This was by far my best performance in the ladder with 16 games. So I moved up and will be squaring off in prime time today.
I didn’t quite expect it to pan out the way it did. The line up last Monday is quite imposing as I play against Carl , Jack and Mike M. Though I never lost to Carl, my record against Jack isn’t that good indoors and I never played Mike. I definitely sensed that I had a good chance to top the pool and move up if I played well.
I started off with Carl but before that during warm up I ran three circles around the tennis court. I felt winded but warmed up enough. We held serve at 1-1 and after that Carl never won and I finished with 6-1. There were some shots from Carl that on another day would have been winner but were out by a foot or so today. I did cut him some slack on some rallies where the ball was out as the action was happening too fast and by the time I was about to call he was ready to hit his reply to my returns. I played some good defense and some of my backhand placement shots worked well. The key again was my serve which held pretty well.
In comes Jack – The Tennis Samurai. Since I won 6 games with Carl, my mood was to get 3-4 games of Jack and I am less set for the night as I would either move up or stay on top of this block with that score. I broke his serve and then he broke mine to make it 1-1. Then I broke him again served good to take the lead. Jack came back aggressive and there was a game where he led 40-15 or something but I somehow pulled it back. Its been a long time since I served that well against Jack and that helped me win 6-1.
With 12 games, I assumed that I would top the pool and was considering going easy on last match with Mike M. Then I learnt that he won 7 games so far. So if he were to win 7-0 against me, or 6-1, he would be the leader. So I needed to win at least two games to ensure that I come out top. I lost the first game on my serve and I thought it wasn’t a good omen. Luckily I broke him the next game to keep the game on Serve. I won my next and that ensured that I will finish the Evening with a guaranteed prime time spot. From this point on I didn’t press too much. I tried to play some angles and used second serves to get some exposure. I attacked his backhand and passed him whenever he came to net. His lefty serve was effective in patches but wasn’t consistent or fast enough to trouble too much. I won the tie 4-3 to make it a 16 game night.
That brings me to today where I will be playing Richard, Dave and Luciano. I lost against Rich and Dave this season while I never played Luciano this year. I won against Rich and Luciano last year and never won against Dave. It will be interesting. My goal is to win 8 games.
Jack’s group is interesting. He plays Dan – the lefty, Paul and Mike. Carl dropped out as he wasn’t too successful against Jack or Mike last week. I guess it comes down to Dan or Jack. While Paul is a dangerous player, it depends on his form and I don’t think he can continue his hot streak for this many weeks in a row.
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