Wow,that was a strange experience. He won his first match against a 16 ish year old, then the second against a 30 ish year old who i thought had a big enough forehand and serve to beat him. The dude was a lower level clone of Moya, running outside the dubs alley to hit western forehands and even wearing the sleeveless shirt to show off his guns. I was wrong, he played smart, consistent, and was able absorb/redirect the power and attack the backhand nicely.
We joked about what we strategy to do to each other over dinner, everything was fine until we started the match. He hooked me on a second serve ace on the FIRST point. Probably not intentionally, as my serve was fast out wide and hit just inside the line. He pointed to a mark that was out, and i told him which mark was correct, proven by the fresh fuzz. No biggy, i gave the DF and went on to hold serve. He has this habit of not calling the score, and getting the score confused has lost him matches before. So i asked him to call the score. I asked him a couple more times, which in combintation with me winning points seemed to upset him. After the first set, i told him don't worry about anything, just play tennis. He settled down a little, but still didn't play his best tennis. At this point, if he was mentally able to play his best, he might get 2-3 games.
I got to play a 6.0 player (lefty) in the semi's, and got whooped. I held serve the first game and that was the only game i won. I got broke in my second serve game then had 15-40 to get to 2-2 immediately after. Really needed to break back but all first serves and sick shots and no dice. I had game points on 2 more of my serve games and got to 15-40 one more time and had a BP in one more game. But the dude's ball was just so heavy, exploding off the court, and always seemed to land about 6-inches from the base line near the opposite corner of where i was.
Curiously, some of the spectators said that i played better than the last time we played, where i lost 6-3,6-1, because of the long games and insane rally's we were having, which were mostly in the first set as my level dropped a little and his rose thru the match. We were chattin watchin the other semi on the next court and i showed him about 15 marks in the duece corner that with all about 6-inch from the baseline. He's like, "yeah, that pretty tough to play against". Nice guy.
The other semi was insane with a 10-8 third set TB. The #2 seed (HS senior, great all courter) was up 6-3,4-1 and started getting a little tentative, as well as a couple very tight calls/hooks by the #3 seed (15-yo super talented future pro lefty). #2 served at 5-4 to close, got hooked on match point then lost 3 games / set. 3 set TB was awesome and even included divine intervention. #2 had MP at 6-5 in TB, ball landed on the base line and was called out. #2 lost the next point and faced MP. Long rally, #3 set up his huge lefty FH up the line and the ball clipped the net and set up just enough for #2 to get to it and send it deep x-court. Couple balls later #2 got to the net, #3 hits goes for a toppy lob and #2 hits a winning backhand backhand OH, WOW freakin WOW crowd goes wild. #3 wins shortly after. Sick@!!
So now its #1 vs #2 buts like a 6.0 vs a 5.5, so my guess is #1 wins 6-3,6-2, which is what my score should have been against him.
