Thanks Ed 🙂 I like you spent hours and hours training my serve. I used to get the serving jitters in mens doubles reverting to nervous flick serves whenever there was some pressure on me. Now however, I have an almost perfect low mens doubles serve. I use wide and straight flicks early on in the match to stop people moving in too close, and then occasionally throw in a drive serve 😛 I feel your advice on serving practice is fantastic for tournament preparation. Mr Stewart once said “which is the most important shot?” and the serve was the answer!

p.s. i only serve backhand in md, but use forehand and backhand in both mixed and singles, just to keep em guessing 😛

Unfortunately I don't know if I am capable of getting up to run for half an hour, given that the tournament starts at 9am and I have a 40 min drive to get there, so I will be too asleep to go running!

Thanks for your advice! I only eat salad during the tournament, but before or during a long break will be brown pasta!

Will let you all know how it goes tomorrow!

Well that was, interesting, shall we say! It was a knockout tournament, but with the “losers” in the first round being entered into the Plate competition, a second tournament contested by all the losers.

Facing off against some very strong and fast opposition, how should I judge the success of the tournament? My goal, was to beat somebody. That was it. I wanted to win a match against one player.

My partner wasn't bad, but not really up to the standard of the other entrants (who were all county players), so the mens doubles was nothing to sing about. However, was pleased to uncover a weakness in my opponent against my drive serve. He did not like that one bit. The problem was his partner was a lot better… but hey, can't win em all! Over the past few months I have really worked on my defensive play, and it really showed in the match. I was able to block and push every smash back into awkward positions for my opponents, whereas a few months ago I probably wouldn't have got a racket on them! Success 🙂

In the MD plate competition, I beat a pair that were experienced, but definitely not up for it, and then lost in the semi to a pair we should have beaten, who simply overwhelmed my partner with the pace they played – they were both asian, both favouring a flat and fast attacking game.

THe singles was a similar story. I lost in the main draw against Martin Stradden (i think) who apparently was once an english national champion. I didn't feel great losing to a man who was probably twice my age though. So into the plate competition.

Here I played a young County player, probably third team. In three tight games I beat him, being down by two point at 19 – 17 in the third, before winning 22 – 20. This was a good match for me.

Finally, I played in the plate semi final, against someone I know, but have never really played against. Again, three gruelling games, but this time i came off worst. At 14-12 down in the third, my opponent then won 3 lucky points – i dominated the rallies but my opponent won the points with lucky defensive shots, just landing in, clipping the net etc. I then made two errors, and at 19-12 down, it was going to be very difficult to win. I Lost the next point, my opponent hit a cracking smash! I won the next two points: i knew my game plan! Flick serve down the middle and the pounce on his drop or smash reply. The flick serve was called by him as just long, of which I am not sure about, it looked an inch or so in, but that was it.

I then stuck around, had the pleasure of watching Daniel Groom play and win the Mens Singles Final.

What a day!

You are right Paul! And I feel goals aren't discussed nearly enough – who reading this has a goal at the moment?

I use the Performance goals all year round, sometimes 1 or two a week. The whole list of things I covered at the start of my post were all performance based goals! With many of them I didn't tell people what my goal was – i simply said revise rearcourt footwork etc, but I knew in my mind exactly the stage and feeling I wanted to achieve from completing that practice – I have felt it before and I wanted to rediscover it! So as you can see I worked through a lot of performance goals in a very short time. But they were all aimed at winning that one match in the tournament, and hence being ready for this season, better than ever.

I still have plenty of goals – most of them performance goals, and some of them long term (footwork ones mainly!). But i have one or two more outcomes goals as well, scores I want to get against certain players who will normally beat me, my ability to compete at a higher pace etc.

Succeeding in these small goals, makes a huge difference to my game, my confidence, and my motivation! I hope some other people will post regarding their tournaments, and tell us how they did!