Another Three-Setter Hard Fought

Sets 107-109 (of 365):

Stuart vs. S. at His Apartments. Winner: S. 6-2, 6-7(8), 6-4.

My Mojo: Scattered

I simply feel like I have not been able to get it together mentally for the last few days. Maybe I'm getting to "tennis burnout." For now, I think I'll try to play through it, but if it gets really bad, I might take a break.

In this match, I had a hard time pulling together my mental state to get any kind of planning done during points. I was mostly reacting rather than calling the shots, but then again, playing defensively is something I do well, though I'm not particularly happy with it. There were a lot of games that he won without me getting a point in, and it didn't seem like I did the same thing. It seemed like both of us got un-calibrated at times, that is, our bodies would get changing circumstances, and then it would take some time to re-tune to those circumstances. He said that he had hurt his back a little bit so his shots were a little different, so he was readjusting to deal with that. And I seemed to get my muscles moving around in ways that changed my shots too, and then I would re-tune as well. So it seemed that then each of us would re-calibrate, and get a few games in a row in.

I noticed also that I was calling a lot of shots just a tiny bit early, and I was having to change calls from "out" to "in" because of this. This was bugging me and I was trying not to do it, but I did eventually make the fairest calls that I could, and it didn't seem like he missed hitting any because of my calls. I would have probably given him the chance to play the point over on a let or hindrance if he did mishit because he thought I had called a shot out. I don't seem to do this with other people, but S. seems to get a lot of shots that just go seriously close to the lines and look like they will be out for sure, both back and wide, but then float down right on the line. Maybe I do call other people's shots early too but it doesn't make a difference, because they are closer to being out.

For the first set, I was not focused at all. I just got a lot of passing shots that came by me, and it was frustrating me a lot. I did manage to get a couple of games in, and I thought that if the whole match went like this, I would just lose in a really lopsided fashion.

But I managed to hang on by the skin of my teeth in the second set. We kept pace with each other through the set to get to a tiebreak, and I just barely whistled by in the tiebreak. He wasn't getting me on as many down-the-line shots as the last time I played him, but he was still getting a few in.

In the last set, he seemed to hit a lot of slice shots that looked like they were going to be drop shots, but then sailed longer than I thought they would to land in the back of the court. These shots usually came right at me so I had trouble judging the depth. I would run up for them thinking that they would fall right over the net, and then by the time I realized that they were going longer than that, it was too late, and they would either fall at my feet where I would be out of position, or behind me. I was getting nailed on a lot of these. Though I kept pace with him for the first part of the set and got to 4-4, he won the next two games to bring it to 6-4 and I lost the match.