The 2012 Racquetball Chronicles Round 2

One of the guys from work has been wanting to get into racquetball to get back into shape. This morning we had an 8 o clock game set up.

Before the game we hit it back and forth for a bit and a few things were readily apparent to me. One, he has lost a fair amount of his agility and ability to hit the ball but it will come back quickly. Two, if I went all-out this would not be much fun for either of us. So I resolved to set up rallies and work on my serve location to a right handed player since my normal playing partner is leftie.

I had him serve first and worked on serve position, shot selection, and shot execution. The ball was certainly coming back at slower speeds, but it gave me the time to think about where I wanted to be on the court.

I was doing a good job of moving into the aggressive fore-court position and my reflexes were letting me not just get to the ball but actually think about where I wanted to hit my return. When he lobbed it over me, i was able to get to the back wall, think about my next shot, and was doing a good job of playing a defensive shot instead of always trying for an offensive shot even when out of position.

I also was able to recognize how important it was to re-lob it to him. This allowed me to get off the back wall and back into my prime position in fore-court, ready to take any low shot off the wall and put it away for a point.

I did score a lot of points off serves close to either wall he struggled to return so I spent a lot of time working on lobs to either corner to experiment with where to serve to a right-hander.

This is not a knock on him. He has not played in nearly 30 years, I am younger, quicker, in better shape, and have been playing for over a month...I should and did badly outclass him. I was able to toy with him, work on my game and still completely dominate the match.

I won 15-4, 15-6, 15-6.

He then wanted to work on his back-hand. I offered to just hit it around but he wanted to play another game so we did. He jumped out to a 1-0 lead on one of those z-serves I struggle so much with. I then took a 3-1 lead. And then he had a string of serves and a couple volley put aways. I was working hard on hitting it to his back hand and forgot to play position. So he was in front of me and I was struggling to put away winners.

Once I remembered to get back in position I kept pounding his backhand and ran out the game 15-6. He broke my serve a couple times but could not score off me again once I remembered to seize center court forward.

Overall it was a great time. Even though I was never in danger of losing a game, it was a good workout and allowed me to work on several weaknesses much more than working on reinforcing any particular strengths.

We did have several fun rallies involving getting to shots it seemed impossible for either of us to get to and I thoroughly enjoyed those.

I also had a really fun shot that was tight to my backhand when I was at the dotted line just left of center court. I pulled it tight and low, garnering a pretty good kill shot in the low right corner that bounced twice within about 8" of the wall. Probably the best shot I have hit yet.

So overall a fun day that i think improved my game a lot.