After the knee injury which I had 2 weeks ago, I came back to competing in a small tournament, an inter faculty tournament. Last year our faculty won easily, so I thought this year will probably the same and it will be a good warm up for me to get back into training. Nope. There was a guy who had trainings 5-6 years ago, who was very good with the foundation skills. He beat me in the preliminary round 2-0 when we played games of up to 7 (idk why such rules).
Then as the 2nd team finishing the preliminary round, we get to play them again in the finals. This time I said to myself, I really wanna beat him to win it for the team and to get my revenge. This time, we agreed to play normal games up to 11. I lost the first set 8-11, then from losing 10-7 on 2nd game, i hung on to win 16-14. The final set was very similar, winning after many duce at 15-13.
Unfortunately my teammates lost their singles and doubles, so we ended up getting 2nd place this year.
The lesson I learned today, is to really work on my 3rd ball attacks against good players. Against weaker players, their return of serve is often of a lower quality, which makes it alot easier to execute a 3rd ball attack than say in a tight match, where the opponent is of similar skill level or higher.
Second thing is match mentality. My friend told me that from observation, I was playing alot more defensive, and usually I am an attacker. I think it is due to the anxiety as well as the other player's skill level, which made me more hesitant and as a result, I ended up backing away from the table. At times even went to do lobs, which is not something I practice.
Third thing is, I realise that in these matches, when I am nervous, I forget alot of the serves that I do. Especially my usual serves, I don't use them, and instead I moved on to do serves which I would use less regularly in normal games where I am not stressed.
In bottom line, I need to practice more 3rd ball attacks with good players, and continue to develop my match mentality to play out my style and use my serves haha