How Did I Play Today?

Lost to Margit in a league match 3-0. It was a bit fustrating because I could tell as soon as a started that I was cold. The biggest problem was that my legs and eyes weren't functioning properly yet. Besides that I wasn't able to do my spinniest serves, since this was the first singles match I played. My basic strategy of serving and looping was working, because my serves were being returned in a weird way. The returns had the opposite side spin that I served with. I couldn't see what she was doing that would cause this. The third game managed to be close with me losing 11-9 as I started to warm up, but it really was a case of too little too late. I wanted to try to attack her lack of ability to reverse spin on her forehand, but found that my pushes were too weak, and my serves to the forehand too unpracticed. I should think about resurrecting my forehand tomahawk from the forehand side against the weaker players in the club. I also found that my backhand loops were being blocked back easily. My suspicion is that Margit was using a rubber on her backhand that is just short of being anti.

I was working on my reverse pendulum forehand serve and as it warmed up I found the serve to be much easier. I figured out today that the key to the backspin variation is to serve with my whole body, getting a good shoulder and hip turn. I miss this serve sometimes because I stop watching the ball and sometimes because of a bad toss.

I also played Arsene today and while interesting, I had trouble executing the short backspin serve into anti and then a forehand flip against the weak topspin. I unfortunately kept putting this shot into the net. I either need to get more spin on this serve or to expect less spin. I also couldn't get his heavy backspin serve back onto the table. If the serve came long I could loop it with my forehand, but most of the time it was too short. I tried pushing the serve, but was too passive with my push and it kept ending up in the bottom of the net. This tells me most of all that I need to work of my push and leveling it up at least one level.

To reiterate, I should work on:

-Serves to the forehand side, this should be from all of my three motions, forehand pendulum, reverse pendulum forehand, and forehand tomahark. I should think about using the tomahawk from the forehand corner as well and the backhand corner.

-pushing, both forehand and backhand. My forehand push is better than it was a year ago, but my backhand push has probably regressed. This just means that they are both inadequate for the level all my other strokes are at.

-playing Margit in singles a couple more times. Figure out why I lose to her. i.e. what weakness is she exposing.