Back on Tour | FIP Silver Lelystad

After a big weekend where Team GB qualified for the European Championships and I won all three of my matches in the process, I jumped straight back into training in the UK with some quality sessions behind me. Louis Harris and I teamed up for the Lelystad FIP Silver in the Netherlands. It was only our second time playing together at this level, so we were keen to see how we measured up against some of the top players on the tour. On my smash. And I don't want to just stick to it, to trying to hit the ball out for three metres tomorrow, because I know that if I do that, we're going to get punished. And the third thing is that I want to trust myself at the back of the court. I want to trust myself in defence. The ball bounces up here. Yes, it's super fast, but the ball does bounce up. So it will give me a chance in defense to use my defensive skills. And it's something that whenever I'm at home, I'm always training my defence. And then sometimes when I get into a match, I don't quite trust myself and I end up rushing or trying to. What I think is use my strength. So coming up to block rush the net, because that is a strength of mine, but I want to get in a position where I'm confident to do that through my choice. So whether that means I have to defend four, five, six balls, I want to commit to that tomorrow. I know that I can do it, but I want to commit to that in the match. So those are a few accountability goals. It's something a little bit new that I want to do in this video, but hopefully I'll play the match, look at this afterwards and say, yep, I really stuck to that.

Hello, everyone. How's it going? Louis Harris here, just here in Holland, Just had a little practice match with Tom. We're going to be playing together in the fifth this weekend, so, yeah, first little hit, little practice outdoors. It's actually really nice. Surprisingly, sun's out, although it was raining last night and this morning. So nice practice match, but we just found out now that they're moving us indoors, so not the most ideal practice conditions. We had to almost try and pretend we were indoors with a few lower lobs and, you know, maybe going for more overheads than we shouldn't have, but no harm done there. We're going to be playing against Bart, member of the Dutch team, played against him many times. Also with him, definitely a tough match. He's got a Spanish partner called Adrian. Don't really know him as much But I've heard, you know, very good things. I mean, look, all these flip events are strong, they're stacked, right? So every match is tough, but we're going to give it our best go. You know, me and Tom played together only once before in Belgium. Went quite well, especially working with that tactic of Tom moving and pressing up to the net, which is what he's good at. Blocking me, hanging back a little bit, playing on the right. I was usually a backhand player and trying to control the game a little bit more. So, you know, hopefully that pays off. At the net we're aggressive so, you know, we don't need to worry about that too much. Hopefully putting the Smashes to bed. But yeah, looking forward to this match and hopefully we get the win.

We had a three and a half hour delay before we went onto this court. It was a bright sunny day outside. We'd done a practice match previously thinking that we would play outside and then things were moved inside. So it just goes to show that how quickly conditions can change and how much as a player you have to adapt to these, these changes. As for my accountability goals that I set for myself, using the high lob inside would not be a good option. And the Smash variation wasn't really something for this match now because you couldn't run out the court. So the goal was to hit 3 meter smash every time you got an overhead because you'd automatically win the. We started this match just trying to play solid. We were working out what was going to be the best tactic to win this match. And we actually held our serve pretty comfortably at the start of this match. So we felt good at the net. Louis obviously got a massive smash which puts our opponents in a little bit of hesitation around lobbing him. I was also smashing well today. And so for our opponents, they were playing a lot of balls down, trying not to give us too many easy lobs. And at the start we were holding serve comfortably and our goal really was to try and put pressure on their serve and really get a chance on the returning games to break and potentially hold out the set. But we just couldn't quite get that break. So both sides ended up holding serve and we struggled really in, in this first set to find that break that would give us the breakthrough. Bart being a lefty on that right hand side made it tricky because that lob through the middle gave both players an overhead. And on our returning games we needed to make sure that our lobs were deep enough so we could get them off the net. And I think we had a few mini chances in this first set on the returning games, but we couldn't quite take them and therefore both sides ended up holding serve. And it came down to just a few points in this first set. Louis and I had held our serve throughout this first set and we felt like it was going to be a comfortable game. Our opponents were fearing a little bit, giving us lobs. We were smashing well and so we were putting pressure on and hopefully taking that pressure into a first set tie break. But as is the case with pad, a couple of lapses of concentration. I missed a volley by inches on that point, which I knew how important that would be, was a bit frustrating, and then gave them this mini chance where Bart hit a good volley, didn't come off the fence. 30 all. Now this is a tough point. Now there's pressure on winning this point, having been quite comfortably up in this game. And this is just how Padel is. If you take your foot off the gas just a little bit, you give them a chance. And here now we're facing the set point. Had a comfortable smash there to take it to juice, but now we're looking at a goal point and this is a massive point. And there just a little bit of communication from us, Louis, probably the fact that we haven't played that much together. And we ended up losing that first set, a really frustrating end to what was actually a good solid first set. So we had to really try and reset there and bounce back going into this second set. The goal was to just reset from that first set because we'd actually played really well in that first set and we'd been a little bit unfortunate losing the set on a golden point. But we had to take the learnings from it and show our opponents that we were here and we were ready to win this second set. And again I was back on my serve at one all looking for a solid game to show them that we were here. And we were ready to get this lead in the second set. But a couple of mini chances, they got lucky on a net cord. They played some good points here, lobbing me playing a good drop volley to fence and my lob here quite good enough. Probably the wrong shot choice. And as the pressure starts to build, a few errors start creeping in and I could feel the pressure building on my serve here. I didn't want to give our opponents a break of serve, got on top of the net there, had an easy volley and I felt so frustrated there that given breakaway and giving them the momentum in that set. So we were a set and a breakdown. And this was really when we needed to fight back. Because matches like this can go downhill really quickly. When the opponents have a set and a break, they can relax a little bit, they start to play more relaxed. Paddle. And unfortunately, that's what happened in this game. We couldn't quite get ahead. We made some poor shot choices, some tough points, some physical points, but we were never on top of those points. We never seemed to come out on top. And to be fair to Bart and Adrian, they played really well here. They didn't take the foot off the gas as much as we. We fought to get back in this second set. They just kept putting the pressure on and they played long. Points played to their strengths. They've got good volleys at net. Adrian's got unbelievable hands. And as the match went on and he started to get even more confident, he came out with some great shots. And as much as we tried, and even a few trick shots in there, that didn't come off. I think the difference in this second set, and it was something that Louis and I talked about during the match, but also afterwards, was that we just couldn't make any inroads into our opponent's service games. So we had many chances to break, but we couldn't quite break. And so what that does is it just puts extra pressure on your own serve. If you feel like you're not getting chances to break your opponents. If they hit a couple of lucky shots or they play some good points and you go down in the score on your own serve, it just puts out extra pressure on you because you feel like you're not going to get the chance to break serve. And that's exactly what happened in this match. And as the pressure was taken off our opponents, they started to play more relaxed. They started to come out with some incredible shots. Adrian's hands in the net with these drop volleys, drop volleys out the door, which was incredible to watch. But as you can see, the scoreline giving them such a lead, they felt like they could go for those shots and it just extended their lead, which made it tough for us to get back in the second set. Whilst I couldn't focus on the accountability goals I set yesterday, when I thought the match was going to be outdoors, particularly around the high lob and the smash variation, I did feel like I trusted my defence today and a learning for me moving forwards, and something I'd like to work on in training and in these next tournaments is to continue to work on my defence. But in particular, my return of serve. I think this match really showed me that to get into our opponent's return game starts with that return. And at this level, it's not just about hitting a solid return back, it's about pinpointing on our opponents where I want to hit that return and doing it in a way that gives us the advantage. So that's going to be a focus of mine moving forward is that return of serve. And to be fair to Bart and Adrian, they played solid first set. It's not always easy to close out a match like they did, and so hats off to them, they're a solid pair. Louis and I, it wasn't our day today, but it was an enjoyable match and I look forward to the next one.