Basics of Tennis

Hey, this is Aniket posting, the other blogger’s son. I thought I’d share my disaster at a recent tennis meet. I play on a travel team during the summer. Normally I play in the U17 division, but this time, since I’m still 14, my coach put me in the U14 division. I’m good friends with the kid I was playing, but I also knew his technique was horrible. I’ve been taking private lessons this summer, so I’ve learnt about many technical mistakes that I’ve always had on my groundstrokes and serve, and fixed them. So now, I can hit with much more topspin. Anyway, I hadn’t had much time to practice my recent fix-up: my flat serve. As a result, my opponent broke me on nearly all my serves. He didn’t do much; he just sat back and watched me double fault multiple times. Nevertheless, I still had a 5-2 lead over him as the match progressed. In our meets, we play an “8 game proset”, meaning you play first to eight, win by two. Also, we play with no advantage on the second deuce. Now, back to the match. I lost the next 6 games back to back. And 4 of them were in this “second deuce”! You can imagine how annoyed I got, but I guess it shows you how important it is to be mentally tough, so you can get those “need to win” points.