Pushing Myself Into A Bad Attitude

Sets 264-267:

Stuart v. S. at His Apts. Winner: S. 6-4, 6-0, 6-1, 7-5.

My Mojo: Frustrated.

I haven't won a match or even a set against S. in some time. The last few times I played him, I had even lowered my expectations to the point where I thought 6-2 or 6-3 would be a good result. But this time, I decided not to do that. Perhaps that was my downfall in terms of attitude.

S. told me that he thought that I was playing pretty well, but that didn't stop me from being disgusted with myself my the end of the fourth set. I really need to back off of the negative mental stuff, especially when I play S. I don't know why I get so down on myself sometimes. It's not really a lingering thing; half an hour after the match, and it's gone. But it can really affect my play.

A lot of times I'm able to "push a reset button" on my attitude. Especially at the beginnning of a new set. And frequently also, I can do that in the middle of a set and just act like it is a new set. I was able to do that to a certain degree in the fourth set, but my attitude was just too negative.

In the first set, I started out pretty strongly even though I lost the first couple of games. I was also able to sustain my momentum. Usually (especially when I am playing S.), I start out really strong and then fizzle after about four games. But in this set I managed to keep focus for at least the first eight games to bring the score to 4-4. This set contained probably my strongest sustained play. I was also getting really good balance during my shots, and moving my body effectively into the shots, which is something I have been working on. However, at the end of the first set, it started raining. I wanted to stop, but kept playing in the rain against my better judgment, and sure enough, I dropped the next couple of games easily to lose 6-4.

It rained for about ten minutes, but not hard enough to completely soak the ground. So we waited around to see if it would clear up, and it did after a short time. I had slightly thrown out my back this morning and didn't want to play on a surface that was at all slippery, so I wouldn't have played on a damp court this time. But it completely dried up, and we resumed.

I didn't count on what the loss of momentum would do to my attitude, though. I was totally unfocused for the next two sets, and lost game after game quickly before I realized what was going on. By the time I could have possibly regained my composure, my attitude was too far gone to do well for the second and third sets. He won almost every game easily, and I was just getting really angry at myself for losing my direction.

For the fourth set, I was able to push that "reset button" on my attitude somewhat. For the first part of this set, I was back to getting really good balance and movement, and was getting in the most aggressive play so far. By the time that I was up 4-1, I thought I actually might win a set. However, not only did he mix up his game somewhat (successfully), I completely dropped focus, and he brought the score up to 4-4, which made me really pissed. I won the next game to get to 5-4, but the win that was within reach never materialized. I could not get beyond scattered after that, and he also stopped playing with as much pace. I missed almost every shot at net as well, ehich frustrated me even worse. My failure to convert the advantages that I had previously into winning the set really frustrated me, and my mental attitude was at its lowest at the end of this set. Still, I would have played more, and maybe at some point I would have been able to "reset" again. He had to get somewhere, though, so he couldn't play another set, and I was left in my gnarly funk under a black cloud mentally kicking myself in the butt. But, like I said earlier, half an hour later, everything was OK again. The world is not going to end because I lost a set of tennis.