Tennis and Basket Ball

I have been a bit busy and didn’t get chance to update my Blog.
I last played on 26 April (really seems like a long while ago) with Jack. The score was 4-6 and 6-1. I lost the first set but came back strong to win the second.

There isn’t much to really point out from the match. My knees have been bothering me for sometime. My wife thinks it is because of all the antibiotics I am taking for the cold and throat infections. It greatly impacted my movement and ability to hit the ball cleanly. I often guessed on opponent and I paid for it. The score board for first set shows that I lost 4-6 but it should really be 2-6. Wind helped me on couple of points and I blindly attacked on some points that came up my way. Jack moved me very well and played smart tennis. Towards second set I felt much better. Knees are still hurting (I felt pain as late as Monday) but I was warm enough to move a little better. I also found my range on some of the shots. Jack’s form dipped (he later indicated that he rushed into his shots as a whole battalion of people were waiting for us to finish the match so that they can take the court). I didn’t really have much trouble in second set and towards later part of the set; I was in full control never seriously under pressure. I served a lot better than I did in earlier matches.

Here is the summary of my season so far. I have only included matches after 01 Apr 08.

Opponent Venue Date To Against
JC Charter Oak 3-Apr-08 6 2
JC EHRC 11-Apr-08 5 7
JC Glastonbury 18-Apr-08 6 3
JC Glastonbury 18-Apr-08 6 2
JC Glastonbury 20-Apr-08 6 4
JC Glastonbury 20-Apr-08 6 2
JC Aspen Woods 25-Apr-08 4 6
JC Aspen Woods 25-Apr-08 6 1
Summary 45 27

So in summary I won 45 games and lost 27 of them. I won 6 sets and lost 2 sets.

Last week the weather was real bad and I didn’t get any tennis action. Finally I got the ball machine out on Sunday and me and my wife had a great session with it. I practiced Backhands and cross court forehands. I am hitting backhands very cleanly and the more topspin and bounce on the ball, the better my shot was. I got the hang of good technique and I can go cross court as well as down the line. Very happy with the progress.

In that process I also discovered another flaw. I am generally late on my backhand shots because I don’t treat it as an offensive option. Now that I played around with ball machine, I can see that and I tried to over run the ball. The result—I have more time to setup for the shot and more options (eg: cross court, down the line etc).

I also drilled some cross court forehands and rediscovered a lost art of mine—change of grips. In the past seasons, I used to change my grip (I regularly use mild semi western) based on the opponents shot. On high bouncing balls, I used to go western and take a big cut at the ball. This results in more topspin, high clearance at the net and more angles. Off late I have been real lazy and try to over hit with one grip. Have to change that bad habit and get back into using multiple grips.

Needless to say, the ball machine workout is great and allowing me to really work on my game. If I can have another 5-10 such sessions, my game will be greatly improved. One thing I couldn’t do yet was to practice serve- the single most important shot of the game. I plan on working on it very soon.

Btw my wife has a great double handed backhand. I was very impressed with the way she was hitting the backhands. If I can spend some more time with her and probably some training, she can become a good player and enjoy tennis.

In NBA , my team Lakers swept Nuggets and moved to Western conference semi finals and played Utah Jazz yesterday. However I am a little sad that Dallas maverics and Phoenix suns both lost in first round of Play offs. These two teams play an offensive brand of basket ball that is very entertaining and fun to watch. Their Run and gun style of play allows them to score lots of points in the game. But their lack of defense hurt them most. Teams like SanAntonio Spurs, Detroit Pistons (and Lakers to an extent) play suffocating defense and tie down opponent’s offense. Once the wheels come of the Offense, these teams struggle a lot.

As they say “Offense fills up stands. Defense wins championships”.

Same deal in tennis. One can’t rely too much on offense with out playing proper defense. Players like Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic play great defense all along and can switch into offense effortlessly once the moment presents itself. That’s why they are Grand slam champions. By the way I followed the Monte Carlo Clay court tournament final between Nadal and Federer. It is a great lesson for recreational tennis players like me. Federer played very smart and used lot of angles and wizardry to dominate Nadal in patches. Nadal relied on old tested and proven ‘Heavy topspin into Federer’s backhand ‘ tactic. In the end Nadal’s forehand is too much to handle for Federer’s backhand as Federer couldn’t sustain his level of play across two sets. Not sure how he can handle that in a best of five sets in the French Open Grand slam. In any case I don’t have strong enough tennis resume to advise Roger Federer on what he needs to do.

This week is looking much better in terms of weather. However my schedule is such that, I can only play on evenings and that too on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I have Badminton on Wednesday. There are only two more Badminton sessions left and for all practical purposes this will be the last meaningful session. The last day of badminton is usually Pizza party followed by badminton and usually very less of badminton. Depending on how crazy I feel about tennis, I may skip badminton this week.