Ultimate Tennis, Allen Middle School and Cooper Clinic
5:30 PM: Joe McDonald 6-2, 5-7, 7-6(7-0)
Its always tough playing against my best friend, Joe McDonald. Not only is there the mental aspect of playing a friend but Joe's style of play, which includes hitting with less pace and varying his shot placement well, has always presented challenges to my footwork and consistency.
I started well enough in this match getting out to a 5-0 lead. Strangely enough Joe seemed a little nervous and was making more UEs that normal. The first point I gave up was a double fault during my second serve game. Looking at the video of the first five games I can't say I was doing anything particularly well. The whole poor shoulder rotation issue sticks out to me like a sore thumb. Also I must start getting lower to the court as I look like a stiff stick man.
At 5-0 the rain finally forced us to stop and at that point I took down the video camera not wanting it to get water damaged. After a few minutes the rain let up and the court quickly dried enough to let us continue. The break hurt me more than Joe and he took the next game and was up 40-love when the sky fell in. We decided to head west to the Cooper Clinic at Craig Ranch and as luck would have it, even though we felt a few drops there, we were able to finish out the match at that location.
It was a good thing that Cooper had lights because the next two sets would end up being long ones and we would not finish until about 9:30. While Joe got two games back on me I was able to take the first set 6-2. But I knew that Joe would not go down without a fight. The first game of the second set was a long one and I had several chances to break him after getting a 40-0 lead but I could not pull it off. That was very frustrating and that carried over to my service game and I was quickly down 0-2. Nothing particular stands out to me about the middle of the second set except that I was playing more on the defensive and my shorter shots were becoming more frequent.
I ended up getting the break back and getting one myself and was serving in the 5-4 game for the match. However, today was not one of my better serving days as I was hitting a lot of first serves into the net and second ones very short. This allowed him to play lots of short angles and he was killing me with that. So he ended up breaking me, winning his serve and then breaking me again to win the set 5-7.
The third set started off like the second with a long service game for Joe during which I had my chances to break. Once again I failed to do so. In my mind the third set played out pretty much like the second with me not getting to the net or hitting aggressive shots nearly enough. This time around however he was up 4-5 on my serve and I was serving to stay in the match. Even worse he took a 0-40 lead on my serve! I pretty much was already checking off another close loss to him. But a miracle happened and I scrapped my way back to duece with one point consisting of me diving for a short ball just before it hit the ground. After getting level I ended up winning the game and we went on with the set reaching a tiebreaker.
As it was already pretty late I jokingly asked Joe if he wanted to play it out instead of doing a tiebreaker. Laughing he said we better not. As it was he might of done better as I ended up sweeping the tiebreaker 7-0 (don't think I've ever done that before) and pulling out the match.
My shoulder rotation is especially poor when I play players that hit with less pace. This robs me of even more power and I tend to fall into the trap of hitting the ball shorter and shorter as the match goes on. I need to continue to work on upper body rotation including using both hands on the racket during practice.
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