What a day! Very tiring as usual for a Vets tournament and running on little sleep, which is also usual.
Got to Mornington just after 8.30am and there was time before events started to have about 20 minutes warm-up hitting.
After events began it wasn't too long to wait to be called for my first match - division 1 doubles. My partner (JP), who is an ex-teammate from 5 1/2 years ago and he had to leave the team after just 3 weeks. So we had three 5 1/2 year old competitive doubles matches experience up our sleeve going into this LOL. Our opponents were Sahmaniac and his partner (a true div 1 player from Dandy) who had just come off an O40's doubles match as a warm-up and have been playing doubles together in most the Vets tourneys this year. Considering experience vs experience, we did pretty well...but we didn't win a set
But it was a good experience builder for JP and I. We now had "current" experience of 1 match lol.
My next match was in Div 1 singles. I was up against a local Mornington player of unknown quality to me. To get a feel for what I was up against I asked him what grade he played a Mornington and he said "A2". This told me he was probably below my rating as I would make it to their "A1", albeit as a No. 2, certainly not a No.1 there, as their No.1's would be A1's just about anywhere in Australia. As the match got underway I discovered the guy had pretty decent strokes and was not overly bothered by my main serving "weapons"! So, he presented something of a challenge. Fortunately I was able to find other ways to stamp my authority on the game and I took the first set 11-3. In the second set he learned to overcome a lot of the things that bothered him in the first and I squeezed out of it 11-9, from 9 all. I think he kept on my hammer and may have even held a lead in the third. Can't quite recall the final set score, I think 11-7 or maybe 8.
Soon after winning that match I was called for my first O40's match. I was again drawn to play a Mornington local and once again I had no idea of his level. In fact, it turned out he was unrated. His game was fairly impotent, as he had reasonable loops on his FH and pushes off his BH, but obviously very little experience against LP. When he did give me a heavier topspin or faster shot and I sent it back off the pips he netted it in the first set. I took the first set 11-2 I think. I lost some focus after that as I was feeling uninspired and he began scoring more. I don't recall the scores exactly, but I think he went 11-7 in the second, but I focused and tightened back up in the 3rd and got it about 11-5. I was chatting with him after and he said he'd recently come back from a 15 year break and his last level was A2 Seniors at Croydon back then, which is quite a decent level (above mine if he were still that level - which he obviously was not). So, I'd won an O40's match, which should earn good rating points, but with no rating, there'll be no points.
The next round of the O40 was where my next match came from and I had gone from an unrated player to facing up to BP Huyhn, the 2nd seed and a full-blown Elite player...something I've never faced before. Having faced Brian Berry a couple of times this year I thought I'd have an idea...but BP broke the mould on my ideas. BB gave me trouble with brute force topspin, but I'd been able to adjust to them and use it to my advantage. BP's serves were a completely different beast. First, they were fast. Second he could send them to the tables white-lines at will and get them there before you even knew he'd served. Third they had freaky spin on them which I was never really able to get a bead on from serve to serve. So I was just guessing, and when I guessed place, spin and bat angle correctly I got into the point. But his smashes (which could be loops travelling at most peoples smash speed) soon ended the point when I did get a serve back. I managed to get the first point of the first set with my pip serve which caught him out by surprise and he netted it. Every time I did catch him out with anything though, he wasn't caught out again by the same thing, ever. It was like you got one shot to find a point, then you had to come up with something else very nasty if you want another. I got 4 points in the first set. I got 4 in the second and then he cut me back to 3 in the third. And unlike BB who was quite willing to go for risky shots and give away a point if it didn't come off, BP gave NOTHING away. I earned everyone of those 12 points the hard way! Quite and experience. Glad I did well enough that he didn't 11-0 me, because I have little doubt there'd have been no pity points.
JP and I began our Division 2 doubles quest after this. And first up we were up against a player who plays both at our club and Mornington and rated quite a bit above both myself and JP. His partner though was a sub-1000 player, although he was quite handy in the pairing. JP and I won the first set easily, the second a fair bit harder, but then lost the 3rd in the deuce. I was a little concerned where there was 1 for them there may be more, but we closed out the match 3-1 winning the 4th set 11-5.
A while later, JP and I went into our 2nd Div 2 doubles match. Unbeknown to me we had started in round 2, and were now in the semi-final. Our opponents were an older gent and a lady. The older gent (JB) had a Dtecs setup similar to my own. And both our partners were dual inverted. JB had more tricks to turn with his Dtecs than a street-hooker and produced wobblier balls than a camel running! Between he and I, we had that ball doing a Mexican Hat Dance! Somehow JP and I managed to pull off the first set at 11-8. A lot had to do with JP's amazing efforts in returning balls from way off the table that he ran to reach and fish-loop back (usually with side-spin). I was serving to the lady in the second and fourth sets and made my contributions mainly via non-returned serves. We scraped through the 2nd set winning it 12-10, but in the 3rd set they snatched it with 13-11. I think during this match JP and I finally began combining properly for me to get him pop-ups to his BH were he flat smashes from. And the longer the match went, the better his BH smashes got. In the 4th set, we got a good lead, but at 9-5 up they began coming back at us point after point. It was my serve to the lady at 10-8 and she returned it and it became a rally which ended in their point. So this was reaching almost crisis point. I gave her a short pips serve chopped to produce a light topspin which she popped over the net with a slight lift that had it bounce about 9 inches higher than the net on our BH side. JP slammed it with his BH for a winner and match was ours! This was probably the hardest match we had, and although I was still unaware...our next match was the final!
We went into the final soon after, and the opponents were quite accomplished players - one who was a C-Pen with BH LP - rarely used. However, for some reason JP and I were now combining so well we went to a 6-1 start and closed it out 11-4. The second set they stepped up a little but we still beat them 11-7. It looked like we would close it in 3 sets, but they changed the way they were playing against me. The C-penner went from either netting from my pips or popping up, to loop attacking the shots having learned how he needed to hit them and giving JB a lot more trouble. The set went to deuce, but they closed it 13-11. In the 4th set, I was serving and returning to the dual inverted chopper/hitter. He'd wised up now too and while he didn't have a loop to attack with, he was floating the ball to me forcing me to move for JB just to hit a return. I changed up what I gave him and stopped him doing that and JB started getting flat BH smash opportunities again. He hit some and missed some. But his rolled returns were drawing loops from the C-Penner and I was getting some good topspin to send back and the chop/hitter started getting drawn into the net. We lead this set all the way, but then they started making inroads to our lead and had come back from 9-5 to 9-7. I was returning the Cpen's serve and JB went for a smash and landed one on the next ball to take us to 10-7, but missed the next to be 10-8 up. Now was my serve and I thought I could pull off the same LP serve to draw a pop up to JB's BH. The chopper put it up with some underspin though and JB hit it in the net. 10-9! I needed to serve something that would be safe now and not lead JB to an error. I served a short underspin serve from my inverted which I'd not served to the chopper for some time. He netted it!
We had won the Div 2 doubles title at our first crack at it as a doubles pair! Not a bad effort I think.
I played my 2nd Div 1 singles match next against a very short, but fairly highly rated player. Being short (5'2??), he played a fast straight-line hitting and blocking game with awkward fast serves to the table extremities. I felt I could beat him as I went virtually point for point with him out to 8 all in the first set, but faulted on a couple of shots and lost 11-8. He got away on a flyer on me in the 2nd set and went quickly out to 8-2 and got me 11-4!
In the 3rd set I lead him by 2 points out to 8-6, but he came back to 8 all. It went to 9 all and he closed me out 11-9. He didn't look like much of a player, but looks are deceiving and I certainly didn't under-estimate him as I knew he was good. In the end, he simply was too good for me, knowing how to pull out those crucial last points each time.
I finally got to play in my last event, the Div 2 singles. It was after 5pm by now, and I was running on just about empty. I was starting in the 2nd round of the draw, playing the winner of round 1 in my section of it. Who should this winner be? The same guy I'd played and beaten earlier in the day in Div 1. The difference was now he knew a lot more of my tricks. Mind you, I also knew more of what would and wouldn't work on him and how he may respond to my game. Who would have the advantage? Well in the first set, I did and was well on the way to winning it at 9-4 up and set to go to 10-4 as he popped up prime to my FH, but very wide. As I lined up the sash to put it away, he let out what seemed to be an involuntary "Ha!" just as I started my swipe. I can't say categorically, but I felt I jerked backward from the shock of his noise and completely missed the ball and instinctively said his noise caused me to miss (which I think it did, but who knows if I'd have missed or not). He said he's happy to replay the point, but seemed annoyed at having to as if he was being cheated. So I said he should have the point, and he took it. So it was 9-5. Then he won the next and made it 9-6. I decided not to panic, collected my wits and hit the next ball deep into his BH with my pips which he stuck down the side of the table to go 10-6. Then served him into the net on the next with the pips and closed it 11-6. I then repeated that twice more, winning 11-6 in the next 2 sets.
My last match of the day was then in round 2 of Div 2 singles and I was up against my doubles partner JP. I began really well and had him on the run, leading him 7-3. But suddenly I couldn't find a point. He returned 3 smashes in a row in one point from distance and then came in and hit a BH smash down my FH (his favourite shot). The score moved all the way to his favour of 8-7 before I won another point to go 8 all. He jumped to 9-8, then 10-8 as I was reeling. I re-focused and grabbed 10-9, but then errored the next to the net to lose 11-9. In the second set the reverse occurred as JB lead me out to 8-4, but I came back to 10-8 and then deuce and I kept on rolling to win 12-10. This match was tightly played and I hadn't realised but we were fighting for a semi-final berth. The third set went along locked at the horns and went also out to deuce. JB took the lead 11-10, but I took the next 3 points from him to take a 2-1 lead. The 4th set came on and I got a 4-2 lead and rolled it over to 5-3, but couldn't keep the gap. He came back to 5 all with some unbelievable BH flat drives as well as some FH mega side-spinny loops. I took 6-5 and came close to getting 7-5, only to have it stolen to 6 all. We went point for point to 9 all and despite desperate attempts he whisked some FH loops away on me to go 11-9. Now during this match, his looping and his BH smashes were hit and miss and largely dependant on whether my chop-blocks caught him slightly out of position or not. I still can't figure how he pulled off the last set, because I don't think my gameplay became any worse. But from 2 all, he played a faultless game out to 8-2. Talk about take the wind out of a guys sails! From there I got back to 9-4 and again he cracked 2 great FH loops down my BH side from low pip-reversed balls to win 11-4. I was stunned! I've played JB quite a bit at the club recently and the last time I did I'd beaten him, albeit by 2 points in a 7th set. But I don't think I've ever had him play like he did in that set. And this match wasn't best of 7 (although he has won all the best of 5's we've played lol). So now it was his to go on with to the semi. In fact, Sahmaniac and JP respectively played semi's against the pair JB and I had beaten in the doubles final.
The result? Both JP and Sahm lost their semi's and the doubles parter's were playing the final as we left, with the Cpenner winning at the time. We left Sahm umpiring it, so he may update us on who won when he reads this over his morning coffee tomorrow
So it was quite an eventful day. And not altogether unsuccessful. I think I may gain one solitary rating point from it (at most lol). But its not every tournament you win cash and a title, so I'll take it. Even if the cash only covered half the entry fee
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
