My draw consisted of Carl, Paul and Roger R. A few weeks ago, i would have seen this as a slightly easier draw. However my game dipped in the last couple of weeks and my motivation is lacking. Apathy towards results set in and i was looking to see if i can jolt myself and get back to the fighting ways. My serve wasnt firing today either.
I broke Carl on his serve the very first game. I played an excellent reflex shot on Deuce to move up and then came up with another down the line one handed backhand touch shot on Deuce (on my serve) to go up 2-0. I broke Carl again to go up 3-0. Serving 1-5, Carl hit a great shot on Deuce point to make it 5-2 for me. I am glad i won this match 5-2 but it could easily be 2-5 if the deuce balls bounced the other way. My serve wasnt clicking , my forehand is consistent but nothing great. My backhand did a lot of heavy lifting. I also moved well. Historically against Carl, it was always my ability to get back balls into play that caused him trouble and it was true yesterday. I moved well and cut off his angles and returned them back.
I started with Paul even more tentatively , losing first two points for 0-30. I pulled back and won the game with some good consistent rallies. I broke Paul on his serve to go up 2-0 before he broke back to be on serve at 1-2. I broke him again and held mine. This pattern continued for rest of the match for a 6-1 score for me. Once i got up to 4 games, Paul , i believe got disappointed and appeared like he threw the last two games away(he definitely did threw away the last game). Paul's strategy , which he used successfully against many opponents, is to engage in rallies. He uses a back hand slice to draw opponents to the net and then he forces the action by a) going for a deep shot and attack the net b) another biting slice c) defensive rallying.
A year or two ago, Paul had one of the best slice serves. These days , his serve lacks that sting and mostly gets the point started. His slice has very good bite and can easily throw off an opponent. My game matches up well against defensive sets and i was able to stay in the rallies and occassionally earned some easy points with my serve.
Entering the last match, I had 11 games to Roger R's 9 games. Incidentally he had good matches against Carl and Paul to get to 9 games. Carl has 5 while Paul collected 3 games. This basically meant that either Roger or me would be the winner of this group. I need three games to become the winner as i have a two game lead over Roger (Winning three games makes my tally 14 while Roger would only have 13 even he wins the other 4 games). I started out by breaking Roger's serve and went 1-0 up. He broke me back to make it 1-1 and then we held our serves to make it 2-2. At this time, it was 0830 and the next group of players walked in. After some shuffling, our match was moved to court #1 where Jack and Vishwas were playing. We had to wait a bit for them to finish before we could start off. I knew i needed one more game and i can then call it a night while Roger assumed that we were even in games (ie he thought i had 9 games entering last match). After a brief warm up, we started off and i broke Roger to go up 3-2 and also secure the group win. I then held my serve and then basically experimented in the last game--which back fired. I won the match 4-3. Even in this match, my serve worked only in parts but it definitely worked when it mattered--serving at deuce. The key however was my movement and ability to put the ball back into play.
With 15 games, i will be moving up to challenge Vishwas for #1. This victory also ensured that i will finish January at 7 pm regardless of how i play. Another interesting stat for me is that this will be my fourth week as #2. Outside of this academic stuff, in reality, i believe that i am probably a top 3 or top 4 player right behind Eric and Vishwas. Considering that i struggled agains these two players and mostly won against every other player, the results do attest that.
Jack will still play at the top of 7pm and try to move up for another shot at #1. I wish i could beat Vishwas next week and Jack to win his group and we both play for #1. That would culminate a strong Winter tennis season for us. We both plan to start sub'ing from last week of january and very unlikely that we would contend at the top beyond January.
You can check out our scores (usually a week delayed) here.
http://apex.oracle.com/pls/otn/f?p=24230:6:2554599036473778::NO
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