Playing With A Full Deck

Sets 193-194:

Stuart vs. P. at Austin High. Winner: Stuart 6-0, 6-2.

My Mojo: Above-Average.

It was major muggy outside today. Not too hot, but just hot enough to make me build up a huge sweat from not much exertion, so I was dripping with goo early on. P. had a serve that didn't have much of a back swing and just utilixed sort of a quick snapping motion rather than a big swing and follow-through. I've seen people who serve like this before, and their serve can be surprisingly powerful, which it was for P., even though there was so little motion involved. However, the serve was fairly erratic and he got very few first serves in. The ones he did get in, I got to pretty easily, though he did ace me once. He also double-faulted a lot, and his second serve tended to be not very hard or deep, so I was able to get up to net a lot after his second serve after returning some approach shots that put him off-balance. I got a lot of points that way. My serve was pretty decent and I felt I had good placement and power.

In the first set, I took all of the games pretty easily. He had some good shots, but I was opearting with a full deck, so I was getting them back pretty well, and taking many of the points through strategic moves. I was easily on the offense, and only rarely had to defend. The first set went by pretty quickly.

In the second set, his game ramped up quite a bit. Many of the games were pretty close, and the first game of the set (the first one that he won,breaking my serve) was fairly long, going back and forth from deuce to ad many times with substantial rallies that he managed to edge me out on during key points. So he started out the set 1-0. I managed to win the next five games to bring the score up to 5-1. He put up a good fight in the next game, and beat me all four points of the game, to bring the score up to 5-2. I came back and won the next game, and won the match.