Raising your game while you play

After all these years, I only now see what a strategy really looks like on court in real time. Richard once said to me that however I play against him because of his experience he will always have something more to pull out of his game to raise the level of difficulty against me. I understood that to mean he has a strategy for how to play at varying intensity and pressure against players of all levels. Ever since then I have pondered this and I wanted to develop my own strategy or at the very least understand what his was. Today I finally saw clear glimpses of what this looks like playing on court.

I started playing with sluggishness and listlessness. It certainly took a long time before I found movements in my legs. During this whole time I was watching what my opponent was doing and trying to figure out why I was having so much trouble. After playing a few people I began to see they were attacking my shots from the T and I was not doing the same. My first reaction was to urge myself to focus and concentrate on watching the ball early. That indeed resulted in more active anticipation in my feet and I started to move better in response to a shot. The next progression was to improve the quality of my straight drives. These efforts made a marked improvement in my scores. Instead of losing 5-11, I was losing 9-11. Finally, I made up my mind to gather my wits for one more try to raise my game. This time, I said to myself that I had to attack from as many positions as I could. This meant I would volley, but also volley shot. I also half volley boast several fast low drives that my opponents hit. And lastly, I started to cut off deep drives that came off the side wall before they hit the back wall and straight drive them back down the side wall for a winner. These shots were effective attacks because they were all done in quick tempo and sometimes fast pace also. When I combine them in a rally it became apparent to me that I was finally attacking aggressively. So much so that I could see the score now changed to an 11-6 win. The three stages of my game today represented a clear progression that I could employ as my strategy. Knowing also that I have a solid defense, being able to combine the aggressive attacks and defense within a rally would make my game very strong indeed.

So now, I must endeavor to practice some of the shots I mentioned which are still too fresh to be of consistent success. For sure I will have to tune my focus to hitting the ball straight when it is still on the rise coming off the side wall. These half volleys deep in the back court requires hitting the ball with the same stroke I have to use to hit a ball that has passed the plane of my shoulder and may require choking up the racquet in order to make good contact. I will just need to practice the progression in order to instill the idea in my match mind set.