Things to work on

Pushing

• short pushing off the bounce
• long fast push
• forehand pushing
• backhand side spin push right to left motion
• forehand side spin push against forehand pendulum, hitting right side of ball

Looping

• Improving consistency with crosscourt forehand from backhand side


• looping down the line from backhand side (placement, placement, placement)


• consistency with backhand loop


• getting better at mid distance looping, but still need much more consistency, need to be better at moving forward to attack shorter blocks


• keep working on backhand loop against topspin

Flipping

• developing comfort with this shot

Serving Experiments

• forehand tomahawk, elbow dominated motion vs. shoulder dominated


• reverse pendulum poke motion vs wrist


• forehand pendulum how many motions am I using now? 4? 5? 3?


• pure backspin forehand pendulum


• kicking topspin serve; hit the top of the ball

Service Receive

• watch the racket not the ball

Still a lot of things to work on. There is some new stuff compared to the last list and I'm really still working on everything from that list.

At the club today

Only played a couple singles today. I'm mostly going back and working on my pushing and transition game.

I was able to play Siggi close by just serving backspin most of the time, and opening. Siggi started to be able to block them and I should have started varying my loops more. If I had served differently I would have done better.

I also played Jeff. I won a game with the normal point advantage, but was outmatched in the other games. We had some very fun rallies and I chopped a couple balls that managed to win me those points. I need to figure out a different way to play Jeff as my typical game doesn't work.

I was working on using my reverse pendulum serve today also. When I use this serve and serve short to the forehand I need to move to the center and be ready to play a wide forehand. In this situation against Jeff I was being pulled too wide from the table. I need to loop this closer to the table to be able to stay in the point.

I also have been having trouble recently looping forehands against backspin crosscourt from my backhand side. I think the main problem is just not being used to my new blade. I need to work on this again. It was my main winner before switching blades.

Northridge 2008

I only ended up playing 2 matches at this tournament. Unfortunately I only had 3 people instead of the usual 4 in my group. If I hand known this I probably would have played another event. Plus I sucked it us and ended up losing my first match. In total I had a 1-1 record.

The biggest reason I lost to the first woman I played was that I couldn't deal with her serves. She served very spinny top spin serves to my backhand that jumped off the table more than I could control. Her serves were as spinny as a loop, which made even blocking difficult as they weren't as fast and came at a different trajectory being a serve instead of a rallying shot. In all I'd say the rest of my shots were better than hers, but could not get into rallies to take advantage of that. I did well on my serve though and could keep the games close. Unfortunately I couldn't get the one or two points I needed on her serve at the end of the games to win. I also felt rather out of rhythm against her and wasn't as focused as I should have been. If this had been the second match I played I might have won. Later on Jeff played her and also struggled against her serves, so I didn't feel as bad that I lost. He struggled against her serve until she had to switch rackets, which let him win the last game easily. I think he probably would have won anyways, but it would have been a lost more interesting.

In the second match I won very easily. My opponent gave up early in the second game and I cruised to victory.

I helped coach Jeff in two of his matches and I felt I did an OK job at this. I managed to point out a few things that he could adjust and do better at. Unfortunately he met a little kid and couldn't quite pull out a win losing in the fourth game in duece. He also coached me a little in his second match, but I really needed it more in my first match. Just having another set of eyes that knows your game really helps. It's hard to see from the inside the simple mistakes you're making.

Unfortunately I feel that I didn't learn much from this tournament. I was outspinned on service, and without experiencing those serves more I'm not sure what adjustments I could make that would help in subsequent matches. In general I'm still adjusting to my new blade, and probably will be for another month. I'll give a review of it then. The one thing I could do better at is getting settled in my first match quicker. I don't think I approached my first match with the right mental attitude. Needed to be more calm and relaxed. If I'm stuggling I should play slower.

Advice from Aussie Player

"Coming away from this years World Cup, I feel very happy about the way I played. I didn’t quite manage to win more sets than previously but there were many positives to focus on despite that. I’d managed to play on fairly level terms for most of the match against two of the best players in the world. I discovered that you don’t have to come up with the spiniest serve in the world to cause trouble; it’s enough that it’s something different and new. So experiment and think outside the box. I was shocked that such a simple serve could win me around 75% of the points against such high calibre players but it really opened my eyes to the value of originality."

how did I play today?

On Saturday I played Bill in a league match. Lost 3-2. It was the closest I've played him before and lost in a fifth set duece. I should have served long at that point, but forgot about it and tightened up a bit. I had been serving short most of the match. I lost focus in the fourth game and lost that game badly. I think Bill contributed though with the adjustments he made. I should have stayed with a more conservative slow loop pushing strategy, like I played in the first two games. I started to get a little too aggressive at times.

Today I played a few singles. It was a bit tough as I'm a bit sore and didn't sleep enough. Of note I tried to play an all out attack strategy against Margit and lost. I tried to flip or loop almost everything. If I would have played a little more conservative at times I probably could have won.

I played a pen holder hitter. He was probably significantly better than me. He got me a lot with sharp angle pushes. He hand a forehand loop, but was a one sided pen holder, so I should have tried to push more to his backhand. I lost pretty quickly in three.

Lastly I played Nathan and was doing pretty well and lost the match 3-0. If I could have dealt with his serves to my elbow better I would have had a decent chance to win.

I'm still struggling a bit with the new blade. I've been lifting many of my loops long. Especially against no spin. It helps if I let the no spin drop a bit, but it would be better if I could attack these at the top of the bounce. I'm also having a problem missing my backspin forehand pendulum. I keep wiffing on it. The backhand is doing better, but my form still falls apart at times.

Club League Matches

Played three league matches today at the club. When I was warming up I was trying to use my de-1 blade, but decided that the weakness with serving was too much and switched back to the KLHS. After playing most of the night with the KLHS, I think the YinHe De-1 is better for everything except serving. If I can learn to serve with a different grip I think even this can be overcome.

My first league match was against Jeff. It ended up being a 3-1 loss, but was closer than it should have been. Jeff was making a few errors that he normally doesn't make. I actually won the game where I missed 2 serves. I think I missed one more each in the third and fourth games. This was really unaceptable and I probably could have won another game, if I hadn't missed any serves. I'm not entirely sure why I missed these serves. Concentration is the only explanation I can come up with. We had some nice rallies with me playing defense. These were where Jeff was making some uncharacteristic mistakes. I don't think I could have played much better.

My next match was against Yoshi. I managed to win 3-1. The change from last time was mostly that I was more aggressive with backhand service return, and I would force shots to Yoshi's backhand. My safe backhand to backhand topspins were enough to win points. I also was getting easy points off my serve.

My last league match of the night was against AJ. I also won this 3-1. The main reason I won was that I found a serve that AJ could not return. It was a long low heavy backspin serve to his backhand. AJ didn't try to lift his push up and kept putting this serve into the net. I leaned heavily on this serve and probably served it for 50% of my serves in the last three games.

For the most part I just played my game and managed to dictate the pace of the matches I won. Neither Yoshi nor AJ were aggressive enough to take that away from me. I also played Waad in a couple of singles matches. Some of the games were close, but I only won 1 of 7 games. He gets me to make some errors with a pretty good block. I probably need to play a more controlled looping style against Waad. The other adjustment I should have made was to push more and invite his attack.

All in all I'm pretty happy with my progress recently. I've been hitting my backhands more consistently and this has strengthened my game as a whole. I haven't been working too much on flipping in games. In fact I can only really flip against people whose serving is fairly predictable. I am doing better with pushing and am starting to gain confidence that I can beat some of the people just below my level with pushing. In my league matches I made a fair number of errors when I backed off the table and tried to loop from mid distance. I'm guessing this was a combination of switching rackets and being more anxious and rushing shots.

One things I'm very happy about is that my fitness level has gone way up. I felt that my legs could have played several more matches. My shoulders on the other hand are pretty tired. I'm not sure how much of that fatigue is from doing pushups again and how much is just trying to play at 100%. Hopefully if I keep at the pushups this will help with my match endurance. If not, I may have to start doing other exercises.

Today at the Club

I got the Galaxy De-1 blade and tried it out at the club. It was a little tricky to adjust to because it's significantly thinner than my KLHS. The blade was definitely faster and maybe stiffer. Even though it was faster it was less bouncy so it was easier to keep my pushes low. Looping was pretty good as the blade flexed as I swung harder keeping the dwell time. The extra speed helper a lot on my backhand as I backed away from the table. On the forehand side it was a bigger adjustment as I found it harder to lift the ball, especially against backspin. I need to try the blade more to see if I can adjust. It's possible I either need to use a thicker rubber or softer rubber on my forehand side. Hitting felt really good. The ball went faster and the extra speed gave me more control on hitting. The big thing I need to try is using the blade for flipping. I didn't really get a chance today as the people I played mostly served long. I think with the better touch on pushing and control in hitting and blocking, the blade fits my game well.

Not too much to say about the matches I played. I'm trying to be a little more aggressive with my backhand service return and it's been serving me well. By agressive I mean topspinning the ball. Against topspin and sidespin serves I'm trying to use a very conservative slow shot and place the ball. Against backspin I need to take a bigger swing to counteract the spin. I'm still trying to open to my opponents forehand side and it still feels a little awkward, but I'm starting to hit a few more in.

I think I'm going to try and adjust to this blade and use it at the next tournament.