Going through a lot right now. Finished playing the minor league TT league and struggled through a few matches. Had a good team but we had a player that just didn't know how to hit the ball. This led to too many situations where when playing equal or better players, he would get put away opportunities but couldn't reliably deliver the point. Also made it hard to coach him since he had no on demand point winning weapons. Not a good idea to play for too long without getting any coaching whatsoever. I mean, at worst, get a good friend who plays well to show you stuff.
I am trying to put together a weekly league for my club. The hardest part will be finding strong players to raise the level of the club and I suspect it will cost me some money even though it is largely volunteer. I will do it anyways.
I played a tournament today. The plan was to limit myself to two events, U1900 and U2150. Again I was top seed for U1900 and since the other finalist was now well above 1900 I was the obvious favorite (some might say sandbagger but not my fault). My wife wanted me to attend something with her so I had to be done by 230pm no matter what. So I suspected I would not finish the U1900. Regardless, let us fight.
U2150 was first. My group was ugly, I had losses in practice matches against all 3 players so I easily saw myself playing well and losing all the matches so I just buckled in for hard matches since there was no scrub. I played my first match against the D player (I was the B), a guy who has a very aggressive blocking and pushing game and attacks hard opportunistically. The Viscaria SALC with 05 had fixed one of my main problems against such players which was the ease of getting speed and spin. I had beaten him in a practice match at our regular club on Thursday so I was confident but the tables at the tournament skidding a bit more. During the warmup, I could see blocking was a problem and focused on heavy spin. I won the first game easily, lead for most of the second game, but ended up losing at deuce. He was missing his openings more than he usually does so I focused on long pushes and trying to open if I got a push back. Won the third game, was up 8-4 in the third game, lost 3 points and then called a timeout. Closed out the match winning thr next three points.
Played the A player, a young lefty i have never beaten before in tournaments despite holding match points. I had beaten him in our most recent practice matches but unfortunately, this was a different tables. Serves I could bother him with at my club, he looped easily. He won the first to games 11-6, 11-3. So I focused on the one thing that was working (long pushes to the backhand). I won game 3 12-10, but lost the last two points of a close 4th game 11-9.
Now for the B vs C matchup which determines the second player to advance (the A player leftie had beaten everyone else). The C player was another young lefty, i had lost to him during the league 2-1, but it wasn't that close, I salvaged a golden point in the very last game. He had served a lot of no spin sleeves that I just pushed off the table. Then later, I found out his rating was now officially 2000 as he had some upset wins against higher rated players last week Saturday. However he wasn't reseeded for this tournament. I started the first game missing pushes and attacks and I am not entirely sure what about this kid's game causes me so much problems with calibrating the spin. I kept playing catchup and was soon down 4-8. But I told myself that just keep focusing on executing the play, he relies on my mistakes but if I keep calibrating the attack, it will come together. I was missing his sidespin push to my forehand but I started to lock in and once it started landing, I got the game to 9-9. He got the first match point at 10-9 but I deuced it. I got my first mach point with a their ball attack but then he managed to retrieve the ball away from the table when I was attacking and I dumped the ball into the net for 11-11. Serve and backhand drive kill for 12-11 and i looed his serve for 13-11. I think my winning that game really affected him because after that, I took an early lead in game 2 and won 11-6. I kept doing my noise making and got the score to 9-3 in game 3 hitting wide angles on openers. He got it to 9-6, I called a timeout. I won the next two points and that was all she wrote, i had advanced to the quarter finals.
I played the top seed in the quarters. Somehow, I won the first game 11-9. Then he got early leads and he is a strong frontrunner, keeps up the aggression when he has the lead and is relaxed and I lost the next two games at 5. When i spun onto his backhsnd, he often just blocked the ball softly to my fprehand and i could not consistently generate. My shoulder and neck were beginning to act up. In the 4th game, he had match points at 10-4. Then 10-5 ans 10-6, sere and attack won the point. He missed the pop up to give me 10-7. Looped long for 10-8. Dumped my dead balls into the net for 10-9. Then we played a 10 shot rally point at 10-9 and i racket edged my final loop off his block.
And that was the end of the 2150. I lost to the top two players.
I was very sore and considered pulling out of the 1900. But I am an addict so...
I played my first match against a 1500 player (he was C, I was A) with a spinny forehand. I had played him before and usually beat him 3-0. But his forehand had more spin and my pain made it hard for me to consistently attack. He went up 9-3. With some calculated pushes and smarter returning, I got it to 9-9. Then I lost the next two points, the last when he looped a long serve to get it to 11-9.
Now his buddies now got into the match. Now I was struggling with my injuries and figuring out my capabilities. But dealing with his spinny forehand was the biggest problem, it isn't often you face a player who just can loop the ball at you and you can't block it even with reasonable technique. I just resigned myself to accepting the loss if he was playing this well. I pretty much won game 2 mostly on serves and pushes and attacks few opportunistic backhands. Then game 3 started and it was a battle till the end with his friends cheering him on. I was trying really hard to win it because 2-1 is very different from 1-2 with crowd and underdog. But my backhand openers kept going long as his pushes didn't have the weight i was looking for. It got to deuce and we traded game points. And then he punches my loose no spin serve to go up 2-1 and win the game 16-14.
Game 4, there wasn't a chance I was going to win this comfortably attacking so I looked for other ideas. But I lost the first 3 points with missed serves and bad pushes. So I said no more attacking unless it is blatantly easy. I had a block that landed late on the table with an early cho from him for 5-2. Then he and his supporters tried to focus. I switched to backhand side topspin serving and all of a sudden, i tied it up at 7-7. The sidetop caused more long pushes off the tables and pop-ups for kills. I also entered pushing ralies where I lost if he got the forehand in but survived otherwise. I was surprised that it still got to deuce but I won a point with the serve and he served long onto my backhand which I forced myself to topspin and he blocked it off the table. So it was game 5. An observer took pity on my pain and told me to use the side top much more once i got a lead. Thr last game was far less eventful as I managed to find more consistency and he still struggled with the serve and I won 11-3.
You might think, NL, you wouldn't be stupid enough to continue playing in the pain you were in... you are smarter than I am for sure. I decided to play the B player as well. I felt i could play better against him since he didn't have the overwhelming weapon the C player had and while I was right, he refused to give me an easy victory. His primary weapon was a no spin serve which if pushed he would attack really hard with his forehand. I fell for it a few times and then mostly spun it from there. I went up 2-0, but then the pain got worse and he scored a few easy points with short serves to my forehand. I muat not have made it very obvious since he didn't double down on it. I lost the third game at 8, but went up 9-3 in the 4th, mostly by looping his serve and continually changing the spin on mine while making the serves look superficially similar. Then I got it to 10-3, but then it soon became 10-6 with my serve. Somewhere in there, my shoulder became pretty unuseable. I don't know what would have happened of he kept his returns tight but I was lucky he opposed up the ball at 10-6 and I managed to drive ir well enough to win the match with my lower arm. But that was it, I was unable to swing at the ball after that and was done.
So I am now on Tyenol and Meloxicam attending my wife's function and hoping I am not out for too long. But it doesn't feel good...
On the EJ front, I think I am going to try Dignics 80 on the SALC. I think my original concern was that there might not be enough arc for D80 but the blocking issues of D05 make me think I should at least test it and see. Until next time...
