Game 76: 26th July

2-6

5-7

5-5

Rating: What a gift that God could gie us......

Venue: Playtomic Barn


Well that was a toughie, a step up in rating and opponents given my recent wins.

However, we brought our usual work game attitude and got absolutely clobbered initially.

14 min first set and then didn't finish the three sets in the remaining 1h:40m. 

So so many Deuces

First Set: just gave up the net completely and just got smothered. Any gaps were exploited, any poor lob was smashed.

We came off a bit disorientated but I was like "We have to play harder, we have to take more risks and we have to contest the net"

Second set that immediately payed off with our returns posing problems in a way that they didn't in the first set.

My serving was absolutely on point and anchored our games but the big change was stopping the terrible lobs and leaning into hard and flat returns. This cause them to commit errors as they were very good at stepping into the net but tended to stay there and not have time to react to our hard flatties.

I also started to do more Bajadas rather than a reset lob that was just being sent back to us as a bandeja or gancho.

We stayed on serve to till the last game where they stopped a tiebreak. I'm saying "they" but we had 3 unforced errors which was unfortunately the difference in the last 2 sets.

3rd set a bit more of the same, very tight and stayed on serve until we ran out of time. 

I did get a Por Tres though, which is nice.

The match was videoed and it was brutally honest. As a pair our tactics and positioning left a lot to be desired. I kept creeping into the middle and was getting beaten down the line. They got so much joy from easy shots down the middle because we were too far apart and too square, just ugly viewing.

First set in particular we were just passing the ball back to them. Finally, I looked like a dump truck. I need to lose a bit of weight and all the talk of Bandeja technique or tactics cannot compensate for that half or full step of movement.



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