I just finished a match that was very revealing. The guy I was playing was definitely not better than me and I could tell within the first few minutes that I could win pretty comfortably. Then I lost my serve in the first game. Things were feeling pretty tentative. My head wasn’t there and I couldn’t strike the ball accurately no matter how much I tried.
Then I decided to try something new. I just slowed everything now. I took relaxed swings at 50%, slow spinny balls away from the alleys that were just deep and high enough for him to not be able to comfortably attack. If he hit a big hit at me then I just sliced and neutralized. My error rate was a small fraction of what it usually is. The point usually ended when he would get impatient and try and hit a winner on an unattackable ball and miss or he would give me an opening and I would hit an 80% ball and get it past him comfortably.
I won and it felt like I was just toying around with him except I wasn’t. I just felt like I wasn’t playing well enough today to win any other way. I think a better player could have just teed off on my pushy balls and crushed them.
I used to hold the mentality that ball bashing is the only way to play and pushers aren’t playing real tennis. I kinda grew out of that but still maintain that pushing isn’t satisfying tennis.
But man. That was effective.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I might have lived long enough to see myself become the villain.
Thank you for coming to my shitpost.