Its been a strange week of TT. Monday night, my team met with the team second on the ladder to us and we got trampled. Maybe I should really say I got trampled
My teammates did roughly what they've been doing...winning one match each. I lost all 3 of mine instead of winning all 3 as I'd done the previous 2 weeks and we lost both doubles (I only played in one given we hadn't tried the other 2 guys out together yet). We hadn't lost a doubles until then either! So we went down 9-2. And its not like I even felt that I played all that badly. I just had a night where I couldn't push the 11 line enough.
So then we switch to tonight's A1 Masters where we expect very little of ourselves. The team we were playing has 2 quality players in it, but as far as this grade goes, they are not the cream. Having said that, I still wasn't sure of winning even a set, certainly against one of them who plays A1 Seniors on Mondays also (I play A3 on Mondays). Anyway, it turns out the "weaker" of the 2 players isn't coming and they have a fill-in coming who is stronger than both of them!
In this grade there is no complaining though, you just have to grin and bear it
So, I go into bat against their first player, M...the guy who plays A1 Mondays. I told my partner L if I get a set I'd be wrapped. This guy used to be a teammate about 3 years ago, but since then has improved so much he left me in his wake. He is a VERY strong looper from both wings and he plays the game I HATE most...you pip players know...the one where he serves topspin to your pips and then tees off on the underspin that comes back at him. Generally, I have very few answers to this type of game, and the last times I'd played him, he'd killed me every time. Even when he had a sor back and couldn't move he beat me using a pip nullifying game until he got easy putaways.
So I figured I'd do what I could to find cracks in his lining, but I wasn't expecting much. To my surprise though I actually started out pretty well with him. He was serving his topspins and I was sending him back fairly heavy underspin just as he likes, but I was trying to get it into awkward spots on his BH side that made him decide whether he would BH or FH loop it. Now the spin he generates on the serve is REALLY hard to control anyway, so getting this right wasn't easy. But he hadn't got into his "zone" yet, so I was troubling him into some misses. I sensed I might pick up the first set if I could keep him off-balance. And that's just what I did and I got him 11-9. I was happy with that! In fact, I was happy enough that to lose 4-1 wouldn't make me unhappy lol
We got into the second set and again I was keeping with him, even though he had started to hit his loops a little more, and had started to remember how to nullify my game and shut down my FH power. I recall he hit one sizzling loop passing me on the wide FH and I got the bat to it for a fast FH block back past his FH side
This time the set drew to deuce and I felt like that might be all she wrote. Surprisingly though, I got him to net my underspin serve that was very short to his FH as he lazily reached for it. On the next point he went for a BH loop and missed and I won 12-10. 2 sets to nil, and I was doing a little dance lol.
In the 3rd set, once again I held strong and kept pace with him out to 5 and then 6 all. Then he hit 2 blindingly good loops and hopped straight to 8-6. On the next point after a short rally he completely missed the ball on a pips push that he was looking to loop. I thought it was my point, as he'd made a few misses like this before. I was happy with getting back to 8-7, when he said it was a let. A ball had come into the back of the court at the time he went for his loop and he said he was distracted by it and had pulled the shot. My teamy umpiring hadn't seen the ball come in. I had and I wasn't sure of the exact timing, but given I know the feeling of hearing a ball bouncing in behind you, and that he is generally an honest guy, I felt compelled to allow the let and not push the point. It did however, slow my momentum, and he took the next point to go 9-6. I wasn't done though and I fought him out to deuce. This time though he was getting his loops zoned in and easily took me 12-10.
The 4th set was now my best hope to push this match to somewhere where I might stand any hope of carrying off a win. His loops were really hitting up though and I had to be ultra careful of my placements of every ball I hit. I mean he can literally just tee off on anything "loose", and by loose I mean a MUCH tighter definition of loose than most people would think is loose lol. Fortunately, he was still teeing off on most things though as he still wasn't totally shutting me down and waiting for the truly "right" ball to tee-off on (although he had begun doing this more than he had earlier just the same). So when I was aiming to advance this to 3-1, and feeling like I just might...he sent me reeling back by taking the set 11-8. So it was 2 all and he was poised to move for the kill.
The 5th set though, I began to change my play. Instead of sending his topspin serves to his BH, I sent them to his FH. Far harder to do, given there is more distance to keep them on the table going to his BH. But he was kill looping me way too much with his FH down my FH line by now, so I had to throw a spanner in his works. Now more than a couple of these FH-delivered serve blocks came back and past me like bullets down my BH line, but he also missed quite a few too. Meanwhle, on my own serve I was trying to keep it tight and safe as I'd made some serve errors earlier (but mainly in the sets I won, so hadn't been too costly). On balance, my change in strategy worked and I won the set 11-8 and got back a lead.
So now, could I close it all out and cover myself in glory by winning the 6th set? He even said to me, "finish me off". I'm not sure if it was a taunt, or "permission" in his mind for me to win...but I took it as the latter
The set started badly though, with him winning his serve on the first 2 points. Then he won both of my serves and the next of his again to be 5-0 up. This wasn't going to plan! I won a point finally to get going and then moved along to 6-2. He got out to 9-3, but I managed to mount a comeback that saw me back to 10-7 when he closed it 11-7. So it was 3 sets all and coming down to a 7 setter. You have to remember though, I was happy taking ONE set from this guy. Going to 7 sets with him was miraculous!
Into the 7th, I served first and he teed the first long pips serve to his BH straight back through me. So I served him another to a slightly different position and he tried it again and netted it. From there though, he took it to 3-1, then 4-2 and then had us change ends with him 5-2 up and commanding the match now. I managed to snatch the point at 5-3, but he got away to 7-3 on me as his loops were just blasting me away. Most of them now were from his BH side with his FH across my BH, and I couldn't get a bat to them. He made it out to 9-4 and I sneaked another one to be 9-5, and then another to go 9-6 thinking I might put some pressure on here when he blasted another loop by me to go 10-6. Well that was it, I figured I'd just go for broke from here and see what I could conjure. Most of it is a blur, except for a couple of very clear things. One was a big FH smash past him that I'd worked my pips butt off to get. Another was a loop he sent long from the mis-read of my pip spin, to give me deuce. And the pen-ultimate climax to the match where he hit a BIG FH kill-loop down my FH side. He put so much on it he, and with such certainty of a winner he let himself over-commit. No way would I get a FH to that...but an out-stretched arm BH pips block to the FH side (one of my favorite emergency shots btw
) gave me just enough time to put bat to ball and block it back across deep to his FH side and all he could do was watch it land
11-10!
Well the match was not over yet. It was his serve and he chose not to topspin into me, but put a short tomahawk to my FH. I sent it back off the pips to his FH and he looped at my middle and I chop-blocked it back to his FH again. He knew the spin was heavy, so he lifted it back to my BH and all I could do was push it back at his tummy deep. He moved and went for the big loopkill from his FH, but hadn't made position well enough and sent it long! Now it was my match!!
I was jubilant! This might well be the best player I ever beat. He had a few excuses, saying he was trying to extend the match until his fill-in turned up and that he had new rubbers on his bat, but he did at least concede I won the last set which wasn't sposed to happen.
In the end the fill-in didn't turn up, so he got another guy to fill-in who was a much lesser player that L and I both beat in straight sets, although he did manage to support the opponent to win the doubles 3-2 (A1 has this odd quirk where they only play to 5 sets in the doubles if the match is already decided - weird when no other grade does it).
L lost his single to the A1 Seniors player in 4 sets 11, 6, 6, 8. He had an off night really, as we only really lost the doubles due to a raft of mistakes he made (especially serving faults and rushing shots and missing ), which were uncharacteristic for him. Luckily, we already had the night in the bag!
Winning 2 matches tonight takes my personal ratio from 0% to 33% too
Thought I might stay on zero the entire season.
This win may also lift us off the bottom of the ladder even too