How important is the everyday competition?

[egilgrim]

As the title stated - how important is the quality, quantity and variety in a player's development? The reason I'm asking is because I started to really take tennis seriously and focus on my improvement about 1 and 1/2 years ago. For the first 1/2 I had great competition with everyone in the group I played in regularly being better than me (some even FAR better). But now all these people have either left town to study or are focusing on school-work because they're in the last year of high school or whatever. The last year or so I've therefore been forced to play with younger and less skilled players (even though there still is one guy I practice with regularly that beats me). I experienced a greater developmental curve the first half year than I've done this year and my question to you is simply: how far can I get without constantly playing against A LOT of more skilled players, and how important is this component in the developmental process?

Thank you very much in advance

[racket-e]

I have pretty much reached this same problem. I was in a group with many people much better than me and rapidly improved. Now I am better than all of them and my clinics have no one better than me. There are 2-3 kids that are close to my level, who might be me in a set 1 in 4 times or so we play but the rest I can pretty much beat without losing more than a couple games.

I have been dominating competitive games but I still feel like I am improving because I have gone from mainly a defensive counter puncher to an aggressive player since most of the kids are worse than me. At the same time a big problem I have is when I attack these kids there defense is much worse than when I have to play quality competition and as a result when I play a speedy player with good passing shots it is hard for me to break through him.

[egilgrim]

Yes, I totally see your point. I must admit that also my own offensive game has improved more than it did the first half year. The problem however is that whenever I travel to tournaments, I'm not used to the pace, the precision and power those players I meet there play with.

[tennisbuck]

Yeah you guys seem to be in a tough spot. I would suggest getting a the numbers of some of the better players or those about like you, and practing with them individual. Then you can ask them who there hitting partners are and if they know of any challenging clinics

[egilgrim]

Thanks for the advice tennisbuck, but I found another club further from home where I can train with a group of really good players and this has really helped my improvement. I now live in the tennis hall and train there almost every day