Tournament review (part 2)

Sunday, A grade tournament.. Never expected much out of it every single time because of the many quality players entering this grade.. Was supposed to play all 3 events (again..) but I couldn't get to sleep the night before and had a splitting headache when I tried to wake up in the morning. Rocked up at around 10.30, just around 1 hr before the doubles started. Did some umpiring and warm-up before we took to court...

1st match wasn't fun at all. In fact, it's a total joke. Won't go into any details as it will just be wasting my time, but we beat them 21-0 w/o them getting a single serve (enough said...). Great, I was feeling pain all over my body (from B grade) and had hoped to get some warm-up in the 1st round, & I didn't really get any....

2nd round match against Rae Mun/Jim. Started positively by taking 2 pts, & then we defended well everytime they were attacking. I thought we were playing ok, given that our opponent was an ex-commonwealth games rep. Half way through though, I started thinking he wasn't actually that good at all, even though he's really powerful and could take anything we threw at him. On the other hand, we also could deal with whatever they dished at us, so it was an even match overall. However, I think we lost a bit of concentration and went down 11-3 before changing side. Rae Mun started smashing at me more when Jim was in front at the net, so I used my usual style of driving cross-court and moving to the front to finish it off. It didn't really work as Rae Mun had a strong wrist and he could normally just lift it up, but at least we managed to get into attacking position. This type of exchange just kept on going for a while, & we finally lost 21-9. A teammate commented that it doesn't look like we had lost by that big margin bcoz we seemed to be matching them in every department, but I guess Rae Mun was really the deciding factor there as he was stronger than any 3 of us on the court. We were feeling pretty tired from all the smashing in the match but he just looked as fresh as before he had played us!

Out of doubles. It's ok. There's still the mixed doubles to look forward to, or at least I thought that was the case then. When we started the mixed doubles, I was suffering a lot from thigh muscle pain & I couldn't get myself to move at all, & we got beaten 21-9 again by PJ/Kitty. Han Xue was also not feeling well at that time & we decided to pull out from the event, since it's quite pointless to continue at that stage.

It's finally the end of all the tournaments this year. I think I definitely played better in tournaments this year than previous years (I don't think I even played any last year..). Some recent achievements include: advancing to City of Melbourne A grade MD semis (w/ Andrew aka boi2), winning Melb U B grade MD & MXD (again, w/ Andrew & Han Xue, respectively..), and potentially could get much further if I had any luck in tie-breakers (Monash Open A MS vs ??? (can't remember his name) 14-16, Monash Open A MD vs Ferds/Hero, lost both sets 20-22).

To sum it up, it hasn't been a bad year so far in tournaments. Hopefully can get a few more wins under my belt in next year's tourneys!