So I wake up for the final day of the NA Teams - I am not staying at the tournament hotel so I have a 30 minute drive that is very smooth in the mornings when I make it. We have two teams left to play. Depending on whether the teams want to win and whether my rest works out, it is a fun day. Let's see whether a story is still interesting when you know how it ends. I won all my matches today, putting me at 9-6 for the event and my team at 2-5 in matches.
My first match was against a player who i generously estimated after the warmup as being 1600 (I was right that he was lower but had a hard time registering that a player lower than 1600 would be on a team in my division. His game was so awkward and he served a lot of slow topspin and I struggled to figure out what the bug was. But after the first game which I won with a struggle (the awkwardness just stuck on my mind), my teammates clued me on that he was whacking the ball when he had the chance so I should just give him balls that hacking doesn't work extremely well on, which means largely avoid the kinds of topspins his coaches would feed him. I won at 3 and 2 after that.
Then the next match was against a young woman who another of my teammates with pips had already beaten. I had seen her warming up yesterday and felt i was too old to be playing someone with this level of energy lol. Seems like my premonition was right and she was enjoying the quality of my topspins. She pushed well and also served backhand and when she attacked, she attacked to the middle. I lost the first game despite having a 9-7 lead. I then looped more slowly and with a bit more control and placement to get the match to a 1-1 tie, though even at 1-1, I just didn't feel like i had anything to work with. I could feel she wasn't a higher rated player than I was, but I couldn't find what the bug was. In the third game, I started pushing her backhand serve too early and popped it up either off the table, or to the middle of the table for a ball she would drive into my middle for a winner. Even in backhand rallies, she would sometimes place the ball uncomfortably. I wasn't getting obvious misread but I played decent points. I think we got the score to 9-9 but the most frustrating point was me down 10-9, and she pops up the serve to my extremely short forehand but I could not make contact and like that, I was down 1-2.
So now getting a lead was important and I think I got to something like 6-3, and my teammates felt i was losing focus and wanted a timeout but I rejected it. Then suddenly the score was was 7-8 with me down and I took the timeout. My teammates were pointing out that she was as strong on the wings as I was and I needed to find a way to hit the middle. But under pressure you can't over think these things, it is just as important to play the point and conscious thinking interferes with the playing process. Out of the timeout, I pushed and and popped up her serve and got a third ball attack into the middle again. I lost the second point on my serve and now I was down two match points. The focus for me became making sure I would not loop a long serve off the table but I also would not hesitate to spin the shit out of easy short balls over the table. I won the first point. The next point after a couple of pushes, I got a semi high ball over the table and my backhand is supposed to be my best shot so I spun it for a winner!
At deuce, my lifeline would be back if I just won the freaking game. I had tried some side backspin serves in to her middle forehand earlier in the game and she pushed a couple of them into the net. A lot of my serving switched to backhand sidespin but I also had to survive her backhand serves which were repeatedly drawing errors from me. Some points, she brought my power loops back and I looped the block into the net or off the table. The deuce went on about 10 points but I won 16-14. A loud cho because I am back on effing business.
I think losing that game deflated her. I started serving side topspin into her forehand middle and she kept missing or popping up the balls. She barely got a point in the last game and I had survived the most nerve wracking match of the event (for me). To be fair though, the match sharpened me quite a bit and I learned a few things about hitting clean and controlled topspins that I will take into some matches. She called a timeout at 0-4 so everyone needs an education in when timeouts are valuable lol.
I then played their teams highest rated player in this match. He had powerful strokes on both sides but only produced quality (rarely with heavy spin) consistently on obvious balls. But the difference between how I did against him and how my teammates was another example of how my serving and backhand just create a game that some players are not used to. He struggled to return my serves consistently and even his power strength sometimes had obvious placements that were not beyond my blocking capabilities. I won in 3 games with very little fanfare. My team won this match 5-2, the other teams' two wins coming from their best player.
The final match was against a family team anchored by a rusty 2200 player who was the only team member with a different surname. The father and his two sons make up the team. I used to play the father and the older son in some matches at Westchester back in the mid 2010s when I was training seriously in my early youtube days. The father is an extremely nice and transparent person and doesn't play or train as much (he had a best friend who he played a lot with and since the best friend stopped, he hasnt played as much). I was meeting the younger son for the first time and just as fate would have it, he was my first opponent.
A first game against a new opponent is often a game of cat and mouse but I figured out a couple of things very quickly. The kid liked to serve no spin hoping the opponent would push and pop of the ball and let him get his third ball in. But when you kept the ball low with light spin, he still looped it like it was backspin and lifted it off the table. This bug was basically enough with my other features to not make the match close. He did fix the bug against other opponents later.
I then played his father. I won a close first game 11-9. His father was using an all wood 5 ply (or maybe 7 ply) but then rebound was slower and the control on his hits and blocks was giving me issues. He won the second game 11-4 as I struggled to return a lot of his heavy long serves and popped up a lot of the shorter serves for third ball attacks.
In the third game I kept a large focus on the backhand side since I felt my backhand was ultimately better as long as I used it properly and with confidence
The biggest change that broke it wat 8-8 was serving long no spin serves which he topspined with his backhand but which i backhand topspinned over the table for winners. I won the third game 11-8, got a huge lead in the 4th game ( he turned down a timeout from his teammates), and won the game going away.
My team lost the match 3-5 with 2 wins from me and one of my teammates beat the youngest on a 5 game 11-9 thriller. And that ended my team's tournament with a 2-5 record.
I will be getting some points which I will take back to Texas where they will likely send me back under 1900 again lol. It's all good though... so what was my overall estimation of my play?
One good comment I got was that my forehand no longer has a backswing. I will have to see the vide to verify but my coach has tried to work on my keeping the racket in front of me at all times and kick topspin even with the forehand when I have less time. My mobility was good, even though I put too much pressure on my forehand when I allowed opponents wider angles into my forehand. Not a good mix with my shoulder issues.
There is a lot of stuff I can do to make my backhand extra super and I think I will continue it. It separated me from a lot of players and I think that it will be the simplest way of making my forehand better and more effective.
Finally I am going to find some money for Craig Bryant and work on serves. I could see how they made it easier for me to beat opponents that some of my teammates struggles with. If I could build out more deceptive serves, it might make my life easier outside the club.
Finally I suspect i will either end with D05 on both sides of the SALC or have have 09c forehand and 05 backhand. I don't think I have the patience to do tacky rubber on the backhand at the moment but watch me lose to someone who does and change my mind...
That's all folks and if you read this long, thanks!
