Spanish disappointment

Time to share my thoughts on the very disappointing effort in Madrid on friday.

As I told you in my post yesterday I was up against Andi Hartono, an Indonesian based in Sweden. His world ranking is as low as 400 and he has failed to make it past the first round of the four tournaments he took part in during the last twleve months. My own world ranking is 72 at the moment and I won Dutch International less than one month ago. Obviously results and form pointed in the direction of an easy win for me, but as you all know this clearly wasn't the case...

The first set was a complete disaster for me. For some reason I was not there in my mind at all. Not much I remember about the first set though, it's like a black hole in my memory which just proofs my point about being somewhere else mentally. I think the score says it all: 21-8...
I was able to shake off the disappointment of the first set and played a bit better in the second. Throughout the set I was being very agressive and attacked on every chance I got. Still I was far from playing my best as I was just hitting hard smashes all the time and forgot to use some more variation in my attacks, which is key to make your attacking game more dangerous. Somehow it worked out for me and I won the set 21-19 after wasting a couple of set points.
Third set was much like the first. I don't know where my mind was, but clearly not on court with me! All of a sudden I was giving away the initiative constantly and quickly got down 7-1. I did manage to close the gap a bit before the interval as we changed ends at 11-8 for him. One should think the 1 minute break would do me good and help me get my mind back where it should be, but the complete opposite happened. The first five rallies after the break were horrendous and I lost them all. That gave him a lead that was way too big for me to close with my current state of mind! He finally sealed victory, 21-13, with an easy mistake from my side.

I'm not going to state this as my worst game ever as I have played worse games after returning from my knee injury, but it is very close to my most disappointing game ever. My expectations were much higher than a first round exit for this tournament, that's for sure. Losing in the first round was never really a possibility for me and maybe this is part of the problem as I probably underestimated my opponent.

So many things that disappoint me about this game. First of all the result of course. Leading up to this tournament I have been feeling in excellent condition, moving around court with ease and playing really well, but during the match I never felt comfortable on court and moved around with no speed and power whatsoever. Secondly I was never able to react to the things that happened on court (apart from small periods of the second set). I just kept on doing the same things over and over again even though it was obviously not working. I wasn't thinking at all, I was just playing along, allowing him to dictate the pace of the game. Third aspect of the game that disappoints me a lot is the fact I went on to court without having a gameplan or tactical focus in mind. This should never happen at my level and is just not acceptable in any way! In general my pre-game preparation was just not good enough and I will really have to learn form this. I'm just not at a level where I can take easily on matches like these, I need to prepare professionally for every single match I play. If I don't, my chances of losing will increase dramatically. To be honest it's a lesson I should have learned a long time ago, but for some reason I haven't. Let's just hope I've learned it now!

A possible explanations for my poor effort could partly be donw to the fact we (the danish team) didn't have a coach with us. I'm sure if we have had one, a few of the things mentioned above would not be there. Such as not having a gameplan and not reacting to the things happening on court. I will not use this as an excuse though, as I am at a level where I should be able to handle all these things on my own. I've been on the european curcuit for 3 years, so it really should be a standard routine for me by now.

At the end of the day there is noone to blame for this poor result besides myself. The responsibility is all mine and I will have to take the experience I've earned in Madrid with me and learn from it.

Time to move on, but not to forget...

HK