Tonight I was matched up against T-mat, a guy from work who used to play regularly but took about a three year sabbatical. I figured I would score a few points but probably lose handily.
I was also a little concerned because when I set it up, I had forgotten he said he used to regularly plunk guys in the back who set up in position.
Well, the first game started out with him jumping out to a 3-0 lead as I played the back court and got spanked for it. Then I started working the mid court and got the serve, reeled off a bunch of points and was up by a comfortable 10-3 or so.
We then exchanged serves a couple times, but I was not worried because I was winning the volleys and he was struggling with his serve.
I finished off the game with a convincing 15-3 win and was feeling pretty good. Maybe I have improved that much. Sure, it was hard for him to score since his first serve was long the vast majority of the time, allowing me to get serve after serve I could handle. Regardless, I was winning most of the volleys.
Game two, he got his serve down. He was using a drive serve that was actually not legal as it screened me but I was complacent, thinking I would win anyway, and thought it would be good for me to work on my return game.
He was mixing up his serve well between drives down the forehand wall, drives down the back hand wall, and drives that just ate me up right into my chest. Even when I did get a return, it was a week one that consistently had him taking shots from scoring position.
When I tried pinch shots I angled them poorly, thus bouncing right back up waist high to his forehand and when I tried passing shots, I over hit them, allowing him to stay at mid court and hit kill shots.
Only my speed and agility allowed me to keep a lot of balls in play and his rust had him miss a few easy shots so it was a respectable score...something like 15-10, but he won. It was a really fun game because we had several rallies that included multiple points where we both had shots it seemed like we had put away for a winner, only to see the other guy hit an even better shot that we somehow returned...I loved, loved, loved it.
As the set wore on, I noticed an error I kept making. I have been working on using the walls more to create angles to make my shots harder to read. However, he is so good at reading them that all I was doing was giving him to set up in the mid court and blast perfect shots...but I kept hitting that shot. I really need to work on my in-game adjustments.
The third game was really back and forth. He built a 4 or 5 point lead, I fought back to tie it, he scored a couple, I took a small lead, he took a small lead, tie, I took a 10-9 lead, he took a 12-10 lead. I then scored 4 straight.
We were both gassed. It had been an incredibly tense game. I was sweating so bad that three times the racket came out of my hand. This new racket has a grip that gets super slick. I will either have to purchase a glove or regrip the racket. I NEVER had that problem with the old racket.
Anyway, at 14-12, I hit a gorgeous serve that bounced about an inch past the service line and bounced a second time short of the receiving line...a perfect ace. He flipped the ball back to me like you do when the ball is short so I shrugged and went back to work.
Unfortunately, I had assumed the game was over and, my head not on straight, served up a lollipop. He hit a kill shot, I went to return it...and the racket came completely out of my hand.
He then served an ace of his own, another point, then served an ace.
I started to go and he said, "this ain't tennis. You gotta win the last point on a rally."
Aha. Now I get it. My serve HAD been good but he had a house rule that I was not aware of. Fair enough.
Still, could not get my head back in it, and did not even go after one shot in the next rally that was not only eminently hittable, it was well set up for me to hit my most effective shot...a backhand pinch shot to the far corner.
He just outworked me after I thought the game was over. Even without that, he is a better player than me all around...he has a stronger serve, better kill shots, better position...so I feel good about the games and best of all, worked my tail off for an hour.
Also, it was good because I learned more about the game. My regular playing partner hits it to the same corner, but his shots tend to bounce off the side wall and/or back wall. So I was setting up to return those.
T-mat, however, keeps them scraping the side wall or bouncing dead at the back wall, so where I was setting up to play the rebound, there was none so I was out of position. So I need to read the ball angle better.
Then B showed up and we played. I fell into some bad habits because I was trying to keep it interesting. Instead of working on my shots, I was trying to set up rallies.
Even so it is such a mis-match that I wrecked him 2 games in about 15 minutes.
I then started serving more seriously which, counter-intuitively, he seemed to have an easier time returning than the lollipops I was serving earlier and suddenly we started getting a few rallies going. I still won pretty handily, but it was a better game.
We still had 25 minutes to go or so, so I took out a few minutes to help him work on his serve.
And he promptly serves time and again that I struggled to get to. Unlike some of my games with him, every point he got in this game was legit...I simply could not return those.
We had several good rallies, he was up 11-9 and serving many I could not handle...probably 9 of his points were off serves I could not return. I was winning most of the rallies and losing to his serve.
We closed out with a handful of good rallies and I walked off a 15-12 winner in the last game.
I need to remember to work on my ball control when I play B...not just try to get rallies, but work on hitting passing shots hard enough to get by the opponent, not so hard they bounce off the back wall. I need to work on the kill shots. The angles.
I also need to make him work harder because he plays better when I do.
Overall an exceptionally fun night of two hours of racquetball and I am spent.
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