Notes From Angel Part 1, Dealing with Frustration

Hello all,

As I've mentioned a time or two, I had a conversation with Angel and he said that he and Ozzie had spent a number of hours going over things that affected play.  He was kind enough to send along some of the details of  his conversation.  

I'm going to break this in chunks and add some commentary from my point of view as a rec player.  

A lot of what they talked about are tournament specific but what I'm interested in is the base knowledge that any advanced player would/should/might be conversant with and trying to extend that knowledge base to the greater Downs' players.  So let's explore what Angel and Ozzie are thinking about and see if that can make us better players...

Angel:

 Below are a few things that Ozzie and I talked about after our first session playing together to start prepping for tournaments. 

1. How to deal with frustration. 

After our first session together, we talked about what to do if either of us were to get frustrated. It is more common that I get frustrated sooner than Ozzie, so we established ground rules/signs to let the other know when frustration starts and how to deal with it. 

We first established that if one gets overwhelmed, the other will take more court. (e.g., as is done in mixed doubles)  If this doesn’t work as much as we hoped, using timeouts was our next step. 

Not only do we slow down our opponents, but Ozzie and I also get to talk about anything, even if it's unrelated, to try to trick our minds into concentrating on something else, even if it's just for a minute. 

Timeouts are probably the complex situation as calling it depends on where we are in the match. The first rule is to call a timeout if our opponents win 3-4 points in a row. But like I said, it depends on where we are in the match. Let’s say if our opponents are up 7-4, if they win 2 points in a row, then we call a timeout.

 

Rich:

I think the above are quite interesting.   Let me comment in turn.  The solution to frustration or bad juju, is to play a more asymmetric court division.  Angel mentions the Johns brothers later in his note about this.  I think it's a topic that deserves more study.  For example if you play with me, you might want to decide to encroach on my forehand, but not on my backhand and particularly at the kitchen line.  There will be more on this point later as Angel talks about Ozzie and his strengths.  But I think that a partnership is a synergy but not always a symmetry.  We all play parts of the game better than others and designing defense and or offense based on those makes sense.   How to go about this hasn't be discussed much in what I've run across.  So a topic that any partnership of length ought to discuss in detail.  Who has the middle?  Who will stand in the middle?  Who will watch the line, the lob, and stacking, which could be a big part of this.  "Partner, you like to hit nothing but forehands, let's keep you near the sideline and I'll sag into the middle?"  Update: a new video hit my YouTube feed by Collin Johns dealing with this topic.  Probably I'll get back to this.  I've not seen the video yet.

Timeouts can be used for a bunch of things, getting some oxygen after a long point, or "let's dink, we can't hit with these guys!"  I would suggest that the first timeout be used to decide to whom the team will play.  Obviously if you are up 8-0, you're doing just fine and keep going, but if it's 0-5, then maybe isolate an opponent and hit to just backhand or something.  If it's is 0-5, then you ought to do something differently for sure, don't continue a losing strategy.

"Get your mind in the game!"  I find that when I'm not moving well or concentrating, moving my feet more is a nice trigger for me to get ready to run, poach, and advance.  Find something that will help you forget the trash talk and joggers and get ready for the next point.

Angel's last point about what part of the game you are at...  Hopefully you use timeouts as early as required and not wait until it is 0-9 for example.  The end of a game is critical.  You have less time to catch up and errors are quite costly.  If you lose at point at 0-1, you lost just 10% of the remaining game points, but do it at 8-9 and you've lost 30% of the rest of the game.  Be a touch more conservative in shot selections and speed ups, and never serve out at the end of the game.  

Angel has more to say and I'll be passing them along soon.

Thanks Angel for sharing your insights!