When does an athlete bring everything together and start performing as well as they can? There is a long list of promising athletes who never fulfill their promise and drop out of sight. Others may take a while to get there. Roger Federer had trouble winning his first grand slam because of the pressures of expectation. Andre Agassi had early success but experienced personal turmoil before becoming the only active player to win a grand slam on all surfaces and winning five slams after his 29th birthday. I remember a Sports Illustrated article after Agassi had won a few slams. His father walked by the interviewer and expressed his opinion about his son’s exploits up to that point, “He could have been president by now.” Whoa, how’d you’d like to have him for a father?

The process of developing stong mental skills and automatic shots can be lengthy. Watch any league game, how many points are won due to errors versus winners? This is all by way of constructing my excuse of the week by reminding myself that this is the first full season of league play for me. I was ahead in singles 4-1 and lost 5-7, just like last week. The 4-1 score was a bit misleading, my opponent had 5 margaritas and stayed up til 3am partying last night so he was spraying the ball everywhere but on the court. He finally started to find the court and I lost my service stroke, thus the final score.

I feel bad for my doubles partner, who is the top C level player, he has to suffer through me gaining this valuable experience. Poor guy.

Practice and Competition Report: played in the league today, one set of doubles and one set of singles: 1-6, 5-7
Solutions Analysis: looking for a solution to the problem of losing my service stroke during a match. Possible solution: stay on the court during the next rest period and practice my serve motion without the ball.
Success Analysis:
1. I made some good returns of very strong serves.
2. I played the second deuce sudden death points well.
3. I came to the net on second serves and scored points.