My Advantage - Drake the punisher

Playing players I can't beat. Feeling my 63 years sometimes, all my opponents look less that half my age. Still you want to play when you're older, then play like you're younger.

Played on the shortest day of the year this week, in the bottom of the pit of darkness, time to climb out.

Doublefault a journey to the Pan Pacific Masters games 2024

Transcript

Yep. Hi there and welcome to Double Fault. My name is Andrew and I'm on a journey to go and compete in the Pan Pacific Masters Games in Queensland on the Gold Coast in November of next year. That's 499 days away. Less than 500 at last. That time's just ticking away, so I'm feeling pretty good at the moment. I'll be walking around with a bit of an Achilles problem, a bit of a tennis elbow problem, but I think they're not going too badly. I play a little bit of tennis this morning against a mate of mine and it felt okay. The weather's getting awfully cold, though, depending on where you live. I'm in Sydney on the northern beaches of Sydney and this morning was five degrees Celsius and for me that's really cold. You know, the ball doesn't bounce very well. It bounces like a rock, but it's fun to play anyway. And the weather's been clear and dry and it is winter, but we're going to hit the shortest day of the year in two days time and hopefully those days will get longer. The mornings at the moment I'm playing at 630 in the morning and it's it's light enough to play, but it's still pretty dark, although after about 15 minutes it's it's actually pretty good. I watched the game last night and it's a 12 year old game, the 2009 Wimbledon third round with Andy Murray and V Troicki. I actually don't know what the V stands for. I must look it up.

Viktor Troicki Yeah, I just looked that up and with the magic of editing, I've cut that whole big gap away while I was searching with Google. Anyway, it was an interesting game. Murray looks just like a kid here. He's so young. But it was. It was a long game. It went through the full five sets and at one stage there was something happened and and a ball boy actually ran onto the onto the court because he thought the point had finished. But The Court the point was still going on and the referee made the players replay the point which they weren't particularly happy about, but it was a tense match. This was a cut down version, like the highlights. So it was a half hour, but it was good fun to watch. And you watch these players, that's 14 years ago and they're playing just like today. You're playing with a modern forehand with nice serves and it's on clay. I'm not the biggest fan of clay. I find it's a bit slow, but it's fun to watch games of this caliber because there was a lot of drama and a lot of interesting gameplay, a lot of chasing down really hard to get shots, which there's a lesson there. I think I need to do a little bit more of that. Chasing down hard to get shots anyway, so I think it's always worthwhile going back and watching all the games. There's a bit of a limit.

I wouldn't go back and watch the McEnroe era at all because I find those games there. They just don't feel as professional and polished as current games. And you might not agree with me, you might go, Those guys were professionals then, but and they were professionals then. But the games moved on and the gameplay now is it's different. It's faster, harder. The gameplay is not that much serve and volleying which happened back then. So gameplay has changed somewhat and I like the modern game better I think because it's faster and it just moves along better. So I've got a couple of matches this week, I've got one tonight and I'm playing a guy in a competition and the competition is reaching its end where last time I played him he he drilled me six love, six love. And I'm expecting something similar tonight. Now, it's fun to play a player like that who's really skilled and really knows what he's doing because, you know, you learn some stuff. There's no real downside in taking risky shots. You're going to lose anyway. Your miles will go out and take harder shots and take chances because those things sometimes are successful. And if you don't do them, I'm going to lose anyway. I mean, I don't want to go out there with a negative attitude. But seriously, this guy is well and truly above my pay grade, so I'm looking forward to that. I'll be wearing my mic tonight and maybe I'll do a bit of commentary afterwards.

It's at a nice court, a very well lit local courts, and it'll be cold. At the moment it's only about 14 degrees. So by the time I play this evening at 730, I'm thinking it'll be under ten degrees. So that'll make, uh, I'm not going to say it's going to make it uncomfortable, but it'll make the ball less lively and hopefully it'll make for a more interesting game if the ball slows down a little bit. I've also got another game later this week against a woman who I just feel like I should be beating. But she beat me last time. 42414 game sets and I'm hoping to do somewhat better against her this week. That competition that I'm playing with her that's got two more players I need to play before the end of the month for that competition. So there's about ten days left in the month, so I'll have a couple more games in that competition and maybe 1 or 2 more Tuesday night games and then it'll be pretty much into the school holidays and competitions will finish. A lot of things will die off a little bit. I'll still have my regular hitting partners. There won't be any group classes. There is. There is group classes on Saturdays, but there won't be any weekday group classes. So there'll be a little less tennis, but a little more time to go out there and practice my serves, which those serves. They're coming and going a lot now because I have changed quite a lot over the last few weeks because of my sore elbow and I'm swinging looser and putting more of a whip into my into my swing.

But because I've changed those balls, they're going all over the place and we're going into the net, they're going wide, they're going long. Sometimes they go in, sometimes they're really good. But it's just a real mess at the moment of shots going all over the place. So I'll try and keep that under control tonight. My second serve is okay, but it could be better. I find that for my second serve, if I choke down a little bit on the racket and don't hold it right at the very end and throw the ball a little bit more over my head, I get the ball in a bit more consistently. I'd like to think I'm getting some top spin on it and sometimes they go really well and my opponent has trouble returning them. So as far as a second serve is concerned, I would say that maybe 70 or 80% of those things go in, whereas the first serve be lucky to get half of them in at the moment, but they are getting better and I'm feeling better about it and I'm feeling my swing is a lot better than it used to be. So hopefully I'll be up for a good serving session tonight, so come along with me to the game. It's a cool night and we'll have a little bit of fun tonight and try and learn some lessons from a player who's basically better than me, but who I think I could learn from.

Okay, so I'm sitting here in my car. I'm about 20 minutes early. It's quite cool. I think it's less than ten degrees Celsius, which is okay. It's colder in the mornings than it is at this time of the evening. It seems really quiet at the tennis courts. Normally there's a bunch of kids getting classes, but it seems very, very empty. Anyway, I've nicknamed tonight's opponent Drake the Punisher, but as I've mentioned, I'm going to try and make some shots, at least try and make him work for his points. And if I don't win any games but win a few points, at least I'll have won a few points. And I'll be okay with, you know, getting into a deuce or more over the course of the night a few times. But anything can happen and we will see, I guess, how it's going to turn out. So yeah. Drake The Punisher, we'll see how that goes. It's 20 minutes away to the game time. I'm just going to sit here in my cozy car for the next ten minutes and then I'll head over to the court. Oh, sorry. Oh, that first ten minutes is going to be. It's going to be hard to warm up today. Oops. Oops. Sorry. Yeah. Let's see if he serves. You can start.

Okay. Here we go. Drake the Punisher. It's about his play. He doesn't try and hit winners all the time. His serves aren't smashes. He serves a rock solid. They're hard. They go in. He rarely does a double fault. When he does start playing, it's generally he gets into a rally and he'll he'll rally along until he sees an opportunity to. Yeah. Hit that winner or make a ball that I can't possibly get. But he's just so relaxed about it. He's always early to the ball. He's prepared early and he rarely looks like he's sprinting to the ball. It's just it's just nice to watch and it's a bit opposite. A good player is to me. I scramble for the ball, I rush, I rush my shots. But he was just so relaxed and, you know, I wasn't going out there with a negative view. I knew I knew I was going to be on the losing side of the fence, but I went out there to at least try and make a game of it and make it hard for him. So up to tonight, he was actually we actually playing. We're actually up to week ten of this semester of game play. So there's two six game sets of an evening and on the scoreboard you can actually see the number of sets won, but you can also see the number of individual games won. And he's won 45 over the last 42 games, so he's only lost three games in 48 games. That's that's a pretty high bar to try and beat. And some of the plays he's won like six love six love They're what I call good players They beat me six love six love quite often.

So anyway, he lost three games up to tonight, but after tonight he actually lost four games. Yep. I got a game off him and I was pretty chuffed about that. I brought a good game with me. I rallied well, my service was rubbish, but I rallied well. I hit some great deep balls. I ran to the net and did some volleys. I did everything I could to try and make it a little bit harder for him. And it paid off. And I won a game in the first set and I know I lost the second set. Six Love. But I'm still walking off the court, pretty happy with my game play and pretty happy that I won a game. So last time I played him it was six love, six love, and I'm walking off visualizing the things that I did right. Like I hit looser forehands. I went to the net a bit more and did some volleying. I hit balls deep into the corners and I did a lot of stuff. What I thought was was right and worked well and yeah, that's that's it for this game. I don't think I'll be playing him again. I suspect he'll be moving up a division and I'll be a long way behind him. But it was a pleasure to play and definitely a learning experience and hopefully I've come off the court a slightly wiser player. Oh, come on. And feeling good about the night.







So well. Yeah. What a game. You know, I went into this game knowing that it was going to be a tough gig and that I would probably be on the losing side of the fence. But it was an education. Anyway, I hit some great shots and knowing that I can do it once or twice brings me to the knowledge that I can do it again and I can do it again with just a bit of practice. And you know, eventually I'll get there. This bloke I played tonight, he has lost three games out of the last 75 games. So the, the site that the scores go on, they score in sets and also a breakdown in games. So three games over the last 75 but now he's actually lost four games out of the last 88. Yep I took a game off him which is something that a lot of the other people in the comp haven't been able to even do. So that and it was a that particular game was was a good game wasn't a fluke. It was a good serving. I placed my balls well and all in all I think I, I think I deserved that particular game. And a couple of the other games were really close as well. They, they went to Deuce and I was leading a few of them at one stage by four 4015. And then as I do, I've thrown a game away because of stupid behavior and stupid shots and stupid double faults.

I actually started my garment at the start of this this game, just because it's something I do sometimes. It's interesting to find what you've been doing. For example, during the game here, I only ran 1.5 or so kilometers, which doesn't seem that far, but of course it's not very big, so it isn't very far. But it was it was two sets of six games, so it was 616 love, so it was only 13 games. So I would expect a shorter distance and a shorter time and it was actually a shorter time too. But interestingly, on Garmin, you can look at a heat map of where you've been running and where you've been spending your time, and you can actually drill down to the map on a court level. And I can see that most of my time has been spent in the back corner of the ad side of the court. So he's been pushing me to my backhand side all the time, all night. And I can see that clearly when I'm looking at this map after the game. So there's a lesson there as well. And let's try not to get forced over to the backhand side. My backhand is okay, but it can't take repeated punishment like that without breaking apart because it's not that good. So that was my game tonight. And it was it was an education, as I've said, and I really enjoyed it.

I played a game this morning against a woman who, you know, she beats me quite often and sometimes I'll beat her. The results today were she won. It was four, three, one, four, four two. So know it's fast for format and you know there's a tie break in there. We did a tie breaking game for the for the day. And you know, that could have gone either way. She likes to rally and she rallies long and deep and high. And I actually don't like high balls, but I try to bring the game to her. And some of those rallies went on for a long, long time. There were so many shots and so much running and it's probably one of the longest games I've played in that particular competition. And I think there's a there's another lesson there, and that is just to be patient. I hit a couple of hard shots there and they were actually they were honest, honest winners. They they went into the back corner or the back court and hit some really hard ones right at her feet, too. And she managed to get them. She she's really good at retrieving those balls and digging those ones up, the bounce at the feet. So it it makes for a challenging game when you're playing against someone who can return so well. You know, I went out for a bit of a class today at lunchtime and at the end of it I was walking back to my motor scooter and there was a bunch of schoolkids, schoolgirls playing in one of the courts.

And the coach said, you know, they're all about 15, 16 years old. And they were they were tall and tough and they were hitting the ball so well. And it just shows when you're picking up a racket as a young person and playing for a few years, you know, you you pick up such a good game. And these are the people sometimes I play against as adults and they've got that years and years and years of playing at that level where they're really, really hitting the ball well and have got a beautiful stroke and it makes it hard for someone like me who's only started a little over two years ago to compete against people like that. But I'll get there. It might take me another year or two, but I'll get there anyway. I think over the next week I'm going to focus more on loosening up my serve, have a looser grip and a looser swing. I'll be videoing myself and same with my forehand and backhand. I'm trying to loosen everything up and not grip the racket so tightly. And it's helping. It's I think my strokes feel better. They feel smoother. The follow through is better. I'm hitting them deeper and I'm hitting them harder with more topspin.

So they're hitting them harder and actually landing the court on the other side. So that's my focus over the next over the next week or so is to really, really loosen up all my game and loosen up all my movements. It's better for my elbow as well. I can tell that's feeling better and I think that'll improve my game a lot. Anyway, that's the week that was. I don't think I have any other games coming up. I've got a bit of a class. I'm trying out a new hitting partner tomorrow morning. It'll be cold, but we'll see how we go with that. I always have trouble with hitting partners, number one, finding one that you know suits my gameplay. And number two, finding one that isn't like miles above my level or miles below my level. Someone who is on a fairly even or slightly better player than me. And that's prepared to play first thing in the morning when it's cold and it's dark. And I've got a couple of those but ones overseas at the moment, the other one's sick, so and one of them has actually disappeared entirely due to work commitments. So I'll see how I go with this new guy. Anyway, that's it for me. That's a wrap up for this episode. Thanks for listening and join me again next week on my journey to the Pan Pacific Masters Games.