Upwards and Onwards
Dartfish, Morphing Training Systems, and,
as Fernando says, "How not to play like my neighbour."

Aside from the recent loss, I have been playing really well these past few days.  In drills, practice matches, I can really feel my game improving.  I've told you about him but I'll say it again.    Am really grateful that I have Fernando Boldo, my new tutor to guide me.  I think it's funny that knowing that my previous tutor was Andreas, it was only when i learnt how to be content and appreciate his value as a coach, that God finally gave me the coach that I wanted.  Fernando's so full of passion and energy!  He has experience, good ideas, and keeps on pushing pushing pushing me to get better.  Everyday.

Things are also changing in the academy---I think for the better.  They are slowly but surely making tweaks to the training system here.  It's not just endless, senseless drills now---they're taking more time to explain the drills in more depth now, the coaches are meeting for more meetings, they've just introduced a inter-league between players in the academy for the whole semester, and have also started using more camera, tournaments, psychology and video-watching for the players.  I for one, just watched myself on Dartfish---a revolutionary tennis analytical programme that plays videos of myself doing drills and allows my coach Fernando to review my shots in a clear, detailed manner. 

He can zoom in, slow down, super slow down, speed up, and mark my image on any frame of the video with obvious start, stop, forward backward functions.  While I winced watching myself, it was really good because I could finally see some things that he's been trying to get me to work on---like having better double rhythm in my footwork, switching my body position in between shots, how I tend to let my free hand droop when I hit the ball, etc.  It was actually quite disheartening at first----I never like seeing myself on video, but hey, it's the truth, right?  Seeing it is the only way to get better.

But going back to my game, Fernando told me that the girls are slowly starting to respect me more because I'm starting to play.... good tennis.  Even beating some of them. 

Last week, I thought I played the best tournament match I've ever played in my life, and on tuesday I played even better. 

Irony is that I lost both, but that is not important.  There was so much variation in my shot selection, and a lot more intelligence in the way I built up the point.  I was very pleased---and I really have to thank Fernando for teaching me how to construct points and think them through better.  Even though she may have won, I think I did with my own objectives too.  Every time I constructed the shot well, read her body correctly, moved into optimum position and executed the shot----my opponent had no answers.  No answers at all.

Now, the next step is to keep learning how to be more consistent.