Please review my match footage! - UTR 8/ USTA 4.5

[zoodoggy1]

Hey everyone! Im originally from Dallas,Texas and I am USTA Rated 30 year old, 4.5C. Recently, due to some life events I am living in DC proper for the next two years. I grew up in Texas so never learned or had the chance to play on clay. I'm in the white shorts here. - My great friend who Ive met since moving here uploaded our clay court match we did out at JTCC. Any feedback is appreciated! Its been a long journey, as I've played since about 12, got burned out at 17 (2009), and didnt pick up a racquet until June 2018 again. Since then I've progressively gotten much more serious (Dropped about 60 lbs since 2017, lift 2-3x a week, play 5-6 times a week and play in tournaments, leagues, and do lessons once week).

I do have some specific goals in mind I want to achieve - become a 5.0 rated USTA player, and potentially become a 9.5/10 UTR singles player before I move back to Texas (Summer 2024). I know this is lofty and tough goal, but I'm willing to put in the work and would love to hear some thoughts on what that may look like. I did get a chance to play some high level UTR guys earlier this year and the summer, lost to a UTR 11 - 6-0/ 6-2 and beat a UTR 9 in a third set breaker. Practice matches with 9.5 UTRs typically I am losing by no more than 3-4 games total between two sets. My UTR has recently taken a hit due to a clay court tournament I entered a few weeks ago and I lost my cool mentally and ended up losing to a 7.8 in two sets. Was a good lesson though.

I started playing singles again consistently last summer, and after my first official USTA singles match since playing as an adult I got rated 5.5 UTR. Now Im about an 8. Any tips or feedback on how I can achieve the goal quicker and more efficiently is appreciated. I know for sure, I'll need to shore up the backhand and figure out a way to generate more pace on the serve for starters to play at that level.

 

[pencilcheck]

what do you want feedback about? any areas you want to focus on?

 

[zoodoggy1]

what do you want feedback about? any areas you want to focus on?

Serve + Backhand is the main areas I am focusing on currently to improve

 

[AnyPUG]

Great job targeting his fh which seems to the weaker side, but needed to hit more aggressive to corners and finish off at the net when you elicited weak responses from the FH wing on vast majority of points. He was happy to just roll the ball over from FH with arm-only shot and wait for the next rally ball instead of being under pressure because the previous weak shot.

 

[ryohazuki222]

Your prep after hitting and before the next ball seems like it could use the most improvement. Feels like that’s why so many errors.

when you get to 10 UTR / USTA 5.0 that lag will cause more errors because your opponents will hit faster (less time) into better spots (you’ll need more time).

errors are fact of life in tennis but the portions of the video I watched had too many unforced errors on balls that you were in a relatively offensive position in the rally. You can afford to lose those points much less as you creep up the levels. Conversely, to climb up if you swapped those lost points you shouldn’t have lost on that stroke to winning points or setup balls putting you in an even more advantageous position, I think it’s pretty realistic for you to be a solid 5.0 in your time horizon based on the talent I see in the video.