Chasing The Plock!

Practice, Practice, Practice! There is no substitute for it, you know it. There needs to be a driver behind it though and an objective. The weakest attribute in game has been my serve since I started. As I explained in my previous postings, I have three different types of serves, but regardless of which I use, I had many double faults that resulted in too many games, sets and matches lost. Has to be fixed. I have been practicing off-matches, throwing 75-100 serves each time I get the chance; however, most of my practices have been during the round robin doubles matches. Believe me I had my share of nasty looks from my partners in abundance and I cannot blame them. At the same time I refused to back off from figuring it out, dropping my pace, or just putting my second serves in with a loopy. I keep trying and trying, hoping something will click. I think something did click this month. I cannot tell exactly what it is, I cannot pin point to a single mechanics, but I think few thing...

I had a singles match with someone I had played once before few months ago, at which time I lost 10-5 in proset format. I had taken some notes about his game, I hadn't played well at the time, but was looking forward to testing myself again. This time we played on 3-set format and I had my game plan. First few games were good, held my serve comfortably, he did so as well. I had good shots, but it was apparent his court coverage was going to cause me issues. As the games went on he kept breaking my serves and I only broke his serve once each set. He was always at the right place to respond to my shots, I used heavy topspin, flat shots, CC, DTL, drop shots, steak-knive slices, and my first serve % was never higher. Admittedly I could have played some shots better, but due to his excellent court positioning it just forced me to take more and more risks, and consequently I made more errors than I should have. I lost 6-2, 6-2. It is an amazing feeling to use everything you have in your ...

Not Focusing On The Win vs. Expecting Not To Win Last weekend I was scheduled to play in our club's mini tournament. I woke up Saturday morning with slight fever, still had to do some house work and had to head out to play first round as I had promised the tournament director that I would play. I wasn't in any condition to play frankly, but any day I get to play tennis, beats most other ordinary days, so off I went. My first opponent was a nice gentleman who played very irregularly and was coming off a 3-month break from tennis, his level was at 3.0 level. We were to play 8-game proset due to time constraints. We started and quickly it was 4-0 in my favor, but my energy was draining very rapidly. I really wasn't try to win, wasn't exploiting his apparent weaknesses, I just wanted to play while I lasted and hopefully pack my bags and get back to a hot shower and bed at home. I thought probably the quickest way to get home was to win the match and forfeit ...