End of a Two week Vigil at Top (and preview monday night 24 Nov)

My apologies for not posting soon enough. Things have been little crazy at work , with my car, in my own life and ofcourse on Tennis courts. Now that the Holiday season is here, may be things will get little easier.

I had a two week reign in the ladder at the Primetime thanks to a 10 game win the week before.However i lost last week with a crazy 6 game stint that is hard to explain and will be playing tonight at the bottom half of the ladder. I will still remain at 7 pm unless i mess up tonight.

A quick recap on my 10 game win the week before. I was already assured of 7 pm prime time spot due to subs so i tried to take it little easy. I started with Mike the sub. There is a little bit of history between us. We both believe we are better than the other and probably dont respect other player's game enough. Last season i won against him but i lost the only time i played him this season prior to this night. The serve which was absent when i lost to him, came back in full swing and i had a 5-2 win against him. I played Richard next and despite dominating for most of the game didnt convert break points and ended up losing 5-2. I should have easily won against Bruce but i wasnt tryint to win games instead was trying to be aggressive and get some winners going. In that process i lost more than i should (credit to Bruce. he hit some awesome shots) and won my 3 games on serve to close the night with 10 games.

Last monday was the first time there were no subs across the ladder. I had the toughest draw of the night against Andy,Dave and Ed. My game plan was to manage 2 or 3 games between Andy and Dave (due to my poor record against them) and probably dominate Ed (he is a pusher!)  to reach my goal of 8 games. What transpired is nothing but crazy unexaplainable pattern for me. Ed basically hammered me 7-0 despite a weak knee. All i can say is i wasnt patient in my rallies and paid the price. Whenever i was patient i did win the points but they came a lot less frequently. How he blocked my bullet serves i dont know. I believe i will have an answer for him next time i play him. Its probably time for him to show him the Pusher in me. As a sole consolation, i was able to serve some body blows with my serves.

I played Dave next. I raced into lead quickly thanks to my serve. Dave tries to stand up while recieving serve. This is often a good tactic against many opponents as it rattles their rhythm (also challenges the server to come up with good serve). I myself use this tactic , successfully against people with weak serves. I however love this challenge when i am serving. What really happens is when a returner stays close up to return a serve, he usually opens up some corner of the service box, he has less time to react and its hard to take a big cut at the ball. This particular tactic fails against big serves because ---less time to react,  more open area for server to hit and chances of ball bouncing of the racquet are higher.  I just went for my serves. I probably hit the hardest serves i ever hit in recent times. I aimed at the Body and corners and was very successful. I also went in with two first serves on several occassions and this completely threw him off.  Somewhere in the middle of our match, he changed his tactic-- went back while recieving my serve and tried to push the ball more and ofcourse cheated on some points that were incorrect. In two games where i hit aces with  game point on the line they were called out (one of them is in the centre of the box!). I won 3 games.

I played Andy next and my record with him so far is one game every match we played. I didnt have any reason to believe tonight will be any different. However i played well enough to win 3 games. two on my serve and one by breaking him. I played one bad service game on my racquet to be broken at deuce. I closed the night at 6 games. If only i executed well against Ed i would have stayed up.

Fast forward to tonight it is a toss up. Its a battle between Carl - The battle hardened veteran, Jack - The tennis Samurai, myself- the racquet slinger and a new comer Mike. I am not sure of Mike's game other than that he is a tall lefty. On paper based on the results so far, it is really a toss up as Carl, Jack and myself have a good chance of topping this block to move into prime time. To me the keys to victories of each of them are 

Carl - will win if he cuts down his unforced errors. He probably has the most complete game in the group.

Jack - will win if he plays his usual counter punching game and use his variety. He has the best chance of the three.

Me - Will win if my serve is on. I got a good enough forehand to cause some concern for the Big Two above.

Jack's variety will be advantageous against the tall lefty Mike as Jack's drop shots might do some real damage. 

If i were to bet on a winner today i guess it will be between Jack or myself.

On Badminton..I am slowly regaining my game. My smashes are getting better and better. Backhand is still an issue. My point construction is good but having a good partner who can close points is really the key. In Badminton Doubles , its important to have partners with complimenting games. One of my long time partner is no longer playing and i had most success with him because our game compliments each others a lot. My strengths are covering the Baseline ,ability to smash , strong defense and ofcourse forming and following a plan. This guy, for one is a far better player has more variety and ofcourse strong offense besides ability to follow the strategy. Over the years we had some memorable victories against opponents who are better skilled players. These days we rotate so much that its hard to play with a consistent partner.

Moving up in the Ladder! (Mon 11/3)

I have won enough games (12) to top the group and I will be playing in Prime time next Monday. Incidentally this will be the first time this year I will be playing at the very top of the ladder and I am very excited about this opportunity.

I started the evening with Lefty Dan-the sub. During the warm up he gave me enough indications of the potential trouble he can cause. He has a nice slice two handed backhand that is very consistent and he can drop it close to the net or hit it close to the baseline. I have a feeling that he might have used the warm up to probe my game. I won the toss and elected to serve. He was surprised my serve and I had little trouble winning game 1. I couldn’t handle his serve either as he used his lefty wicked side spin from his Deuce court to spin away from my backhand. Though I got some balls in play whenever I played on the right side of the court, he was smart enough to dip the ball low and short or way deep into my back hand corner. I served the next game well to go up 2-1. This is when I made a good adjustment on the return of his serve by standing on the side tram lines when he served into the left court (ie he serves from lefty Deuce court). I kind of challenged him to hit down the T if he can. My theory is that even if he manages to hit some into the T, I can use my forehand to neutralize the shot. This strategy worked well and I broke him to go 3-1 up. This is when I played a bad game. I rushed my serves and went for too much on my shots to lose my serve at 3-2. He held the next game to make it 3-3 on my two back hand errors. I held serve to make it 4-3.

I played Jack next. For some reason I felt tired and winded going into this match. Like most of the time we played, there were lots of service breaks. I won the toss, elected to serve and lost the game. He held serve to make it 0-2 for me. I won the serve to make it 2-1 and then broke him to make it 2-2. I lost the serve again for 2-3 and broke him for 3-3. I couldn’t hold serve in the last game and I lost 3-4. He played two unbelievably good games and I played Two very bad games and that pretty much sums it up for me.

Heading to the last match of the day with Carl, I had 7 games to Jack’s 8 (he won 4 with Carl and 4 with me). Having played both Jack and Dan-the sub, I predicted that Dan might pull through as there are some aspects of his game that I felt would be difficult to deal with if one is playing him the first time. So I thought if I can win 4 games against Carl I still might have a shot at moving up assuming Jack doesn’t blow out Dan. Carl won the toss and (not surprisingly) elected to serve. He won quite easily for 1-0. I served a love game to make it 1-1. Despite some fight Carl held for 2-1 and I had little trouble in making it 2-2. Having reached my target (of exceeding previous week’s result) , I thought I will try to win the night by playing slightly more aggressive and apply additional pace and spin. I blocked his serves to put them in play and then hit some good passing shots to break him to go up 3-2. I held my serve easily to make it 4-2 and broke him again with some good array of baseline rallies and closed out with a cross court passing shot. To win the match 5-2 and make it a 12-9 win-loss for the evening. Tennis Samurai Jack had a good evening with 10 games though he fell a little behind in the last match with Dan-the sub.

The things that stand out are I cashed in all break points (I didn’t save any break points either and lost serve 3 times), I hit good passing shots and I served well. There are still gaping holes in my game that needs to be plugged and I also need to replicate my movement I had this evening for the next sessions.

Next week will be a big challenge. I will be playing against the likes of Dave, Luciano , Bob and perhaps Andy/Richard/Dan. I never played Bob. I have won the solitary matches I played against Luciano and Richard—both 4-3 scores. I lost the only matches I played against Dan and Dave. In 14 games I played, I won only 2 against Andy. So you know what I am up against. I need to serve exceptionally well and take my chances to have any shot at these guys. In other words, I have the game to beat most of these guys (excl Andy) but it largely comes down to execution.

Monday Tennis Preview 03 Nov

As expected it will be Jack, Carl, I and a sub battling out tonight at the bottom half of the 7 pm for a place into 7 pm Prime time. It is going to be as tough as it can get. In some ways last week was little easier in the sense that I have no chance against Andy and Carl/Paul are some what susceptible against consistent players. This week it will be the Tennis Samurai Jack who plays consistent and good tennis and then Carl –my record against him not with standing, can easily topple me.

My goal is at least win as many games as I did last week (8) and see if can Improve my result by a game or two. If I play like last week, I will give myself a good chance to top the pool unless the Sub happens to be an excellent player. I don’t think my game has reached the levels of last year where I can dominate players. So my wins if at all will be small and margins will be less whereas some of my opponents can win matches with lopsided scores which is a huge advantage in the ladder. This is a long season and I want to build up my game properly and withstand the game styles of various opponents.

The build up into tonight is rather normal. After last Monday’s tennis, I played Badminton on Wednesday (skipped Tuesday swimming due to Diwali) and that’s more or less it. I didn’t get a chance to do any Gym. In any case I want to rest a little bit after last Badminton session. I had a very good session and my game is returning to normal and my smashes showing good penetration and I appear to be moving well. However I felt fatigued last Thursday and hence I decided to skip Gym for the week and instead try to get some rest to recharge batteries. The flu shots on Wednesday didn’t help either.

We will see if the rest is going to help or hurt me tonight. I happened to watch the Paris masters cup final between David Nalbandian (one of my fav players) and Jo Wilfred Tsonga. Tsonga served the lights out and played as well as he did in this years Australian Open. Nalbandian played good to win a set but in the end couldn’t handle Tsonga’s serve.