Tennis Blues

This is the third summer Andrew and I have played tennis once a week, usually getting in one set to 6 games first and one set to 3 games first.

Andrew is in better shape and great reflexes, so I have a hard time putting it past him with either a hard first serve or shots in rallies. On the other hand, in the past his attempts to hammer it past me would often result in his shot going out or hitting the net. In this manner I could maintain a certain amount of parity by simply getting it over the next back in the court.

Last year I worked a lot on my forehand to get my returns lower and faster, and this year I've been working on my backhand in order to, well, make it work at all. Andrew, being evil, is helping as much as possible in that case by putting it to my weaker backhand as much as he can. Unfortunately, despite making improvements something terrible has happened: Andrew has changed his style as well.

Instead of going for the smashing drives down the lines like he used to, he's become more conservative and the result is that a lot of the points I used to get from his mistakes have evaporated. In the last four full sets we played last week and this week, the results have been 6-1, 6-0, 4-6, and 6-0 in his favour. OUCH! That one set I won was the second set on Friday after he whipped me six to nothing first. It hasn't helped at all that my serve has been on and off too.

My only choice is to keep improving, working on getting the backhand to dependable (which I feel I'm making good progress on) and making my forehand shots even more deadly and accurate. I need to make fewer mistakes and force Andrew to work harder to make his returns. And maybe, just maybe, I can get back to respectable scores!