The Perfect Game
So, I’ve been watching these videos of matches analyzing what I’m doing wrong and what I’m doing right.
I came to the conclusion that there are sometimes shots made by an opponent that are just really, really good shots and there is nothing you can do.
There was one that I thought was one of those, but after watching it a few times, it may have been preventable. In motion up from the baseline at midcourt, I drop the ball cross court from my right to left. It’s a decent shot. Low and fairly shallow. But it’s still high enough to volley. My opponent (in this case Marie) dinks back cross court and it’s perfect, right on the edge line. I just cannot reach it to hit it back. Once she hit that, the only way I could have returned it was to have a six or seven foot arm and I don’t have one. (Not that I’d really want one, it’d be hard to find shirts!) I might have been able to prevent her volley by doing a better drop shot on the run.
About to bounce right on the line. Nice shot, Marie!
But I keep working backward on that point. Back to the serve. My serve from the right service court. I served it shallow, which brought her up to the kitchen. A short serve is not necessarily bad, it’s good to mix up your serves. But generally, you want to hit it deep to keep your opponent at the baseline. This time, I didn’t catch her napping and she returned it down the middle into my court right by my left forcing a backhand by me. (It was a safe shot, about 4-5 feet short of my baseline.) Now, this is where I made a mistake. I should have done one of two shots: a drop shallow into the kitchen or a lob over her head. (Lobs are rare by the pros, by the way, since they have great drop shots.) Instead my drop shot wasn’t shallow enough. She volleyed it back short to my forehand. I had to take it on the move, I didn’t have time to set up then hit. That’s where the above paragraph takes over. My decent shot. And I moved into the right place at that point, on the kitchen line, guarding the middle. But being that she could take it in the air, she had the angle and put the point away.
Maybe there is a perfect game out there where you do everything right but still lose points. And it seems that should be winner shots that are simply unpreventable even if you do everything right. There was another lost point in one of my videoed matches where I figured it was just one of those perfect shots that I had to just notch up to my opponent’s skill or luck. But now I wonder if that one is also traceable back to an error or lack of precision/skill on my part.
All I can do is continue to analyze and get the hours in. Maybe I’ve mentioned this already, but in sailing, they talk about “time on the water”, that is, to get better, you just need to be out sailing—maybe it’s races, maybe it’s drills, but it’s time on the water.
For me, it’s still just a lot of time on the court that needs to be put in.
(Funny thing is, after watching it over and over, it looks like her shot on the line was actually out. Not by much, but out. And I told her I thought it was in. Ah, well!)
Number of day on a court: 11 (still)
Number of hours: 31 (still)
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