Saturday 17th March 2007
Time for another quick update on my progress towards the 2006 Australian Open event. It's been a busy week, so I'll just touch on the highlights (and lowlights!).
Grand Prix Round 2
Friday the 9th March saw the second round of our local Grand Prix take place. It was an interesting night, with a couple of upsets along the way before the event was done.
Early Rounds
In the first round, it was business as usual for the top 6 seeds, with the exception of # 6 seed Phil Ranger Jr who was unlucky enough to get Peter McKenzie in his group. Peter is tough to play at the best of times, and tonight was no exception as he beat Phil to come through as the number 1 player in his group.
Onto the second round groups, and Peter continued his good form, this time beating the #3 seed Jeff Drew, in a close 4 game encounter. In other groupings, #4 seed Giovannni Cnapich dropped his first match against Mick Lee 2-3, but Mick then lost to Chris Hibbert 1-3, and Giovanni beat Chris 3-0, with the result being that Gio made it through to the semifinals due to his better game average.
Meanwhile, in the other groups, Craig Campbell and myself were relatively untroubled in winning our way through to the semifinals.
Semifinals
In the first semifinal, I played Giovanni. My main tactics for this match were to forget about trying to go toe to toe with Giovanni in attacking, and make good use of my defense. Giovanni is very fast around the court (which I'm not) and also possesses quick reflexes (which I don't!), so I'm never going to match him for speed. Instead, I need to slow the game down to the speed I can work at, using my backspin defence to blunt his attacks, and set up my own counter attacks.
This time, all went well with my tactics and execution, and I ran out a comfortable 3-0 winner.
In the second semifinal, Craig Campbell took on Peter McKenzie, in what proved to be a tactically fascinating battle. Craig is a great allround player, capable of rock solid defense and fast loop attacks. Peter is a very awkward style, using medium-long pimples on his forehand to attack with, and smooth rubber on his backhand to control the ball. It was a pretty close matchup, but in the end it was Craig's ability to vary the spin when defending that forced a couple of crucial errors from Peter's normally reliable forehand, and so Craig took the match 3-1.
Final
The final saw Craig and I meet again, in our third matchup in finals for the year. I started well, running my mental programs and playing similar tactics to that against Giovanni, and I won the first two games without too much difficulty. But Craig is a smart tactician on the court, and he began to defend a little more in the third game, drawing me into a more attacking game. And it paid off well, with Craig taking the third game and going on with the job in the fourth game as well, although I did have a match point at 11-10 or so, which I couldn't convert.
The final game was a real rollercoaster. I realized what Craig had done with his change in strategy, and made sure I was playing with my original tactics again. I was feeling pretty loose and comfortable, but on the other hand Craig had also found new confidence and was playing a better brand of table tennis himself. I started well, then Craig came back and took the lead, and then I caught up again. We reached 8-all and I was still feeling good, enjoying the match and thinking I could win provided I played the right tactics. Then Craig played 2 excellent points in a row, and I was down 10-8 with Craig to serve.
I made sure I was running my return of serve mental program, so I was as ready as I could be. Craig served to my playing elbow, but the ball was a bit long so I skipped over to my backhand side and looped with my forehand down the line. I thought I had hit a clean winner for a moment, but the ball just clipped the edge which turned out to be just as well, since Craig had moved into position for a crosscourt return. So 10-9 to Craig now and he sets up another attack, but I get a little more backspin on my return and his attack just hits the top of the net and fails to go over. Phew! 10-all.
At this point, many a player might have given up the fight, but Craig kept coming and I had to work hard to keep using and executing the right tactics. In the end I snuck the win 14-12, but it really was the sort of match that could have gone either way. I was pleased to win of course, but even if I had lost it would have been simply because Craig had played a smart tactical match and some great table tennis as well. I know I felt that I had played some good ping-pong along the way!
I was also pretty happy that even under pressure at 10-8 down, I had kept running my mental programs and stayed much more relaxed and loose - which paid off in the end. So a pretty good night in all, although it goes to show that I'm certainly not going to have everything my own way this year!
(continued on next page - Pennants writeup)
