ATA College Prep student Aaron Chaffee was a semifinalist in the Men’s Open draw, coming back from being 0-5 down in the quarterfinals to advance.  Other ATA players who competed included Josh Hagar, Hunter Goertz, Jonah Kral, Landon Weiss and Liam Leddy.

One of the things that our top players try to do after each tournament is advance themselves by thinking about what they learned at the event.  We call these takeaways.  Here is an example of some takeaways from one of our players:

Takeaways
San Antonio Adult SCMZ

1. Serve. I served clutch and consistent, which is necessary for me to win. I know that at higher levels protecting my serve is imperative. I can return pretty well, and am confident in my abilities to break my opponents serve, but sometimes (like my match against Wiegand), protecting my serve is all I can do. If I can do that, then I put my opponent in a pressure situation. From there, either my opponent will play clutch, or he will play soft and that’s when I go get him. If I never get that chance in the pressure situation, then I continue to protect my serve and win in a tiebreak. The overall message is giving myself the opportunity to allow my opponent to give me an opening. And if he doesn’t, I keep my head and continue applying pressure by holding serve.

An impressive feat this weekend was my ability to take one point at a time on my serve. If I ever got down love-30, I would focus on making a first serve and putting a quality point together to try to get back to even. And once I got back to 30-30, I knew I was in a good position to get the game; I just continued what I did to get to that point from love-30. More of these situations will allow me to become more comfortable and confident in executing first serve plays.

2. Consistency off the ground. I rarely missed in my first three matches. I was grinding my patterns and tiring my opponent, with exception to my last match. In the past two months, my consistency has improved dramatically and I am giving myself more chances within the point to come forward and win. Or, in some cases, giving my opponent a chance to miss.

3. My match against Wiegand. Simplest way to put it, I got a bit nervous. I knew who I was playing, and I probably over-respected him to an extent. I know now however, that when I am in that situation again, I must put myself in winning positions using the same tactics I used in my previous matches. Next time, I am going to run my cross-court patterns and focus on consistency off the ground giving my opponent nothing. I must force him to beat me. And if he begins playing soft, I pounce and take it to him.