Tennis - Followup

In non-professional tennis tourneys, they like to guarantee everyone gets to play at least 2 matches. To accommodate this, they create a consolation draw of everyone who lost in the first round.

There were only 3 of us who lost in the first round (19 participants in a 32 player draw ended up creating 13 "bye" matches in the first round) and one of us 3 losers decided not to play in the backdraw. That left just me and one other guy playing for the backdraw championship.

We played today, and I won 6-1, 6-0.

It was a simple situation. I was about as superior to him as Greg was to me. He had good strokes, and he stretched me on a number of points. He hit several winners, and many of his serves overpowered me. But things looked a little different on this side of the skill-divide.

His shots were so "wristy" he made ping-pong look flat, and his backhand was unpredictable. So, the game plan was simple. Hit most everything to his backhand, and when I did go to his forehand keep the ball too low for him to get that wrist action under it.

I kept to the game plan (never change a winning strategy) and he had exactly the troubles his style should create.

The most interesting thing was that my serve largely fell apart. I probably averaged getting about 35% of my first serves in, and that's because I quit trying for a lot. I need to be trying for more and still achieving 65% or so. You want to be trying to win points outright with your serve. It's not enough to get a high percentage with weak serves. But my serve was just miserable.

I think it was a combination of some of the things I was trying against Greg, and being so far ahead. When the pressure goes away during a match, different parts of your game will weaken. Today, it was the serve. I was glad it was nothing more important.

Thanks for tuning in. :-)

You can see the damage here, after they get it updated.
http://tennislink.usta.com/Tournaments/TournamentHome/Tournament.aspx?T=62813

(BTW - do you know what kind of tourney this was? As they guys would be leaving they'd say little things to each other like, "See you in Scotsdale.")