Cindysphinx
G.O.A.T.
Hey Cindy, don't know if you've wasted the 10 minutes of your life that you'll never get back like I did, but this kid has videos on YouTube. He's one of those former high school athletes that is picking up the game in his early-mid 20's. the type that is athletic and coordinated enough to rally with average 4.0 guys.
I would bet this kid will get bumped in December to 3.5 and be OK. He'll run into the backboards and junkballers there and have a few frustrating defeats, but for the most part he will win out of pure athleticism. Just like he did at 3.0, which he probably never belonged at.
4.0 will be another bag for him, as there will be plenty of folks there that are as athletic and technically sound. He won't fly through that level, but he'd have to be a total mental midget to get smoked. He likely will come to rest there for a while unless he plays up and gets some fluke wins.
4.5 is the level where I think he'd get it handed to him. Most guys at 4.5 have 20+ years on the court in one way or the other. I'm the type that played juniors and quit at 17 and then picked it up again 10 years ago in my late 20's. others picked it up after college and are now 40+. That level of experience is what will be the toughest to overcome for Police.
Just so we are clear, I wouldn't dare guess how far NTRPolice can go. 4.0? 4.5? It all depends on whether he can get quality instruction, can work on fitness, can get lots of match play. That takes time, money and dedication (plus luck to stay healthy).
My point in mentioning our former TT poster's 4.0 wake-up call is that the leap between levels is huge, and the higher you get the harder it is to improve. Perhaps TT looks good on camera and has pretty strokes, but we all know how difficult it can be to translate that to match play. I hope he achieves his goals, whatever those might be.
In the meantime, he should perhaps defer to people who play types of tennis he has never once played (ladies 7.5 combo, as in this thread) and those who actually have scaled the men's 4.5 mountain.
If he's serious, however, I do have words of advice based on what I have seen at TT:
If you want to move up, don't get married and don't have kids.