Last week I mentioned that our team was successful in their semi-final campaign and made it into the finals.
My finals match was against a young Scottish doctor that I first mentioned back toward the end of 2007 after I jotted down some squash strategies following our first encounter. Coincidentally, he is also one of the opponents I mentioned in my semi-final post that I had lost to in a recent string of poor performances. If I was to stand any chance of winning the match, I really needed to bring the form from my semi-final match back onto the court.
A couple things I noticed I wasn’t doing in my semi-final was boasting enough and I was frustrated with my lob. This evening, while I still didn’t boast as much as normal – I certainly added more of that back to my game. However the point I’m most pleased with myself about tonight are the lobs, I think I hit more lobs tonight than I have in any other game and with the exception of a handful – they were all on the money. The side effect of a good lob is that it gives me a chance to recover court position, forces your opponent to run back to cover the ball and if the lob is well positioned, also limits the return heavily.
I think that I played at least as well as I did in the semi-final against Steve, however tonight it wasn’t quite enough. We were both moving around on the court so much that by half way through the fourth game I was hurting, a lot. The game score was 2-1 in favour of my opponent and I was up on points in the fourth – poised to draw the match but it wasn’t to be. I lost my serve and that was the tipping point – I lost five points in a row and the fourth game. While the game score was 1-3 against me, I’m happy with my performance tonight as I know that I lost the match as opposed to him winning all of it. What has become quite clear, if I want to move up to B grade the season after next – I absolutely must improve my aerobic fitness.
Despite my loss tonight, our team absolutely hammered our opponents – yielding only 5 games in total! In my time with the Robina Squash Club, teams I’ve played in have made it through to the semi-finals twice but never into the finals. It was a great feeling tonight, not only to be in the finals for the first time but also to win the squash season!
I think you do plenty of boasting ;)
Oh yeah, good job on the win though. A win against good opposition is always satisfying.