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Doubles. It Is A Chained Team Game.

I enjoy playing doubles as much as singles. The dynamics are quite different, the shots are different with more variety, and you get to experience amazing back-and-forth plays within a single point covering the whole spectrum of fast, high, low and touch shots.  It can also get frustrating often, especially when played with by partners that have no synergy, coordination or expectations. One of the most important aspects of doubles team, in my opinion, is to match the skill and experience level of the partners close to one another. Doubles in tennis is one of those games that if one of the payers cannot perform, his/her partner cannot compensate for bad play. In this sense it is a chained game, and if one of the chain links is broken the entire chain falls apart.

I am part of a team in a 3.0 league and play both singles and doubles. Although I admit my game is much more suited nowadays to 3.5 level, but the USTA NTRP ratings calculations have progressed slower than my game in the last 4-5 months.  I do expect that by the end of the 2016, I will be moved up to 3.5, which I am looking forward. Obviously for me to move up I have to win more than I lose, and even if I lose I should not be losing with wide margins. To help the matters, I also play up in 3.5 team as well, which I haven't lost a match yet.

We are facing a single team as our opponent in our league, there seems to be a lack of interest at 3.0 level for league play. We have 11 players in our team and our opposing team has 10, I am one of the top four players in our team. Our captain wanted to rotate players around to give everyone a chance to play different roles, which I thought was a good idea. Our team overall is better than the opposing team, we won the first two matchups 4-1.

Unfortunately, our captain made a crucial mistake: he paired his best players in doubles with the worst players. I imagine he thought that the better players will be able to compensate for the weaker players as their partners. In tennis it does not work that way, one weak link in the team is more than enough to bring down the entire team. The partner cannot compensate for the weak link, even if the opposing team is half-smart, they'll focus on the weak link and play majority of the balls towards the weaker player and win point after point.

I was late to the match by 8 minutes, which automatically gave two games to our opponents even before we started. I did not even warm up and we started the match with pleasantries, I vaguely knew my partner, but focused more on playing well. Within 20 mins we were up 4-3, and then my partner dropped his serve game a second time and our opponents realized that all they had to do is send back the ball in some fashion to my partner whenever the ball lands on their court. 

Part of the side effect of pairing players with wide ranging games is it forces the better player to try hard to compensate for the weaker partner, taking more risks, over-running, over-serving, etc. I fell into the same trap myself, and as the match progressed I made more and more mistakes, compounding the problem. We lost the first set 4-6 and second set 1-6. Looking up the match history of my partner afterwards, I realized he hasn't won any USTA league match since 2013.

From time to time I would also look at how the matches on adjacent courts were going, and B.C. (another of the better players in our team, who was paired with the second worst player in the team) was also having terrible time. On the singles #1 court things did not seem any better frankly. My match lasted 50 minutes, I was furious and packed up and left, courteously of course; I did not want to know the results of the other matches suspecting similar faith.

We lost the matchup 1-4 apparently; both singles, two of the doubles. B.C.'s match was even worse than mine, they lost 2-6, 1-6. There are no faults on the players' part in my opinion, the captain bears all the responsibility in this case. What was he thinking? He acted as if he just does not understand the game at all.

Not only we lost the match-up in flames, but our individual NTRP average gets impacted as well, particularly by losing on such wide margins. Part of the lesson learned here for me is not just sign up for teams that send an invitation, and doing some research on the captain as well.  For this captain let's chalk it up to inexperience as this is the first time he is captaining.

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