The match
First competitive match since May 2019. 99°F at first serve, feeling like 100°F, and it barely moved all evening.
The plan was short points, I had no reason to try anything clever. The heat called for short points and my legs definitely wanted short points in the first match back.
I played the longest possible version of this match instead — every close game went to four or five advantages, in 100°F. The advice held up. I just didn't execute it.
Game plan was to focus on body serves on both sides, deep crosscourt, then take the short one. One pattern I could repeat while breathing hard.
He was a strong 3.0, bordering on a 3.5. His backhand is his much weaker stroke but he runs around it and is fast enough to do it. He's very strong at hitting past you on the run on short balls, he was hitting winners in the alley when I came to the net so our deep crosscourt to short ball plan didn't play to my favor.
My game plan with my serve went great — I won most of my service games and points and he really struggled with serves into the body.
First set. I went up 2–1 and felt fine. Then he held a game that went through five advantages, and broke me from 40–0. I got back to 4–4, and got broken again after leading that game 40–0 too. He served it out. 4–6.
Second set was the real one. I broke and held to lead 5–4, and then nobody dropped a serve: 5–5, 6–5, 6–6. Two more marathon games on his serve, four or five advantages each — I broke one and he survived the other. More 40–0 games on both sides. Nobody gave an inch for about forty minutes.
Then the tiebreak, and the tank was empty. 1–7. It was not a tactical collapse, it was a physical one; there was nothing left to spend and it showed on the first three points.
Three games lost from 40–0 up. That is the number from this match. It is not a technique problem and it is not nerves — it is what happens when the legs go and the margin for error disappears. A talent gap does not produce that pattern. Conditioning does, and conditioning is the thing I can actually change before the next one.