St(r)ing less Monday 16 Nov 09

That says it all. My racquet strings broke when I was 2-0 up against Luciano in my first match. I was rarely a factor after that. I was fighting myself (as I was terribly disappointed) and also the opponent. I so looked forward to this evening as I was awaiting a show down against the ladder’s best player Eric. With my racquet went my best shot against him-my serve. Though I briefly revived myself against Dan with a spirited 3-4 losing performance, I became an “also played” this evening.

I don’t have a viable spare racquet. I play the Babolat Pure Drive Team PLUS. It is an awesome frame (11oz, 100 inch,27.5 in long) and I string it with Luxilon big banger Alu power rough string. In Tennis parlance, I am using a polyester string and that generally aids top spin production. The strings are also durable but they don’t retain tension for too long. I do carry an extra racquet in my bag but that isn’t even close to my playing frame. This spare hasn’t been restrung in 8 years, has a 110 inch wide size and weighs 13 oz. I borrowed Jack’s spare. It is better than my spare racquet but still way off from being a player’s frame.

On the court, I cut a sorry figure for myself. I know I have no one but myself to blame. At some point, I could have forked 150$ or so and bought myself a spare players frame. Yes, I don’t use my first racquet all too much to need a second racquet. But when I had moments like I did this last Monday, I realized how a spare could have helped. Instead of thinking a “what could have been”, I probably would have had an answer. Especially when I tallied up the scores and it came out that all I needed to do was to beat Dan 4-3 (instead of my 3-4) score to stay at the top of 7 pm. That’s how close I was even with out my best shot.

After some deliberation at home, I decided that I will have a good spare racquet. I started looking at used racquets hoping that I can get them real cheap. Then came the shocker. My racquet is 4-5 yrs old and apparently used frames like mine still cost around 125$. Add the cost of stringing (my favorite luxilon) another 35$ and we are looking at 160$. A brand new top of line Babolat costs 180$ and usually they throw in a free string. In other words, if I pitch in an extra 50$, I would get a top of the line frame. I am sure if I look for deals, I may get that price much lower. I will be going with Babolat Aero Pro Drive plus (endorsed by Rafael Nadal) or Babolat Pure drive plus Cortex( endorsed by Andy Roddick). Of course, as soon as I start using the frame, it will be endorsed by yours truly as well.

In all I managed 5 games and will drop down. I was ineffective against Eric who trounced me with a bagel (ie 7-0). Dan ended up with 7 games(if I had won 4-3 ,we both would have 6 games and I will have the tie breaker). What’s more painful is that even with this racquet, I was leading Dan 3-2 with two games to go. One of the game went to deuce and my forehand went long to throw that game away and Dan played a good last game.

I will stay at 7 pm albeit at the bottom half. So it isn’t all that bad. I stayed after my match(es) to watch the 0830 draw unfold.

Tennis Samurai Jack showed up and counter punched his 7 pm ticket in style. I was there to watch most of Jack’s matches and this is one of the finest exhibition of counter punching tennis. Arguably, tennis has three major styles of play-- Serve and Volley, Baseline and All court. Serve & Volley is a lost art and we don’t have too many Pro’s playing that game though it is still effective at club level (eg: Pete Sampras, Goran Ivanisevic, John McEnroe). Baseline is a style of play where players stick around baseline and generally play extended rallies (Andre Agassi , Ivan Lendl). All court is a combination of Baseline and Serve & Volley (Roger Federer).

With in Baseline style, we have two major types. Aggressive baseliners (Andre Agassi , Rafael Nadal) and defensive counter punchers. Counter punching is a style where the player absorbs and often uses opponents pace against him for majority of the shots but supplies their own juice occasionally. Good examples of Counter punching pro’s are Lleton Hewitt and David Nalbandian. In my opinion, Jack plays this style of tennis though he is equally adept at Serve & Volley.

This Monday night , Jack played counter punching to the T. During some of the rallies, I watched him push his opponent backwards foot by foot while yo-yo’ing the opponent side to side. Needless to say opponent lost the point. In fact most players lose such points. The only two ways out of such rallies are a) come up with a great winner-a low percentage shot as the geometry of the court works to their disadvantage b) counter punch back and hope that the hunter becomes hunted. This is also when Jack is at his best. In my opinion, this is his game. This is one of his great strengths. There arent that many players at this level, that can counter punch like Jack.

Jack ended up with 15 points and he played some outstanding players. True Jack has Dave A’s number and he beat him one too many times. But Jack inflicted a humiliating 6-1 defeat on Dave C and then a 4-3 on Paul S (Sandeep) , two outstanding players. In that process he also cleared any self doubts he may have besides sending out a strong reverberating message to his opponents—Jack is back! .

So Fast forward to next Monday, we will have the classic Jack vs. Me match. Home town fans will all be excited to their favorite home town player Jack back at prime time. The draw hasn’t come out yet but it is quite likely that we will have two other outstanding players to contend with. I will of course , have my racquet back restrung. Only three will survive and one drops down to 0830.