I served to open the match and Stan immediately went into lob mode. The guy was a moonball artesan. It was like he had read the book on how to play me; he was giving me no pace and hitting high and deep, leaving me with little room to attack. At first I let myself get pushed back and replied with moonballs of my own, but quickly grew disgusted with that. That kind of crap is for juniors, I thought, and moved forward to take the ball on the rise. I started hitting harder, and missing. Frustrated, I tried to take an overhead off the bounce at the baseline, but bricked it and lamely put the ball into the net. To make it even worse, I kept picturing how easily I would deal with such a strategy in a practice match, where the lack of nerves would allow me to step in, hit the ball on the rise, and follow the approach to the net, where I would put away a winning volley. I lost my serve, the first game I had lost in the entire tournament. Then he held. Then I lost serve again. Before I knew it I was down 0-3 and headed for a changeover."It's a practical joke, right?" Stan chuckled as we met at the bench on the change of ends. I gave a nervous laugh, but didn't get what he meant until a minute later. I thought he meant I was thinking he was playing a joke on me, giving me a steady diet of lobs. What he really meant was that I was fooling with him, letting him take 3 games after I had beaten everyone else so easily. Either way, the joke was on me.
As I headed back to the baseline to receive serve, I thought about the situation. I decided that if he wanted to send over moonballs, I was going to moonball back and wait it out. I would run all day if I had to, but I was not going down in an avalanche of errors. Also, I renewed my resolve to make him move. Even if I was going to be airing it out, I would at least change the direction and make him go corner to corner. Lastly, I wanted to bring my chip backhand into the mix, slicing it short to purposely bring him to the net, where I was sure I could pass him.
It started to work. Trying to hit those lobs on the run introduced more errors in Stan's game. He started to pull away from the moonball strategy and played more straightforward, which is exactly where I wanted him. And slicing the ball made him run even more; I'd hit a short slice to his backhand, then drive a forehand deep to the opposite corner. I also noticed that he would rely on me to collect one of the errant balls instead of going to find one himself; I cut that out and let him fetch the balls equally. In short, I could see he was beginning to flag. I ran off 6 straight games and took the first set 6-3.
A group of my friends had gathered by the court to watch and were offering my encouragement when I'd hit a winning shot. This started to irk my opponent. I served to open the 2nd set, and at 40-30 Stan lined up about 2 yards behind the service line to receive. Usually you do this for a variety of reasons; to throw the server off mentally, or to give yourself a different look at the ball. Stan had been struggling to return my kick serve and had been changing up his return positions, but this was almost insultingly close to the line. But I didn't care. I knew that returning my serve from that close would be extremely difficult. I tossed the serve up and hit a big kicker out wide. Stan timed the ball absolutely perfectly and nailed a clean winner up the line. I applauded the shot with my racket. One of my friends clapped. Stan made some comment about the audience, but I thought he was joking. I held, and when we headed back to the bench said, "Home crowd. Next time we'll have to play in Victorville" (which is where he was from). "Who are those guys?" he shouted indignantly. "No, I'm serious, that's ridiculous! I absolutely blasted that ball and only one guy clapped!" A cold shiver ran down my spine despite the afternoon heat. Things were going well, and I didn't want any part of this dispute. "I can only be responsible for me, and I clapped for your shot. It was a great shot," I said, and picked up my racket. Stan walked over to the group and argued with them for about 10 seconds. At the end of it they all laughed, so I breathed a sigh of relief and went back to work. My strategy remained successful, and I went on to take the 2nd set and the match, 6-0. We met at the net and all was forgiven; to his credit he worked it out with the guys without things getting any uglier. I was into the final!
(How did I fare in the tournament's final match? Check back for the conclusion of the Sandbagger series!)
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2 comments:
Should this say Part 3 at the top?
Fixed. Thanks!
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