Game 70 : 7th July

6-4

6-2

4-6

Rating: Unbeaten European Adventure

Venue: Green Padel, Tenerife

Playtomic match again with Fraser against an higher rated Father and Son pair. 

The dad had won intermediate tournements and was double my Playtomic Rating.



Match Report

We absolutely farmed points all game from my lobs within a foot of the glass. Only shot available to reply was a weak lob and Fraser would just eat those up with his smash. Yum yum.

He carried it in the second set especially, his service games were automatic holds with his fast serve where as mine were battles.

I served first. Got broken. The 3.8 was playing left and my serves were too pedestrian for playing Australian formation. He was placing it to my feet or out wide where I was struggling to cover. But here's the bit. I LEARN. I knew he was doing that. I made sure that my serves were 10% faster and with 15% more slice. He was still going parallel but under pressure now and I knew what he was doing so I was volleying his return to the middle where it died on the glass.

Second set you had the Dad coaching the son which undermined his confidence. Me and Fraser on the other hand were just in the flow.  Hell I even did my one full on full smash of the holiday and it was serviceable. I made very few mistakes till the last set. Was so tired by then 30c heat got to me. But yeah was Mr consistent. Chip chip chip away, always get it back.


Once we lobbed them and moved them from the net they didn't really try to take it back. Also I felt with both of them that they had obviously done coaching because of you hit the ball to them in a coachable position I.e. soft shot while they were at net, then they could cut a backhand volley really well. Or if it was a Bajada from the back, the Dad was excellent. But....when the rally broke down and you just have get it over? The parts where I was playing soft and awkward, that's where they really struggled.


We lost the last two games as I got broken and they served out, we were over time and I had 20 mins to take my hire car back to a place 15 mins drive away. So I was dreading a tiebreak but "luckily" the game got closed out.


It was great playing with Fraser, we really played well together and my playtomic rating jumped a lot over the holiday. I play well with big smashers who just love to finish points.


Tenerife points

Playing in Spain was magic, loads of different places, all with a little bar to sit and watch the action. 

Outside so sun and wind was a factor.

what I was surprised about is that Playtomic is a desert over there. It was a real struggle to get games organised. Supposedly the way you do it is contact the clubs individually and they set up matches, seems overly complicated.

I did have one lesson at Aqua Padel but found it frustrating. We concentrated on volleys and I just couldn't get it. Was like Homer Simpson in witness protection, my brain just didn't override my current muscle memory of open racquet, too big a backswing. Rather than simplify it we just went through a basket of balls where the coach just got more and more frustrated that I wasn't listening to him. We moved onto Bandeja work after that and all he said was "It's ok" as we rattled through the last basket to get the lesson over with.

Also if you are going, bring your own racquet. The hugarian guy struggled to find a good loaner when we played and Fraser struggled with a racquet that actually broke in the last match. his replacement was absolutely gutless and you could see it affected his play.

More than 2/3rd of my 100 match challenge done. 

Vamos

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