Another tournament report. Played both Saturday and Sunday, and as promised, decided to go with only 2 events per day, to cut down on matches.
It definitely was smart on Saturday, where I went 9:2 and was pretty deep into SE (but no trophies...), so a 3rd event would've been way too much.
Went 3:0 in U2000 RR as a second seed, but 'A' player had estimated rating and was pretty close to me (I won 16:14 in the 5th, so it's as close as it gets). Beat 'B' player easily (who keeps saying how he hates pips), and more or less the same with 'D' junior.
Had pretty simple 1/8 match, but then in QF ran into a rapidly improving kid (~1900) who took quite a few scalps a month ago. Much to my surprise I took first game easily, but then he proceeded to do the same in the next 3.
Went 3:0 in U1750 RR, with uneventful games against 'B' and 'C' players, but then unexpectedly went 5 games against ~850 'D' player (one more lesson of not playing the rating but the player). Barely escaped, at deuce and surviving at least one match point - hard to play juniors when they intend to hit anything that moves and start landing them.
Again a rather straightforward 1/8th and in QF again played a kid from my U2000 group - only this time he was on fire. Fell back 1:2, but kept it simple in the 4th, pretty much purely defending and took it easily. In the 5th, however, it was not fun as I fell behind again, and it looked pretty grim at 6:10
. Well, somehow I pulled it off 
, but poor kid was very upset 
. In SF ran into a carbon copy of myself (but much funkier OX pips and a better FH). Lost in a very tight 1:3, with too many deuces.On Sunday started with U1900 - did go 2:1 with losing to a somewhat underrated A seed 0:3. In QF ran into someone I played a long time ago - I beat her pretty easily 3:0 then, but she improved quite a bit and was rated ~100 points above me. It went back and forth to the 5th, where it was my turn to blow it at 10:6
. Not happy at all, but then remembered that I was on the other side of the same scenario on Saturday, so it helped a bit. A bummer, since draw was quite favorable the rest of the SE round...U2050 I somehow got placed into the group with my 2 clubmates. Beat a D player and rather uneventfully lost to both 'A' (0:3) and 'B' (1:3). And that was pretty much it.
Some thoughts and other tidbits:
* Was unable to reunite with my paddles I left behind 2 months ago. While they did find a paddle case that looked just like mine, unfortunately it had only 2-3 well used rubbers inside, but not 2 of my tried and true Defplay setups. So, I guess I'll need to find another Defplay somewhere.
* Met with 'kaesees' and even hit with him for a bit - always nice to meet someone from the forum in person.
* My only 'moment of zen' over the entire weekend was ~5 minutes of a warm up when I somehow had a FH that did not miss and had these nice balls with decent speed and spin. Need to recapture it somehow, at least in practice to start with.
* Watched Jian Li practicing and, well, his chops are much more 'violent' - he is really making an aggressive motion there, so ball gets massive backspin and is just gliding to the end line. Mine are much more smooth, I think, and not as dangerous. Need to practice that.
* Overall, it feels like game is sort of in a funk - not much progress, perhaps I'm even going backwards a bit. Not really threatening anyone above me lately. Perhaps in addition to flawed technique I'm now also suffering from lack of tactics and strategy, which is a lethal combo...
Such a blow to my ego and the image in my head of an artistic looking game (if not a winning one). 