I went to tennis today and gave it a try. At first my back was feeling rather stiff, but it loosened up pretty quickly and I was able to get into a good rhythm. Also, since I was really disappointed by my serve on Wednesday, I decided to try something different with my form. Today, I was consciously jumping higher to reach for the ball. And it worked like a charm. I was getting great rotation on my shoulders which translated into a lot of spin and power. And the best thing, the serves were mostly going in.
There were only 12 people today at the practice and what's even better, all 12 were the upper level players in the club. So we took advantage of that fact and got into matches very quickly. We only did about 90 minutes of drills so we had a whole lot of time for matches. And with 12 people, we broke up into even pairs and had a good match session. I ended up playing four matches. I could have played one more, but I deferred my spot to a younger guy who isn't able to come and play on Sunday very often.
Unfortunately, I don't remember all the details of my four matches, but I ended up with a 2-2 record. I only lost two service games and the two games I lost, I double faulted on Game Point. What a disappointment. But other than that, I was serving very well. I hit a few aces as well, on both deuce and ad courts. And even more service winners. I started off with the higher jump on my serve, but I got tired so I wasn't able to keep it up, but it got me back on track, so I'll try to start that way and maintain it for as long as I can. In the two wins I was teamed with a good partner, while in the two losses, I was teamed with an older guy and an erratic guy. When I was teamed with the older guy, I held both my service games, but his lost his only service game and that was the difference. We lost 2-4. In the other loss, I held my only service game, and that was the only game we won, losing 1-4. The two wins were solid wins. The first win was 4-3. We were down 0-2 then came back to 2-2, then everyone held serve and we took it. The other win, I was paired with the only left-handed player who is young and strong. We blew the opposition away, 4-1. All in all it was a fun practice.
On another note, I was again chosen to write the club BLOG so I'll add that below.
In the end, I burned a good 1803 kcals. It was almost too warm and I was sweating a lot. I think that had a lot to do with the big burn today.
Here is the CLUB BLOG:
Welcome to the
Le Grand Tennis Club’s
ENGLISH (with a
little 日本語) BLOG!!!
Chapter 2
Table of Contents (目次)
1. Introduction
2. Practice Review
3. Tennis English: 1-Point Lesson
4. Tennis English: 英語と日本語の違い
5. Conclusion
1.
Introduction
It has been exactly one month since the last English
Blog. Wouldn’t it be interesting if I
happened to draw the “RED CHOPSTICK” once a month? It seems like the Blog was meant to have an
English Version at least once a month.
Let’s hope that is not the case.
But I am happy to write this Blog entry for the club, so I hope more
people will try and read it than the last time.
One big difference from Chapter 1 is the “Practice Review”. In Chapter 1, I wrote the Practice Review on
two levels. This time, I am only going
to write it in one level. If you would
like to have a more advanced level of English written in the English version,
let us know in the comments and I will accommodate you next time. For now,
onward!
2.
Practice
Review
Today is Sunday, March 17, 2019. As usual, practice at the Meiwa tennis courts
started at 10 o’clock in the morning. It
has been two weeks since Le Grand Tennis Club has been able to practice on
Sunday because the last two Sundays, the practice session was canceled because
of bad weather. Today’s weather was
absolutely wonderful… almost. The
temperature was perfect! Not too cold
and not too hot. It was sunny, but
sometimes there were a few light clouds.
The reason why I say, “almost” was because of the wind. Almost the whole time there was a strong
cross-wind blowing through the courts.
Because the weather was so nice, I thought that there
would be many people at today’s practice, but to my surprise, there were only 8
people at the courts warming up when I arrived.
Then, after me, only three more people came for a total of 12 members.
It was good to see a lot of the regular Sunday attendees, but I was very happy
to see a member who hasn’t been able to come for several months and a member
who, because of work, mostly comes on Wednesday. It was a good group today and we were able to
really get in some good drilling and match play.
The drills started with the “Two-and-OUT” rally
drill. Usually, we rally with five
balls, but today, we rallied with only two balls. Furthermore, we were instructed not to save
long or wide balls. It was a real
point. If the ball is hit out, next
ball. And we had only two balls then we
switched. Most of the members were
getting in some nice long rallies, but I was having trouble keeping a rally
going. I think my longest rally was
maybe four or five shots. I had a lot of
two and three shot rallies, but not enough to win any games that’s for
sure.
The next drill was a staple drill for Le Grand TC,
“Volley/Stroke” drills. But with only 12
members, we did the circuit drill with the right court’s deuce side’s player
calling “Last Ball”. This time, we were
back to the 5+ ball count.
Lastly, we did another staple drill, “Serve/Return”
drills. We did three rotations with the
return players being set and the servers switching in and out after around five
balls.
At about 11:30am we moved to matches. With twelve members, we had a round number of
4 teams playing, and then 2 teams waiting.
But at the beginning, to stagger the matches, one match was played on
the Left court (near the parking area) and on the Right court, there was a
ball-feeding drill. After about 10
minutes the right court started match play.
A lot of matches were played today, and from what I saw, there were a
lot of really good shots and due to the wind, there were a lot of shots that
seemed to be going in, but were pushed out.
Especially from the park end of the court’s balls were being pushed out
and from the roadside, balls that might usually fly long were held in. But that is the charm of playing outside
among the elements. Everyone was able to
play at least four matches today, and several members were able to play five
matches. Several times during the
matches, players had to just stand and wait out the wind because it was blowing
so hard and the dust clouds were kicking up so much, we could hardly see.
Despite that, I think I can safely say that we all had a great time at practice
today. I look forward to Wednesday’s
practice.
3.
Tennis
English: 1-Point Lesson
“Nice (_______)!!!”
This is a good
phrase when playing doubles. Use it when
your partner does something good. You
can even use it to acknowledge a “SUPER” shot by your opponent. Here are some
examples of what you can say:
“Nice Shot!”
“Nice Serve!”
“Nice Volley!”
“Nice Poach!”
“Nice Point!”
** “Nice Get!”
日本人は、「ナイス」という表現もうしてるので、発音は「ナイスウー」ではなくて、「ナイッス-」です。「ス」の「ウ」が言うわない。「S」の音で終わりましょう。
4. Tennis English: 英語と日本語の違い
「ジャスト」
This term in
Japanese was the most confusing for me. 「ジャスト」or “JUST” in English means: “Barely” or 「本間少し」。Also, in English, “Just” can be used for a
shot being either “IN” or “OUT”. So if a player just says, “JUST” the player
who hit the shot still doesn’t know if his shot was in or out. That is why I was confused.
5. Conclusion
I was so happy, after two weeks of no
Sunday practice to get out on the courts today.
Actually, I think that we have only practiced three times this month out
of a scheduled six times. One of those
times was only an hour. So I was a
little out of shape. I always wear a
Heart Rate Monitor (心拍数腕時計). Usually, I
burn around 1500 kcals during Sunday practices.
When we play a lot of matches like today, it goes down to around
1200-1300 kcals. But today, I burned
1800+ kcals. That means I was working a
lot harder today and my heart rate stayed higher for a longer period of
time. I need to get more stamina!
This chapter of the English Blog was a little shorter
so I hope you give it a try! If you have
any questions, feel free to ask me about anything English related.
Our next practice is on Wednesday, March 20,
2019. I believe the venue is at Frespo,
the indoor courts. Thank you, and Good
Night!
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