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.