Scoring Points

 "Master, I've been beaten up lately at the weekly temple tournament!" said the young disciple.

"Yes, I've seen the scores in the bulletin.  You are not scoring many points," said the master.

"Help me, master, for I am lost."

"Grasshopper, when do you score points?" asked the master.

"Only when we serve, master.  Is that not right?"

"It is close enough for now, grasshopper.  Tell me, when you serve, are you hitting good serves?"

"Oh yes, master.  My new triple spin, kick serve is working very well," said the disciple with touch of pride.

"Yes, and how many points did you win with this new 'super' serve?  Did the opponents have trouble getting them back?"

"Er, no, they returned all of them."

"Did you miss any serves?"

"Only a few master.  I've found," talking rapidly with passion only the youth can muster, "that I need to get the serve close to the baseline to be effective."

"Yes, so it is.  When we consider that, is it not true your opponents returned all the serves you hit in and didn't need to return the ones you missed?"

"Yes master."

"So all in all, the fancy serve served only no purpose?" said the master with sly chuckle.  He was fond of a nice turn of phrase.

"Well, we didn't score any points and we lost several.  I guess it wasn't worth the missed shots."

"Correct grasshopper.  But your errors lie not there entirely."

"Where else master?"

"Let's talk of the points you won.  How did they go?"

"We served in, hit the third back and if they didn't miss the third shot, we got to the net and played pretty well there."

"But you didn't get to the kitchen line very often, did you?"

"No master, we couldn't get into the points."

"Let us be blunt, 'getting into the point' is way of saying that you couldn't get off the baseline, yes grasshopper?"

"Now that I think of it, we made errors from there.  We hit a lot into the net, some long and some that the opponents were able to put away."

"Ah, just so...  What kind of third shots do you hit?"

"Mostly drives.  Drops are so hard."

"And what kind of shots do your opponents like?"

"They were converted racketball players.  They liked to hit the ball hard and they didn't mind hard shots.  Oh, and their backhands were pretty good."

"If you play them again, what should you do differently?"

"Well, against those kind of players, I need to hit third hand drops.  Try not to get into a banging game."

"Excellent, grasshopper.  Practice your drops!  Oh, and if you don't mind, give my feet a nice rub, would you?  I spent the afternoon drilling the beginners and my toes are quite sore."