This is continuation of me documenting thoughts about the tennis matches I play. It's good to reflect about things that happen specially when it did not go as you intended it to.
Today's match was a singles match. I am back to playing singles after a mediocre doubles experience. Doubles while fun to watch, is not for me. It is too fast paced, no time to build points and there is also less running. But enough rambling about doubles. Let's focus on the singles match.
Lets call the dude I played today as Cherry. Middle aged person who probably picked up tennis for exercising, never took professional lessons and probably does not watch tennis either. That is completely okay, everybody plays sport for a different reason.
I had been playing doubles for a few weeks, by weeks I mean a few matches. But was completely out of singles practice. Since winter got over I have hardly had time to play, just got busy in other things.
A friend wanted to practice a few serves before the game, I said cool and my service which is usually a week point of my game was looking good. I went into the game confident.
Won the first first game by breaking the opponents serve. Second game had phenomenal serves from my side. And after that it all went downhill. Why? I am not sure. May be I became over confident? I certainly think that is the case.
The problem with my game is I have no consistency. My serve has cracking speeds but literally no consistency. It can be a weapon if I could get the same serve in again and again and again. I strongly believe your serve wins you matches, at least at the level I play at.
Cherry told me my game was more technical than him, thanks to the professional lesson I took a few years ago. But I could maintain the same level that I started the game with. If I could, I would have won this game.
The thing about consistency is that no level of skill or ability is ever enough. You have to be consistent. Practice the same thing again and again and again, till it becomes a muscle memory of sorts. But with the busy life everyone leads, there is little chance of developing consistency. We tend to half ass a lot of things. Not full ass one thing. That's where we fall short. I am a good player for my level. Not being consistent is hurting me. I could have and should have beaten the player, but it does not matter what I could or should have. The result is he won and that's what matters at the end. I did not do enough and I lost.
I hope I can play more over this summer and continue to evolve my game. I am pretty sure I will get busy in other stuff and write a similar thing for my next few games. But I will try my best.