Hey guys, with some delay, but before it gets blurry I want to mention the fights where I struggled.
So, I struggled a lot with Alex, a lot. He has a material, and is very very unpleasant to play, I lost first set, and the 2nd was very very tight, and I got lucky in the decider point.
I struggled a bit less with Ken, also a materialist, with his signature @rights-reserved KenSpin, very-ugly-you-never-know-what-spin. The 2nd set was a bit easier with him than with Alex, but we had crazy exchanges, he is capable of high lobbing and returning everything, and he is not the youngest anymore, incredible, incredible.
With Nick, I'm not sure I'm going in the right order anymore, but anyway we got into the decider point, where we entered the FH counter spin exchange, and Nick managed to produce a FH topspin which I didn't return and he won. It was so far the only loss for me. And later on Nick asked: "Who did you lose to today, he?" ;-)
With Adrian, who I think actually is a better player than me, I played good in the first set, but he won the 2nd set convincingly. But I got the serve, so in the golden point, he miss-timed and overshoot and I won - lucky.
With Craig, the golden hand, we also got to the decider, and there, can you imagine - he had the serve, made a good one, I slightly misread it and it got over the net down on his half, unreturnable. So again, I got lucky. Craig was saying during the dinner: "Jan is kissing the net" ;-)
With Laj, NextLevel, on Sunday, that was the only match I lost 0:2, I struggled with his FH serve variation strong underspin and no spin. He played very very well, and I didn't, simple as that, or more precisely "shit happens", LOL. Hopefully I will have a chance next time ;-)
With Marcel, also I think is a bit better player than me, I was losing in the 1st set but returned and got lucky to win. The 2nd set I lost convincigly, and in the decider he opened with FH spin, slightly higher, which I could counter spin and won, luck again.
Finally with Leon, a defender, I lost the first set. He can nicely chop the spins, but I adjusted and won the second set clearly, but in the golden point, he had serve and I misjudged the amount of backspin from his short-pips and put it to net -> loss.
When I count, this amounts to 9 lost games, but I have lost 10 according to the table, which means I already forgot one, sorry about that. Perhaps Nikos or Matt, I don't know now.
The TTD team, as you can imagine, Tom simply didn't want to win it, LOL, and Dan was half alive, we got lucky he came for the Sunday... It was a pleasure to meet the Chairman ;-)
Anyway, it was excellent, I'm not mentioning all fights, sorry. Also, as you can imagine, speaking only about TT falls a bit short, but I still wanted to do it. I do think this format preferred slightly the "unusual" styles, but I 100% think it was the right choice, given all the constraints, excellent foreseeing by the captain ;-) Cheers.
