A few quick updates, my 8.0 Mixed team lost a close match to the Pirates (who won the flight last year) thanks to a great effort by Lisa Carson and Danny Rubbo by winning the deciding court in 3 sets against a good team. We won our match the following weekend against the Wild Aces so we are now 2-1 overall. We don’t play until January and it looks like Springton KO and the Funsters are for real teams so it’s great to have some parity and fun matches ahead of us this year. Time will tell how this will all flush out but for now the Pirates are the team to beat.
Taking a quick look around the league, Bucks County captained by Cheryl Taylor looks like a contender at 4-0 with a few quality wins already. I suspect it will be them and Ninjas Nuts and Berries contending to represent Flight A at Philly Districts come April.
In the other flight (Flight B), Magarity Rage led by Larry Gardner seems (again) to be the most formidable foe in this flight as they are undefeated at 3-0. This team has earned a place at Districts for the last few years and certainly I suspect that they will again in 2012 as two of their 3 wins are against their strongest competition (Kinetix and Margarity In It for Fun).
My 9.0 team is 0-2 after losses to Kinetix and Pennsbury but we could win our 3rd match we played assuming with win the remaining 3rd doubles court. There are some excellent teams at 9.0 and with the fairly large number of players who have been bumped to 4.5 it’s a large and all encompassing level with many strong players.
This Philly 9.0 flight is tough! TA, Kinetix, DVTA and Pennsbury are all capable of winning but I’d put my money on Tennis Addiction. Kinetix went to Nationals last year so they can only have 3 of those players on any given roster. Pennsbury is very good as is DVTA who beat Pennsbury but lost to TA. The 9.0 season started a few weeks after 8.0 so there are many more matches to go but with 4 solid teams in a 7 team flight there are no easy matches at 9.0.
I play on a Delaware and a Central PA 9.0 team as well and I have played several 9.0 matches this year. This is my 2nd season as a 4.5 and I think I am now in a better position to say what seems to be the difference is between 8.0 and 9.0.
The 9.0 players are better. OK, that’s obvious. The ball moves much more quickly in 9.0 matches and the players are steadier. As one of my recent matches against Jenny Grove and Jim Werst indicates, you have to do more than stay in the point. Jenny and Jim were both recently 5.0 players who have been able to appeal back to 4.5. Jenny has phenomenal hands – every putaway hit in her direction just seems to come back. We started out 2-2 in the first set, and then, well, it still hurts to sit down we got spanked so bad. Jenny and Jim made us hit 6, 8, 10 shots per point and they didn’t give us sitters. If we didn’t put a little something on the shot, they’d close in and put it away. If I got overly aggressive and tried for a big shot, I often made an error.
So, the answer for this example is that Jenny and Jim were simply better than my partner and I but digging a little deeper you have to end the points at 9.0 whenever possible and you also have to weather the storm and be willing to play a little defense too. In other words, lots of patience and the ability to be aggressive in the right situation – sounds easy right?
At the upper end of 8.0, you have to be aggressive but at the end of the day you can typically direct the majority of your returns to the weaker player and hope for an unforced error from your opponent before you make one. You don’t have to take too much risk and a calm, “steady –as-you-go” demeanor can take you a long way. This is not a good strategy at 9.0. I don’t think I’ve said anything newsworthy in this post but it’s helpful to understand what strategies work and what doesn’t. My only other comment is that it’s best to have a good 2nd serve and short of that you’d better put 90% of your first serves in.
