Ultimate Tennis, Allen High School
07:00 PM: Raj Ramakrishnan 7-5, 4-6, 7-6(8-6)
Until I can comfortably defeat an opponent like the one I faced tonight then I don't believe I can consider myself a decent player. There was certainly nothing comfortable about my match against Raj and I was lucky to escape with a win.
The report on Raj was that he was fast, had limited ground stroke capabilities and loved the no pace balls - especially the drop shot. I did not see this during the warmup or the first five games of the match as he struck the ball well and hard. He opted not to practice his serve and he did not really need to as he was doing quite well with it. As it was I managed to break his second serve game and took a 4-1 lead.
Then things took a turn for the worse as he totally changed his game and went with the off speed dings and dongs. Of course, that exposed my weak footwork and poor mental approach to dealing with that "junk" and I began struggling. The frustration level racheted up quickly as I was ahead of a lot of short slow balls and totally misplayed them, usually sending them flying over the baseline or wide of the left side touchline. Thanks goodness I had a lead as it was the only thing that allowed me to hold on for the 7-5 first set win.
The second and third set are just a mess-mash of memories regarding chasing the short drop shot and running back for the lob. I lost the second set 4-6 and was coming a little unglued, although I don't think I showed it externally. The sun had gone down and the lights were not coming on and I hate that time of day as my vision is poor. That combined with trying to time hitting a slow ball actually caused me to totally miss two easy shots. Needless to say that was embarassing.
I had my chances early in the third set as I had him at 40-15 on his serve twice. But neither time could I cash in those chips and he hung on. In fact he was serving at 4-5 for the match and held one match point. Lucky I managed to hang on and we ended up going to a tiebreaker. I served first and lost that point, but got one back on his serve. I managed to work into a lead of 6-3 but then he won three points in a row to make it 6-6. But I won the next two points to take the tiebreaker 8-6.
I sqweaked out a win and insured myself of at least a second place finish in our division. That should get me a decent seeding in the 32 player playoff draw.
The core of any tennis player's abilities lies with his footwork. Until you master your footwork you'll always be second rate. You must be willing to really work during long rallies against players that give you no pace and there is no substitute for properly preparing for each stroke.
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