I went into the match ready to play and i couldnt ask for a better begining. I broke Eric right away and was 40-15 before he turned it on and won 6 games in a row. It almost appeared like he does a little better than me on every aspect of the game. The second set was in similar lines and except for game 3 which i held (at love) , its Eric all over.
I am not disappointed. While the scores may not tell the full story, there are at least three other games where i had break points but couldnt convert (mind you, there are full set games ie we dont play "No AD". In case of deuce, one has to win two points in a row). If i had won a couple of those games, this could be a far better result.
In the hindsight i question some of my strategies. I should have used spin serves more than fast serves as he was able to put most of my fast serves into play. It also took considerable amount of time for my serve to warm up. I also should have gone for broke more than i did.
It is still a good experience. As i said before , he had too much variety. I made adjustments all through out the match and he realized what i was trying to do within a point or couple and immediately made counter adjustments (ie i go after his backhand and he immediately starts slicing the ball deeper and shorter to deny me good looks , I try to go cross court with my forehand and he forces me to hit backhands, i try pushing and he comes up with ridiculous cross court top spinners).
The only thing i would say is, i didnt lose my baseline advantage. He beat me on all other flanks but not on baseline. Every single baseline rally , i stayed and out rallied him until he drop shotted me or hit long.
All in all it is a humbling experience and reality check. I probably have the game to beat everyone else except Eric on the ladder. But around the same time last year, i wasnt even competing at the top so it is a definite improvement. I just need to continue improving my game and add more offense. Also this is my first ever oppurtunity (not withstanding the racquet string less time) to play someone of Eric's calibre.
I stayed on after my 7 pm match and sub'd for 0830. This was by design. I wanted to play the best and last on the same time. I also wanted to use this chance to test a spare racquet. I had little trouble beating Dave A (5-2), Mike (5-2) and Rob L(4-3). There were some tight rallies and with Dave A i have like 4 deuce games (i won all). I capped the night winning the deuce game against Rob when we are 3-3.
(The irony is that i didnt win one single break point against Eric but then win every break point in the matches that are of academic interest from my perspective)
Jack came within one game of staying at the top of 7 pm. He and Paul D tied up at 7 games all but Jack lost to him 3-4 and hence lost in tie breaker. Jack fell to Luciano 6-1 and that result pushed him to bottom of 7 pm.
The draw for next week is out. I am drawn against Luciano, Ding Li and Paul D. I heard there are atleast two subsitutions in our group. So it is hard to predict the outcome of the group, especially if we dont even know who we are playing.
Jack's draw is ,once again not easy. He has Carl, Dave C and Wayne. He seems to have figured out Dave C and also having a good record against Carl this season. Wayne can go hot and cold and this group may go down to the wire. I predict that Jack will have far easier time against Dave and Carl than Wayne can and if he can keep the score close with Wayne, he is moving up!.
Btw, we have all our tennis scores online. It is built using Oracle Application Express and took less than a weekend of effort to build. It is also Hosted on oracle Cloud-- talk about tennis cloud!.
I love this tool. One of the very few rapid application development tools that has Database and UI included.
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