Hi and welcome to Double Fault. My name is Andrew and I'm on a journey to compete in the Pan Pacific Masters Games on the Gold Coast in Queensland in November 2024. And this is my journey, I guess. So those games are now 456 days away, which is still a bit of time to go, but I'm finding that my level of improvement in playing tennis is slowed down a little bit, I think. I don't think I'm plateauing. I just think I'm maybe I'm consolidating my skills a little bit. I read somewhere that when you learn a new skill, be it golf or tennis or any other skill, you tend to go up in like a saw pattern. You know, there's a climb where you gain some skills and then you stop gaining skills for a while. I think internally you consolidate a bit and then, you know, you can even go down a little bit in your ability to do whatever sport you're doing. But then after a while it starts climbing again, like as if the consolidation phase is over and it's time to learn something new. I think internally that's kind of the way it works and it seems to be the way it works for me. So I think I'm actually over that phase and I think I'm actually starting to improve again. I watched an episode of Break Point this week and I think it was the one with Berrettini in it, and that's If You Don't Know, it's a documentary on the journey of some of these tennis players who don't quite make it to a slam.
They might get to the semi-final, they might even get to the final in some cases, I don't know. But all the ones I've seen, they get to a very high level and then they don't quite make it there. And the cameras following them around during their journey through the Grand Slam. This particular one was the Australian one, I think. But what's interesting is these players, they they're just normal people. They're not out there training 24 over seven. They're actually got lives and they they're actually doing other things, but they're training hard as well and they're playing hard. And when they play, they really get stuck into those balls. I know I, I try and hit the ball hard, but they're putting their entire body on the line to hit that ball as hard as they can with as much as they can. So it stays in the court. And it's pretty impressive to watch. You know, you think about if you're on the opposite side of the court to one of those folk hitting the ball like that or even just a my level at the recreational level, you know, you watch the player on the other side of the net and you see how they hit the ball and instantly you have got an idea of how that ball is going to travel, how what sort of spin it's got probably more or less where it's going to land and you run over there to where might be a good hitting position and you're constantly looking at this ball heading towards you.
And it's it's travel time is very, very short like a second or so or less. And you watch this ball travel over the net and you get yourself in position to hit the ball. And internally your mind is calculating possible spins where it's probably going to hit the court surface, how high it's going to bounce internally. You process all that so quickly and in your hand you've got a tennis racket. It's it's an extension of your hand. You know, it's not part of your body. So, you know, instinctively where more or less the sweet spot on that racket is how you're holding that racket. Which way? The racket is facing. You've already made a decision during all this where you probably want to hit the ball to to get the best advantage out of it. You know, whether you want to catch the other player wrong footed or you lobbed them or whatever you're going to do, and then you start your swing and the ball is still moving towards you. It may have bounced already and you hit that ball more or less where you want it to go. You think of the processing power.
Your brain has to work all that out. I mean, that's pretty much that's a good feat. That's that's something really that I just find astounding. Anyway, this week I have a match against an unrated player, a woman, and they're always going to be interesting. You never know what you're going to get. Often they're a lot better than you think they're going to be. This one will be at Forest, which is a local court. It's very good lighting. So come along and join me in my match and we'll see how. We'll see what the night brings. Okay, here we are, Game two of the semester. Let's see what we've got here tonight. I've actually arrived a little bit later than normal, so it's only ten minutes to the game. So I don't have such a long time to wait around. It's actually a nice night, too. It's I think it's like 15 degrees, which is Celsius, which is not bad for this time of year. I'm just gonna have a quick look which code I'm on. I think I'm caught six. Feeling a bit ambivalent about this game. I already had 2.5 hours of tennis today. I'm not sure I should be doing that on a match day. But, but you know, when you get the opportunity to play well, when I get the opportunity to play, go ahead and give you balls. Um, let's have a little bit of a warm up. Yeah, sounds good.
I'll.
It always takes ten minutes to warm up, doesn't it? Okay, here we go. Start my Garmin. Yeah, I'm hurting a bit, but I'm going to do here. What do you want? Hills, valleys. Hills, valleys. You can surf. You get to choose which side. Okay, here we go. Okay, so here we are. It's a beautiful night for a game of tennis. My opponent is looking very fit and feisty and keen for a game, so this is just a good game. She. She was hitting really hard. She was really getting stuck into swinging at that ball and giving me a hard time. And she made me run a lot. And it's it was a long game. It was very close. So first set finished and it finished with a tie break. She got up six five. So this competition, we have a tie break at five games all and she, she really gave me a run for my money. It was it was hard work. They were long games and it went for a long time. So we finished up with an unfinished game because the lights automatically went out and the last game was she was up five four. But the way the competition goes is if you run out of time, it becomes a drawn game as far as their scoring is concerned. So that was a drawn game. But we are allotted an hour and a half for two sets basically. And it's just it's just we're too long.
We played so closely, as you can tell by the score, six, five, five, four. And a lot of those games they went to deuce and I find that's that's one place where my game is telling a little bit and maybe it's because I'm carrying a little extra weight because I think I'm fit enough. But after an hour and a half of slogging it out, I'm really starting to pant a little bit and sweat a lot. And I'm struggling. I'm not struggling so much, but I can tell I'm running out of energy and I can keep it up. But I don't know what I would do if the games went on for like two hours, which is what they used to go to. I had one game in a previous competition which went for 2.25 hours and I was absolutely finished at the end of that anyway, so there you go. This game was good. I played well. I think she played better on the day because she obviously well, she didn't officially beat me, but she may as well have beaten me because the score was in her favor for the first set and she was winning the second set. It might have gone the other way. It may have wound up with me winning the second set and it would have gone to a tie break. But we'll we'll never know, I guess. Oh, I love 40. Ouch. Hey, hey, hey, hey. We can't playing this. You have to call it five four.
Well, that was some game. I have to think about my thoughts on that because while I wasn't roundly beaten, it was so close and we used the entire allotment of time up plus a bit. Oh, she made me run a lot and I just couldn't get that tie break on the first set, otherwise it would have been my match. What do you do? I think we're even on even on break points for the last set at the end there. So all in all, yeah, a really, really quite a close game. And I'm actually looking forward to playing her again because it was just enjoyable playing, you know, long rallies that little rallies that were actually strong rallies. We had each other running all over the place. I'd like to think I hit some really good winning shots in amongst it all. And I played. I played to my strengths, I played well, and she just played better than me. And that's the way it is. She wrong footed me a few times, which is fair enough. That's just a winning shot. I hit long, long a few times, which I try not to do too much, but sometimes especially on a soft serve. And she serves went soft, actually. But they weren't really rockets. They were. They were competent. Serves. Anyway, I'll get to meet up with her again later on in the series and I'll be back again for another hit next week.
So there you go. End of what is the second game of the season? Somewhat different to my first game. It was very competitive and very enjoyable. It's always good to play against someone who's really close to your skill level because you know, you get longer rallies, you get you don't wait for people to get over making mistakes. And it's they're not easy points. So you're stretched, you're stretching your skill levels. This game went for a total moving time, including the warm up, though, and a total time of an hour and 39 minutes. And I ran 3.3km according to my Garmin gadget and I burnt 867 calories, which has got to be worth something, right? Can of beer, maybe hamburger. I've stopped running for a little while because I had a long game on the courts this week, so before the competition game today, I played with a friend of mine and then I had a class on it in the morning and that was really hard. It was new, a new coach, and she made us really work hard, run hard. And it was it was quite a big class. So we played. We split up into two smaller groups and that meant a lot more running. So not much sitting off on the court. And then after the game tonight, I could feel like my Achilles is aching quite a bit, so I'm resting for a few days before I go back into running. Next week I'm playing another unrated player and I'm also playing.
The Fast four. Competition is also starting up, so I have my first competitor there this week as well. I don't know. I don't know either of the people I'm playing against. They're both unrated, which as I said before, that's meaningless. It could mean that they're a red hot player, that they've just never been rated. And that happens quite often. In the case of the past four format. One, the coaches at that particular court, they actually assess the players beforehand. So they go into groups that are more closely related to their ability. So you don't have anyone running away with the competition at four or for love, for love, for love and ad nauseam. So that that should be a good game as well. My my world currently is a bit topsy turvy. I'm getting my kitchen renovated, so my house is a mess. I've got workmen coming and going. I'm basically I basically demolished my own kitchen. I'm working regular job as well, so I'm really feeling a bit worn out at the moment because I feel like I'm working two jobs and I'm still trying really hard to get a fair volume of tennis in. So the next couple of weeks will be a little bit wearying, I think. But I'm up for it and I think and I'm looking forward to my next games. So I'm Andrew and this is double fault. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.
