Five Sets, I Play Well, But He Plays Better

Sets 224-228:

Stuart vs. S. at His Apts. Winner: S. 6-1, 6-0, 6-3, 6-3, 6-2.

My Mojo: Above-Average, Though Faced With Some Unbeatable Play

I haven't really been blogging that faithfully lately, because I've been involved in a big project that has taken up most of my time. I won't really go into it here, but it's kind of like being on a two-week long crack binge. But now the bulk of the sleepless work has faded and I will be (hopefully) getting back into my life's routines again. And maybe do the dishes and the like. But I will be getting back to playing more tennis again. I really did need to take a break from playing anyway, because of my injury to my finger. It's been about a month, and it's still hurting. At least I can type and play piano with it again and it can bear some weight. It's probably the type of thing that will hurt to some degree for several months. So i'm not Mr. Nine-Fingers anymore, and I played the Maple Leaf Rag today both Joplin-style and Jelly Roll Morton-style to celebrate.

What a marathon. We played five sets, the most that I have played against anyone in one sitting (standing, I guess would technically be a more correct term). I think the whole thing was about three hours long and we didn't take any breaks, except for the typical changeover breaks. So in terms of time, I've probably played longer, as I'm sure I've played two or three sets with long rallies, and in which we could not break out of deuce/ad patterns for a while.

S. has been consistently outplaying me in our last few meetings, and this was no exception. It was somewhat frustrating, but I didn't really get too emotionally invested in it and didn't let it bug me too much. Of course it was a bit frustrating to see him whack shots back every so often that I had no chance of getting to. Some of it was me shooting balls at him that gave him the opportunity to play offense and strategically hone in to blast his winners, but most of it was just pure solid play on his part.

I noticed, too, that on the ladder, he has upped his ranking a notch. I had been telling him the last few times we played that I thought he was now a higher ranked player, and he said he had been thinking the same thing. He jumped up at least twelve rungs on the ladder because he has been defeating everybody he plays, ever much higher ranked players.

S. told me that a lot of players just won't play him any more because he has just been beating most of them too badly. I have no problem going back to play better players over and over again. I don't really have an ego thing invested in it. Sure, I get frustrated sometimes, but it's pretty much over after the match. I have a couple of strategies for not letting tougher players constantly beating me get my goat:

First, I ramp down my expectations. I try to figure what my percentages are, and set my expectations accordingly. Going into this match, I thought that I would be happy if I averaged winning about two games a set. After five sets, I only fell one game short of that, but that was offset by my improving over the course of the match. So that was not bad.

Second, my expectations are fluid as the match progresses. In the third set, I suddenly surged, and so I started thinking that three games a set would be good. And I met those expectations for two sets. In the last set, I got a little tired, and decided to have no expectations going into the set. So the two games I won were bonus.

Third, I just am glad that a tougher player will play me. I told S. that I was just afraid that he had learned everything he could learn about my game and didn't need to play me any more. He said he didn't mind playing. But I play a lot of people who I would probably beat most of the time too. I have no objection to playing just about anyone, pro or beginner. I figure that there's always something you can learn from someone unless you're winning every single shot in the game without difficulty. And if someone is so good that they beat you almost every point, it helps you find (or define) weaknesses in your game that you need to work on.

I started off most of the sets playing well. In most of the sets, I won the first game. And I think I kept playing pretty well, maybe dropping just a tiny bit, but her ramped up phenomenally and got to his game a few games into each set. In the first set, in the last three games, I won no points at all. He kept returning balls that I had no chance of getting to.

So I started the second set a little frustrated by my inability to get to anything in the last few games. And in this set, I only got four points in the first four games. Yow. Those seven games gave me about the worst result I've had since starting this blog. For some reason, I didn't get a major dark cloud over my head over this; probably because I didn't really think of it that way until I typed this.

There is a quality that I don't know if there's a word for, that when one player has it, he usually wins, and when the other player doesn't, he usually loses. It's not quite luck, it's sort of skill-driven luck. It's characterized by your getting all of your close shots just barely in the lines, either wide or deep. I shows up when you are getting lots of those "lucky" shots that hit the net and drop over instead of under, and when your serve is hitting the sweet spot on your racquetand going to just the right place in the box. It's a combination of being "in the zone" and having great luck. And the opposite of it is when all of your close shots go long, when all of your anticipated winners hit the net, when your serves fizzle--you get the drift. Anyway, he had the good part of that, and I had the bad part. So I pretty much knew I was doomed. Even though I thought I was playing great, he was playing even greater, and he was on a roll from doing this with other players too.

In the third and fourth set, I came back somewhat. At the beginning of each set, I played well enough to keep up with him in games. In the middle of the each of these sets, my shots started clicking, and we kept pace in games until the end of each set, when he broke out and won. But I did get three games in. I also got some of my best strategy happening during these sets, and played offensively more often. I did return some weak shots, most of which he pounced on and shot back winners from.

In the fifth set, I was just tired, so I was trying to practice playing tired. He did a much better job of this than I did, and hit shots that maximized a strategy of conserving his energy. I never could get a foothold in, but managed to win two games though I though I played better in the first two sets in which I only won one game over two sets and got creamed. He was just playing phenomenally then.

I probably would have kept playing. He said at the end of the fifth set that his shoulder was bothering him a little, and he was going to call it a day. I don't know why I still felt energetic. And my attitude stayed pretty good throughout the match. I like playing him because he likes to analyze the game a lot, and so do I, so on the breaks, we had some really good conversation about our play. That's probably why I usually write more about the matches with S. Most players don't get very analytical; they just play.