First time pairing with my partner, we did pretty well, lots of close matches.
Bit of background as to how the comp works: the average rating of the pair has to be below 1000, so if you have a strong player, then the other player has to be much weaker.
You might be asking why I join this event then. This reason is because this is the only event that I could join while I am in the city at the time. If I was in the city the next coming weekend, there are so many more events that I can join, but this weekend that I am in the city, I could only find this event that I can join and that means I have to find someone that has a lower rating to play with me.
First match was against a pair where the male is elderly 70s and the female was 60+. The male uses both inverted, while the female uses penhold with rpb inverted and front side long pimple. We got through the first 2 sets with relative ease, and then the 3rd set they started to cause more difficulty for us but we still managed to win 3-0.
Second match was against a pair where there is a big power imbalance. I played against the stronger player (a teenager with rating in the 1200s) earlier in the year 3 times in doubles, 2 of those were close ones, but I lost all of them. This time, he paired up with his friend, who is considerably weaker than he is. We were up in first set but somehow lost it in duece, then it was all catch up work, 1-0, 1-1, 2,1, 2-2, we managed to scrape by in the 5th set and made it 2-3. The weaker player in that pair could only do one serve, but it was low and short with not much spin to it. Surprisingly it causes me to have trouble doing a strong receive to it and when I do try, I often clips the net and loses the point completely. So what appears would be a easy match became a hard match.
Third match (semi finals), we were up against a pair where there is again a bit of a power imbalance, but not so much reflected in the rating. The stronger player uses penhold, forehand inverted, backhand anti-spin. It wasn't so much the anti-spin that was giving me issues, but it was his serves. He was able to do a very backhand heavy side-top serve that is really short whilst keeping it relatively similar in motion with his backhand side backspin serve. The anti-spin was causing some issue with my partner. We were 0-2 down, and 3rd set, we were down again, but we really held on and not give up, so we got 1 set back, and then another set back. 5th set, we had a bad start, 0-4. We didn't give up, we managed to duece it 10-10. We even got a chance at our match point, but I couldn't convert, we end up losing 12-14.
There is a match for 3rd place, and this was another hard fought battle. Against a pair first time that is relatively more even in level (slight stronger left handed shakehand male) and a right handed penhold female, all using inverted rubbers. First set felt like forever, we got it after at least 15-13 or more. 2nd set we took it with more ease. Then we lost 3rd rather poorly. 4th set, we barely lost it, it was sort of important, as there are certain receives that I am more comfortable with, and 4th set was that kind.. So 5th set was going to be a tough one. We managed to take 5th set thankfully without it being in duece.
So out of 14 teams, we had gotten 3rd place. We were seen as one of the favourites, with me being one of the stronger players. But the whole living rurally makes practice very tricky leading up to this event, and then accidents while I was in the city made planned practice impossible. Considering how little practice I have had in the past 3 weeks leading up to this competition, I am still happy with 3rd place. We possibly could have gotten into the finals and at least got 2nd or have a chance at 1st, but it is what it is. I also felt the need to perform better to carry more, and that added to my stress level during the games. The other thing that came to me during the games is the compatibility with my partner. My style is alot more aggressive. I would often create opportunity for him to attack when I serve, by no spin or backspin etc, but he isn't as comfortable in taking advantage of that. Then there is the whole issue with energy level at the end as this competition starts at 6pm, and I got there 5:30 to warm up, meaning I ate a little bit only before that, and by 8pm, my body is telling me to think about food and not the match.
Bonus: apart from the first doubles, I recorded all my games, so I am able to look back at them when I have more time to see why we have so much issues with serve receive.
After the comps, because of how infrequent I am back, I played with some of my other friends. I won a singles 3-1 after leading 2-0. Then we played a doubles before the owner told us he is closing down.
It was a good experience overall, and I will remember this one in my TT journey.
I think this is really the final competition this year.
