I reluctantly played local league yesterday. Why? The gym is difficult for me to compete with the glare, reflections from shiny floor, white wall background, provided match ball old and off color and shiny, poor acoustics, closeness of tables, people constantly walking through court or hanging out on court, balls from adjacent court coming at you or at your feet every other point, and frequent interruptions (you get 1-3 lets almost every point) are some of the reasons I choose not to compete (and pay money to do so) at that place.
I simply do not compete worth a crap in that gym. I can lose to a 1200 level player if they can manage to get the ball on the table and I am off 1 cm on attack. I compete in that gym only when I must, like the CDNF teams. I use a brand new ball each match to help me see the ball when I compete there. When I play league, I usually give up competing with the intent to win, but compete to practice winning points and games in crappy conditions (since some tourneys will also have crappy conditions)
Therefore, I usually only goof off at this place and go there since it is only 10 miles from where I live. It is a place where tables are setup for 3 hrs 1x a week and league happens 1st and 3rd Tues each month. I had forgotten to toss in my tennis huge bag (I normally goof off until league starts and go play tennis).
There is a single match worth discussing for this thread that covers a lot of things we all talk about on this thread - how you win or lose points, games, and matches.
There was an opponent who recently defeated Joey, a 2000+ plus in the 2022 CDNF teams. I played vs him (M). He is rated around 1700... has a tricky illegal serve, sometimes can loop, and has a sneaky BH punch block from an un-natural arm slot and angle, but consistent.
The way to win vs him is to handle his serve with heavy underspin, then loop his push on the next or one after. On serve, you vary short, half long, and deep with underspin sometimes dead and spin attack return. Sometimes you play brain dead vs him, which I did yesterday. I attacked to his BH way too much and lost so many points, like 90% of them - I lost game 4 that way real bad. in the 5th, I finally had enough and found a way to target his middle on spin or power attacks. At 4-4 in the 5th, I started to do that. Every attack went there and not so amazingly, I won every one of those points to finish 11-6.
Sometimes, a player is too determined to play a certain way and does not realize what is going on or is simply too stubborn to adapt and make an adjustment. I fell into that category big time yesterday and could have - should have lost if I stayed that way in game 5. Often, adjustments are really stupid simple things and they are the difference in points, games, and matches.
Still doesn't come natural during games though!
