The match
Beat Tommy Davis 6-3, 7-5 on a day where almost nothing felt good.
I never got comfortable with any part of my game and my serve was a mess. My worst service game of the year came at 2-2 in the first set — not one first serve in, not even close — and I got broken. Then I turned around and played maybe my best return game of the year to break straight back. That is the shape of the whole day: ugly on my serve, saved by my returns.
The thing that won it was a decision, not a shot. Somewhere in there I told myself every ball is going back over the net, and if he hits winners past me I’ll live with it, but he is going to have to beat me. I stopped hunting for the feel and just made him play. From that point on I was fine.
That is what the first set turned into. I broke him in four of his five service games and closed it 6-3 without a single thing feeling easy.
The second set flowed even worse. We traded breaks, I piled up unforced errors off the ground, and at 3-4 I genuinely felt like I did not know how to hit a shot. Broke him at love for 4-4, got broken at love right back for 4-5, and then dug in: broke him for 5-5 after four deuces, held for 6-5 by taking the pace off and simply getting first serves in, and broke him again to close it 7-5.
I held five of my ten service games — as bad as the serve has been in any match I have kept a card for, including the one I lost to Danny Ferro. What saved it was the return: eight breaks, more than in any other match on the pile.
Not pretty. But grinding out a win on a day when nothing works is a different skill from winning on a day when everything does, and I am happy with that one.
One last thing, because it is the whole point. We have been working through The Inner Game of Tennis, and what happened today is that book’s central idea in action: I stopped trying to make the shots feel right and gave myself one simple job instead. Every ball goes back. The feel never did arrive. The match did.