 so far, and a tie on aggregate, there's some time left so we continue to play.
Because i came back to a tie, then unconsciously, i start to get tense a bit again and to lose focus, and i lose 11-3 this set ! my worst set of the day... but i quickly recover my mind for the next 2 sets, to get a 10-2 lead. We play the last set, where if i lose it would mean an aggregate tie, but I get it with authority again, for an 11-2 CRUSH...dedicated to @ttmonster
I'm of course very happy with the result, and actually I carefully prepared to play him... hehehhe. Because in the preceding 1-to-1 lesson with the coach, I asked him to give me tips how to receive long serves to my FH, those same sidespin serves (hammer with FH, or BH serve) that he did to me, and spent a lot of time practising... So my error rate went down from 80+% (on Saturday) to 33% in the 1st-2nd set, and down to 20-% later...
