When I played played squash tonight, I tried to stay in front of my opponent, like I promised in the last post.
This was a disaster. My opponent, who I typically beat, was cutting all my shots off early and running me ragged around the court. I lost the first 2 games pretty badly. Thinking about being in the front of the court didn’t help me at all.
The problem was, I wasn’t getting my opponent to the back of the court well enough. Naturally, if you want to stay in front of them, you need to drive the ball to the back of the court effectively. I realized this wasn’t happening: my shots were reasonably deep but I was leaving them too far out into the middle of the court. My opponent was eating them up with volleys.
In the 3rd game I decided to change mindsets. Rather than focus on where I wanted to end up (in front of my opponent), I’d focus on where I wanted to hit the ball (deep and tight). I decided to think about keeping my shots “tidy”. In other words, pay much greater attention to where my shots were contacting the side wall and the floor. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t just thinking generically about getting the ball to the back of the court, but rather, thinking about exactly where I wanted the ball to land in order to get the ball to the back of the court. A subtle difference, but…it worked.
All of a sudden I was putting much more emphasis behind my shots. My serve returns started to fly a little faster, and they were landing closer to the wall, and at good depth. My serves had more pace too, and were putting my opponent in the back of the court.
I managed to rally and win the next three games. It was a close match, but I pulled it out.
There are still many things I need to work on. For starters, I need to improve my serve. My opponent was hitting some easy winners off them. The same thing happened to me last week in my league match. This is a major weakness that I need to address.