So the over 45 event was later in the day. We serve food at our events so instead quite a bit which I almost never do when playing. I wasn't sure what my elbow would do but I decided to try it out.
Got to the table and the first player seede C I was supposed to play defaulted from the event. So I got to play the B player who I had played three practice matches with the day before, winning two of them 3-2 and losing the last one 0-3. I had decoded what I thought was effective and decided to play him with that. He was very athletic and tall and played off the table with big forehands and an inconsistent backhand. So I needed to not drive the ball but spin it as heavy and short as possible forcing him either to play at the table or to generate with precise timing away from the table. Went up 2-0 in quick fashion but then I started playing lazy and his strengths with chopping and keeping the rally going returned. Lost the third game after spotting a large early lead but managed to win the 4th game at deuce. I won the match against the D player 3-0 and went into the knockout.
Had a very long rest period waiting for the next match and when it finally came, I was to play a fellow player from Dallas, a man in his 60s who had been almost 2200 when he was younger but was now 1600-1800 on paper. That said we play each other fairly often so we know our games. The main difference was that I had been resting and he had been playing. Of course it was not to his advantage to let me warm up or to warm me up properly so I had to hope at some point I could get into form against him.
I lost the first game, going down 8-2 early and losing the game at 6. My timing was off and I was pushing a lot of his pushes off my serve which he had floated back to me and they were going off the table. The second game, I was down 8-4 and then I finally started clicking. I won the next seven points, mostly with offensive play and won the second game. This changed the tone of the match. I went down 5-1 the next game but managed to get it back to 5-5. At this point I felt the handwriting was on the wall and I when I was up 10-8, I served a high and extremely heavy backspin serve that my opponent smashed and it went straight into the table. My opponent was shocked and asked wherher the serve was legal lol. I won the last game playing some shots that I dont usually play counterlooping and attacking topspin with a different intensity. So it was on to the semis.
The semis was against a fellow association remeber who i have known since 2013. I have never beaten him before though i have taken one game off him in a couple of matches in the past. He has a namesake who usually beats me as well so one of my goals this year was that I should beat both of them in matches, mostly because they say (with some justification) that my game is very basic. My argument has always been that if most players serve cleanly I can get in. Not saying my serves dont have issues, but I believe I try aggressively to be clean. I had told this as a goal to a mutual friend and he had seen me beat the namesake in a practice match. So we warmed up and got ready to start this match. And one thing my opponent does when he serves is that he uses mostly backhand serves and leaves his hand in the contact zone for the serve, sometimes obstructing, sometimes not but always distracting. And he sometimes serves over the table as well. And usually I complain about the serve but to no avail. However at this tournament, there was an umpire who had explicitly announced that he would umpire any match where serves were an issue and encouraged you to not argue but call him once he was required. So at 2-3 with my opponent serving, I called for the umpire. I know from previous experience that this is a dangerous move for both you and the opponent but I have worked on most of my serve issues so I know that I can deliver decent plain serves without any major issues. The umpire immediately started giving us warnings, my opponent was warned for over the table and finger tossing and I was warned on serve height of my toss (which mostly happens because most umpires measure by hand separation not by travel height), but definitely the calls were net in my favor. Usually i have trouble defending his heavy spin backhand but I did a great job today blocking and countering aggressively. I still messed up a lot on serve return but with the umpire making the calls, I got that out of my head and focused on the match itself and on defending and countering whenever I popped up the return. I won the first game after a long deuce. My basic strategy was to attack any short push with my backhand, accept the results and take no quarter. At 10-8, I popped the ball up and still managed to win the point with great defense and I was suddenly up 2-0. My first time ever taking two games off my opponent. Would I complete the job?
The third set was extremely close as we traded leads and points and it got to deuce. He god the first advantage, I won the next point. Then I got the advantage. I served. He pushed, I opened with heavy spin with my forehand and he counterlooped the ball for an edge. I walked to pick up the ball with yhat hey it happens mindset. After he won the next point he called a timeout. I think I saved that point but I couldn't save the next two and it was now 2-1.
But in my head, I was still playing the points better and in control of the tactics. All the modified serving had made my serves less predictable. I got a couple of fault calls when I tried to serve fast side topspin but that was it. But I was opening reliably on backhand, stepping back to spin reliably mostly with backhand, and I managed to maintain a lead consistently. At 9-7, we traded points and I was up 10-8 with him to serve. He served and the umpire faulted him for beginning his toss over the table and I won 3-1.
I was so euphoric. I had not been able to bit a ball since Sunday that week and got to hit for the first time on Friday. I really didnt expect to get into to finals. And the last match was not against a member of the organization. So for me, beating him had no meaning and I was not in the mood to suffer just to do that. So I defaulted the final. People were broadly unhappy that I did but I really didn't care, only the people who understood what the win meant to me understood what I did.
So that was it for Saturday, two second place finishes. We went out to eat and sleep and my original intent was not to play on Sunday.... however...
So I had two second place finishes on Saturday. What was happening on Sunday? I had the U2300 event. Unfortunately, we had gone out the previous night and I struggled to sleep. So I woke up at 7 minutes to 9am for an event starting at 9 am, The umpire, who did a great and extremely professional job throughout the event and even more amazingly refused to get paid for it, was going to default me, but since I was affiliated with the tournament organizers, they asked him to let me play. I got there 20 minutes and in addition, the player who beat me in the U2100 final was added to my group. And that player that missed the U2100 round robin as the B player was also in my group. The last player was a kid I had seen play at Myrtle Beach, he had two teammates that played somewhat similarly. They were all coached by Cazacu so I called them either Cazacu Kids or Cazacu Forehands, depending on the context. People who have watched Cazacu know that he has one of the most outright consistently and spectacularly powerful forehands you will see on the US circuit if not the most. And the top seed was a young lady who used Medium pips on backhand, I used to do well against this style when I faced it a lot in NJ, but older and slower with less practice against it, I wasn't sure what could happen.
So I played the player who should have been B in the U2100 first. He was the lowest rated player in the group so he helped me play while giving me a chance to warm up with relatively little risk. I managed to win 3-0, mostly because he wasn't able to remain patiently consistent against my quality and he couldn't move me enough even after I stepped back from the table. It was more work that I expected so I know I didn't have my best stuff.
Then I played the guy I lost to in the U2100 final. Like on the previous day, I won the first game comfortably. The second game, I started have a few more problems returning serves (funnily enough, those serves got faulted in the umpired doubles final which I didn't play in quite a few times), I lost the next two games, had chances to take it to the 5th in the 4th but lost two crucial smash to lob points as the smasher. Lost 1-3.
Then I played the overall top seed, the lady. While I didn't know it at the time, the Cazacu forehand kid had beaten her 3-2 so she was out for justice. She raced out to a 7-2 lead but somehow with more calm and calculated play, I got it to 7-7. But misreading a lot of popups off the medium pips, I lost that game 11-9. Struggled through the next game but lost that one 11-8. Tried to overpower her with spin but she hits the heavy backspin ball perfectly so my real opportunity lay in floating the ball more but my footwork might not have been able to keep up. Lost that pretty quickly, might have been at 3 or 4.
Last match was against the Cazacu forehand kid. List the first game 11-9, but the outlines of what I need to do were clear, The biggest one was to play slower and with spin. Even when I drove the ball with decent spin, I always lost the point because the kid was dialed into those balls. But if it went slower, the timing caused him problems. He also got me to push a popup a lot of serves to his backhand and he trained to kill those balls without hesitation to the forehand and the speed was too quick for me to react. Won the second game 11-9 and then tried to speed things up and lost the 3rd game 11-8. Won the fourth game 11-8 and we went into the 5th, Got a big lead in the 5th, but the kid was never really out of it - playing slower in the 5th game is hard because I mistime a lot of balls trying to brush thinly, I need to work on slowing down the game with more solid contact. Got it to deuce and he missed his third ball attempt and I made mine and I pulled it out 13-11 in 5. Since I was 2-2 and the two top players were 3-1, I didn't get out of the group. But I beat the lower rated players and lost to the higher rated players and as my late coach would always tell me, that is what we call "A GOOD DAY OF TABLE TENNIS". You can guess what "GREAT" days and "BAD" days were lol.
Also played some doubles matches. There were some funny patterns but I won't bore you with the full details, But since there were some strategic lessons, I will discuss some stuff. My partner was 1800, I was 2000. Our first opponents were 2300 and 1600. We went down 2-0 trying to do the natural thing of containing the 2300 and attacking the 1600 but our main mistake was serving mostly backspin to the 1600. Once we started serving long topspin, his error rate went up. We won game 3 easily and could have won game 4 but your truly served backspin to the 1600 on match point. Way to go.
The next match we were up 2-0 and our opponents came back (those dodgy serves came into play but we didn't have an umpire for that match).
Final match was against the Cazacu forehand kids. They went up 2-0 and we were expecting annihilation. All of a sudden we went up 10-0 in the next game and if you asked me what we did different, I cannot tell you. We won that game 11-2 and the next game was more of the same, 11-4. And if you ask me what we did. I do not know. We were actually up 8-6 in the 5th but they managed to pull it out. I wish I knew what threw them off so much.
So my partner and I lost three competitive matches and that was it for the weekend. Great tournament. Met up with lots of wise people, saw best friends living in Atlanta. Now back in Dallas, back to reality and the daily grind of life.
