Just wrapped up playing a tournament in Aspen, Colorado where I entered my first Open Men’s Doubles competition. My partner (whom I picked out of the crowd as the semi-final match was beginning, was a 4.0 rated player who didn’t like to play doubles). And we won the tournament. Okay, okay, there were extenuating circumstances……as in only four teams in the draw so we only had to win two matches. And okay, if you must know, one of our opponents in the final was a woman. No, I still don’t know the whole story behind that, but they beat a decent team to get to the finals, so she was a good small-college player. Seriously, the competition was not that easy, and in both our matches we had to outsmart our opponents as they were younger, quicker, and had more polished strokes. As in they could hit the heck out of the ball. So, how did we do it?
First, let me say that my partner and I had never met previous to this tournament. Heck, we didn’t meet until the third game of the first set of the first match. Seriously! My partner that I signed up with pulled a hamstring and had to quit. Our opponents, a couple of real gentlemen, were open to me getting another partner as they had come to play and didn’t want a forfeit. Pleading to the crowd (yes, there was a small crowd gathered, for what reason I can’t say), I finally got Genaro to volunteer. Genaro is a solid 4.0 singles player….with a great serve and the ability to camp on top of the net and swat balls away! Just what you want for a doubles partner, although I wish he wouldn’t have kept saying he didn’t like doubles!
So, our opponents in this resumed first match were very generous, and I’m pretty sure that the thought never occurred to them that they could possibly lose under any circumstance.
Anyway, to make a long story short (ha ha, that never happens), here’s what we did for strategy in both our matches:
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Geno camped on top of the net whenever possible and I would try to hit the ball to any spot in front of him, mainly crosscourt. That was Plan B.
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We kept up a positive attitude no matter what. Cause heck, we were lucky to be out there playing anyway, so what was to lose? We did our share of fist bumps and high fives throughout the match, especially if one of us missed a shot. This helped keep us loose.
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Our opponents had big serves, so we both played back when returning.
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Our opponents had great crosscourt returns of serve from the ad side, so we went Aussie on the ad side. On the deuce side we both crowded the net when serving, as they NEVER LOBBED US!!
They had no answer for these strategies! Here are some of the videos and [embedplusvideo height=”283″ width=”450″ editlink=”http://bit.ly/29PIKX8″ standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/C42XDrThnUA?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=C42XDrThnUA&width=450&height=283&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=¬es=” id=”ep2110″ /]
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