So I went into the club today to support my students who were playing. An underestimated reason why students have good strokes but play poorly is that they don't have their coaches around to teach them match strategy in real time. The coach who helped me break USATT 2000 often traveled with me to tournaments for free and even when Brett was here, I played one league and two tournaments where he saw me play matches because I wanted to get his read on the match in real time so I could understand how he felt about my game or what I needed to work on. It also helps the coach see what the student may need to fix to win matches if the coach has a just-in-time element to his training to fix problems seen in matches.
My lady student has decent form but she doesn't play enough and often misses the essential element of ball control ( spin generation). She is not fundamentally athletic and I am pretty close to moving her to short pips because I get the impression she consistently wants to take the ball early but unfortunately, she also perpetually drops her paddle and swings upwards and often swipes at the ball when it is short without imparting much spin. Her short strokes and balanced form are her saving grace and she looks really good, she just lacks the ball instincts. She lost all her matches but managed to wind up in 2nd place because there were only two rated players in the lowest event
. Unfortunately, I was sometimes too loud when I sighed in obvious displeasure and she heard me while playing. Will have to work on that. She needs to develop a consistent desire to spin the ball - she too often is satisfied to just hit it. That said, I might just move away from spin and get her work on speed and touch as a weapon with pips.
I then served with a brand of spinny short pips to see how it compared to inverted. I thought I wasn't getting as much spin as I would with inverted but that said, the video doesn't lie - the ball was pretty spinny.
Then my temp student played in the U1650. He ultimately won the event largely on the strength of his defense, which many people found funny since they remembered him as someone who tried to swing hard at everything. Today, probably because of tournament pressure, he didn't find that middle ground between defense and offense as well as I would have liked. On one hand, he needed to realize that his opponents were weaker enough than he was that as long as he opened with heavy spin, he had IMO a 90%+ chance of winning the point. On the other hand, the opponents were so weak that they couldn't punish him consistently enough for pushing - that might change if he plays the higher events tomorrow. He also didn't read the short sidespin serve well but that is a common error. He needs to clean up his serve tosses and I will continue to work with him on that.
I almost cost him the match too. Up 2-1, I told him he had to be more aggressive and stop pushing all the time and look for the opening topspin more so that the kid wouldn't build his rhythm. But when he did that, he lost badly and missed the majority of his openers. So I told him to play how he felt comfortable and to open only when he felt comfortable doing so and that fixed the result in the 5th game. I felt that if the kid was more consistent after attacking, the kid could have won the match.
Here is the match:
Tomorrow, I play my events. I hope my left knee cooperates because it has been a pain all week. I played the defender at my club (haven't played him in a while) and he seemed impressed by the changes to my game. I have tried to improve my forehand by working on taking the ball earlier like I do on my backhand but I think that will take time to implement and will likely not be on the table consistently tomorrow. But in any case, we play for fun, do our best, and let the Gods determine the result. But doing my best is not optional.
Cheers.
