Winter Sports Season 2008-2009

Welcome back to my Blog. I haven’t posted in a long time. I guess I oversubscribed to too many tasks. However the good news is that I think I can be regular again and keep this going.

One of the key reasons is also due to the fact that I haven’t done much this outdoor season. In the past few years, I have been improving my game and adding some significant feature every season (2005 – Serve, 2006 - Topspin Forehand, 2007- Inside In forehand, etc). This season I added nothing. If anything my game went south. I bought a ball machine but never really had time to use it much. I may have gotten 6-7 sessions out of it at most. Though it is disappointing, the time was spent on family commitments and with my Baby who will be two years old in January.

The highlights of my 2008 Outdoor tennis season are getting a ball machine, and some key wins against few friends of mine. One of them is Sundar, an excellent player. He is seldom out of position, has a great balance and excellent footwork and racquet feel. His mastery in sports goes beyond tennis and is equally good if not better at Badminton, Basket ball and Golf. Though he didn’t play as much Tennis as I did in the recent past, he is a formidable opponent and though I came close, I never won against him in my early days of Tennis. We haven’t played in last couple of years but we did this time and I was able to win this time. I played with Jack, SK and Andy- a new entrant into our tennis group. A word on SK. He and me started playing tennis as novices few years ago and learnt the game grounds up. He has the most venomous serve I have ever played against and is a brilliant shot maker.

I wasn’t originally planning to sign up for the winter ladder due to our family schedule. Towards early September things have changed and our family schedule has gotten much better. I was considering joining Ladders and evaluating the two clubs from my neighborhood. One of them offers Sunday evening schedule and I think that suits me much better.

My 2008 badminton season starts this Wednesday. It is really hard to play tennis on Monday and Badminton on Wednesday and then have a long break in the week. I also have my daughters swimming on Tuesday and this pretty much ties up 3 days of the week. A Sunday Tennis gives me better spread of the week. The only issue is the club that is offering Sunday tennis isn’t the one I played last year. I would love to play at the same club.

Talking about ladders, the ladder is out for this year (assuming I join this club). Here is an Analysis.

Welcome to the 2008-2009 Tennis Ladder. The ladder schedule runs from Sep 29 2008 to all the way into May 2009. As most of you know I made significant progress in the ladder last year and hope to keep the momentum going. Though the ladder begins today I wont be playing until Oct 20 due to other professional commitments (Wife’s B’day, an Exhibition match, an airport pick up, last but not least budgetary considerations etc).

Here is the current draw and lets try to break it down.

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7:00 Pm Show time Top bracket

Jay
Ed
Luciano
Dave
Bob
Carl
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7:00 Pm bottom bracket

Richard
Paul
Dan
Jack

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0830 Pm Basement ladder

Satish
John V.
Rob L.
Mike M.
Faez
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With the current form of most of these players unknown (except for Jack and Satish), I am basing my observations on last season’s performance. It is entirely possible that they have improved upon their game.

A star studded 7 pm line up! The draw lends itself to some great mouth watering matchups. Some notable omissions from the draw include Warren and Ramon, Two very good players with devastating backhands, Thomas – a regular Sub last year with well rounded game, Frank- a classic counter punching pusher and Bruce- the perpetual shot maker. Last year top seeds Andrew and Matt are no longer in the fray and that should have allowed many players in the current draw to entertain some hopes of topping the ladder. At 0830 there are couple new players making their first appearance and it will take sometime before the ladder shakes itself out some sense of normalcy is returned.

On the top half of 7 pm, I think Dave and Bob will move further up and probably remain regular fixtures at the top (assuming Jay and Ed are mostly Guest appearances). Dave has a good serve and takes the ball early in rallies. While he isn’t an exceptional mover, he has good court positioning and he can get into opponents head with his antics. Bob has a good serve, excellent forehand and backhand and can also volley well. In my opinion Bob will top the ladder. Luciano game lacks offense and relies on pushing the ball into open court. However he has plenty of action on his slice shots and has a low bouncing serve. In one my blogs from last year (http://gumsat.blogspot.com/2008/02/monday-night-tennis-feb-11.html) I thought he was a polished pusher/counter puncher. I don’t believe he will stay in top bracket of 7 pm and will be pushed down to bottom bracket. Carl is a great baseliner with one of the pleasant looking cross court forehands. He had to deal with injuries during past season and assuming he stays fit he will be a regular fixture at 7 pm.

The bottom half of 7 pm is slightly less complicated as it appears now but that may soon change due to the format of the ladder (after a couple of weeks , players with similar results get grouped together). Except for Dan I have played with the other three players in this group. Paul is a good player who started very strong last season but struggled towards the end and played mostly the basement matchups of the 0830 group. He has a good forehand and powerful but inconsistent serve and can cause some damage if he improves his consistency. Though I didn’t play Dan, I saw him play and also have some scouting reports on him. His soft loopy shots can throw an opponent off his rhythm and his consistency should help him win a few matches. However I don’t see him as a regular fixture at 7 pm and he will probably move down to 0830.

At the bottom of the 7pm, we see the most improved player of the ladder Jack –the racquet wielding Architect from East Hartford. Having played with him a lot for the past two seasons, I have a very good sense of his game. He has steadily improved his serve, his backhand and forehand. He has taken his consistency to another level. He presents the biggest challenge for any players in his group in two key areas a) fitness b) extended rallies. An opponent is forced to hit several extra shots to win a point or take more chances than they are comfortable taking. In general all his matches will be longer than average and there will be lot of running and that can exhaust a tired/unfit opponent. Though he lacks a signature closing shot or fire power offensive weapon, he will more than make up for it with his variety in the game—drop shots, lobs, smashes, volleys, baseline rallies. His game matches up very well against most of the players in his current group. In my opinion he will top the bottom 7pm group and make his way into the top bracket.

At the bottom cellar of the draw, at 0830 pm, I will be battling with bunch of new comers and some old timers like Mike and Faez. On paper, I should be topping this pool and make my way very deep into 7 pm—perhaps a top bracket berth. However tennis is not played on paper and with couple of new entrants I think this pool is anything but decided.

My outdoor season wasn’t that great and it was only recently that I got my serve and forehand back. In other words I am still trying to get my game to the level it used to be while most others might have added a thing or two to their repository. However I am putting lot of work into my fitness recently after several false starts and I am also trying to add some practice sessions and salvage whatever outdoor action is left before winter sets in. The results are encouraging and on a positive note, though I didn’t have a spectacular outdoor tennis season, I didn’t have dismal results either. I managed to still win most of matches against all players I played this summer and only lost a few sets.

Having demonstrated my staying capability at 7 pm, the goals this year for me are to move to top bracket of 7 pm and stay there for a decent time (ie couple of weeks at a minimum). I don’t have any set goals for badminton other than to enjoy the game.

Overall I am very excited to start the winter tour of Badminton and Tennis. I will keep you posted more regularly and I will need all your support.