Yald Patrick Grote's Blog

Focused on strategy – Mark, Matt and Randy

Men's 3.0/3.5 League - 1/2/12 - 8:00pm start.

Paired with Mark for the evening, we lost doubles 6-4 against Matt and Randy who served first.

The doubles game had a few highlights:

1. Mark told me where to stand in doubles. Close to the net and middle of service box. This is probably the better place to play, but I am uncomfortable so close to the net. Randy saw this and just abused us with lobs over me that Mark had to get to. I tend to play back in doubles and set up my net partner.
2. Matt's serves were good. Matt typically tries to serve hard, but last night he was very disciplined and stuck with his killer spin to the outside. This is devastating on the ad side. Kudos to Mark for getting to all of Matt's tough serves.
3. My serve sucked. Ugh. The first serve would not go in.

The set progressed as follows: 1-0, 1-1, 1-2, 2-2. Switch sides. 2-3, 2-4, 2-5, 3-5. Switch sides. 4-5, 4-6.

Singles was interesting as I was trying some new things. My game is too reliant on other people making mistakes, which is not going to fly at 3.5. Mark is such a consistent player that doesn't make many mistakes, I knew I had to shake things up.

Singles highlights in a match I won 6-3:

1. Mark is a smart player. He knows how and when to hit the ball with pace. You cannot set him up with a slow, straight shot to his forehand. There is no getting those.
2. Side to side and deep. This was the key to winning. We were tied 2-2 when I knew I had to change strategy.
3. Lots of long points. As I said, Mark is a smart player and he knows how to keep a point going. I did a very good job of running down balls, but Mark was just as effective. I caught him with a couple of drop shots, but I really did a good job on the passing shots.

The set progressed as follows with me serving first:  1-0, 1-1, 1-2, 2-2. Switch sides. 3-2, 4-2, 5-3, 6-3.

The one thing that bothered me was losing track of the score. When we finished I would have sworn we had one more game to play.

What I did well tonight:

• Good range on getting to balls.
• Changing strategy in singles was key.

What I didn't do well tonight:

• Serves. Still not consistent on first serve.
• Aggressiveness. I felt I was tentative on the serve. If my first went in Mark did a GREAT job of returning it, but  I failed to crush his lobs back to me on the service return.

A good start to the year.

Related posts:

1. Mark Cuban enters the P2P Fray … The Grokster fight is close to being even …
2. Best Buy sucks … focused on the wrong things