A slap in the face..

After the thrashing in Nässjö last weekend I have only played tennis 1 time this week, and that was on thursday evening. We had a warm up for about 15 minutes and I felt really good, hitting the ball very clean. Then when we started to play games, NOTHING worked at all. I made SO many errors and felt really off and heavy on court. I lost first set 6-1 but then gained some momentum and raced to a 2-0 lead before my opponent raced back to 2-2 and then our time was up..

I REALLY needed that wake up call. Imagine if it would have happened in our league game tomorrow. I really have have to focus and let the feet know they are alive.

Even if I only played tennis 1 time so far this week I have been doing some other practices. 2 times on the gym and 1 time icehockey. Had a light workout on the gym today and my body feels pretty good for the game tomorrow. I really have to focus on my game and don´t slow down the pace as i´m facing a retriever that runs on everything and do it good!! My serve are a key tomorrow. I have prepared my rackets and strung up one fresh at 53 lbs with a Luxilon Ti.Mo Banger 122. Luxilon makes the best strings by far. The power and control are far superior everything else.

Well, time to pack the bag soon and get some sleep so i´m fresh tomorrow as the game starts at 09:00 am..

Cheers

New string-machine

Today I received a new Pro´s Pro Pilot table-top string-machine. The reasons I bought a new was
A) The old one was starting to rattle a bit and , well used is used...
B) I felt the floor-stand was WAY to low
Since I already had a homemade floor-stand I felt if i bought a table-top i would save my back when stringing.

I packed it up when I got home from work today and installed everything, removed the crank and installed my Wise tension head and strung 2 rackets for a friend at 28 kgs. It went very smooth and the machine was very nice to work with. Nice clamps and i loved the work-height of the unit. No back-problem what so ever. I always used to get back-pain when string on the old unit since it´s made for persons sub 150 cm´s or so.

Tomorrow I will be out on the ice again and guard the net. I have not been out on the ice for almost 3 weeks now. Tennis is taking all my focus and hockey has been priority,, low , at the moment. Gotta shape it up though as we have a season-ending tournament in Gothenburg the weekend of march 14-15. Gotta stay sharp and help the team. After that I will put my gear on rest until october and focus 110% on tennis and tennis-related fitness work.

G´night!

Double bagel

Today we where in Nässjö and played the 2:nd placed team in our league. If we won today we would virtually be champions as our game, set and match-difference are sky high better then the other teams.

Daniel, our nr 1 guy, won his match 4 and 3 after 1 1/2 hours. I won my singles match 6-0 6-0. Pretty satisfied with my game today. 7 aces and no double faults and only faced 1 game point all match. My opponent actually won the previous round in the league 6-1 6-0 so it was a good win for me.

The doubles match was pretty hard fought but we won 4 and 3. More nice rankingpoints on the account ;-)

The new Wilson-frame are actually a big part of my confident game lately. So solid, powerful, good plowthrough effect and good spin and feel, this racket is a gem for my game. Very nice. I have ordered 2 more now so i´m all set for some time now, and i will officially stop the search for a new racket now as my holy grail is located in my tennis-bag at the moment :)

The journey continues next week with more posts.. On the schedule we have a new racket string machine on Monday, hockey-practice on Tuesday, gym on Wednesday, tennis on Thursday and a new league tennis game on Sunday..

Cheers

Selling rackets, demo-strings and a new stringer..

This have been an interesting week if you look at it in a equipment-way...

First I tried the Head Prestige Classic 600 but did not like it so much as I hoped so I put them up for sale on Tennis Warehouse bulletin board and sold them to a gentleman in Canada. Hope he will enjoy those classic-frames.

Then I went on to sell my stringing-machine as I felt it started to be a little bit shaky. It was a 6 point machine with a floor stand , but I already had a home-made, very nice floor stand made of wood. I felt it was a shame having this nice floor stand just to stand there unused so I sold my older machine and bought a table-top machine instead and will use the home-made floorstand. There is a big advantage with the wood-stand and it´s the fact I can screw on 4 lockable wheels on it so I don´t need to lift it each time I have to move it. It still weight over 35 kg´s so wheels are a big help saving my back.

Talking about stringing,,, I have recieved 2 string-sets for tryout, for free. First I got a RAJ Poly Penta from Germany. A 6-cornered CO-Polystring in 1,23 mm thickness. Played pretty good actually. Very soft, responsive feeling. Will try it more as it grows on me each time I try it. Then today I got a set of a very nice and expensive string from Head, the Sonic Pro in 1,25 mm thickness. Will try it as soon I get a new Wilson racket...

Speaking of Wilson.. It seems to be very hard to find a used Wilson KFactor KSix One 95 in 18 * 20 string pattern and 4 1/2 original grip size,, If you have one, new or used, for sale.. Just post a comment here with your mail-adress and we can make a deal

I have done some seriously hard work in the gym this week and tomorrow i´m going to practice with my German friend Benni on RAcketcentrum. Then on Sunday we play a roda-game in Nässjö. Nässjö are nr 2 in our league and if we win this match we are champions already even if it´s 2 more rounds to play after this match. So cross your fingers, or as we say here in Sweden (translated) Hold your thumbs hard!!

Have a nice Weekend

Hockey-weekend

Had a weekend pretty much dedicated to the lovely sport of icehockey and here is a little "review" and some pics from the hockey-weekend,,,

It all began on friday noon when i left work and was picked up by a couple of good friends. We had a long drive ahead of us so we drove only for about an hour before we made a stop at Burger King in Värnamo. I ordered a triple whopper meal with those lovely BK-fries :) Yum!! To be sure we would be really full we went from BK to McDonalds where i bought 2 chocolate covered donuts,, healthy food all the way ;-)

After some hours on swedish highways we checked in at our hotel in Malmö and waited for a friend that arrived by train to Malmö. When he arrived we grabbed a cab out to Hyllie and the new arena in Malmö. This hockey-arena is actually considered the best in the world at the moment.

Here in Malmö Arena the hottest team at the moment, the reborn Malmö Redhawks faced AIK Stockholm in a clash in the 2:nd Swedish division , the so called Allsvenskan. This game had been talked up a lot the last couple of days and the arena was sold out so the atmosphere was electric!!

The game started in a magnificent pace and this pace continued over all three periods. The hometeam Malmö was on fire and put up a great fighting spirit and outplayed AIK and won 6-2. The crowd was crazy and on their feet entire game and created one of the best support-actions i have ever witnessed live. Amazing!!

After an calm night at the hotel in Malmö center we went the 350 km´s home an i went straight to the Elite League game between Hv71 from my hometeam Jönköping when they hosted the guests Skellefteå. This game was also sold out but when Malmö´s arena can swallow 13000 spectators , Kinnarps Arena in Jönköping only take 7038 persons.

Even if this game was in the highest swedish division this game was REALLY BAD! I almost fell asleep from the middle of the match and onwards. The crowd was also very quiet and it was only the standing home-supports that kept on going for 60 minutes and cheered on their side in a good and loud way.

The game was won by guests Skellefteå 3-2 and it was all thanks to their good goalie Dahlberg who made some outstanding saves in the last period.





Now I have some editing to do with a couple of tapes i recorded on my most recent tennis-practices. To record yourself with a cam on a tripod during a practice is a good way to be able to develope your game. You see so well all the errors you make and then it´s just to adjust your game and see if you notice any difference next time you get recorded...

Head Prestige Classic 600

So, I have finally play tested the legendary Head Prestige Classic 600. I played it on Thursday evening on medium-fast hard court with new Tretorn Series + pressurized balls. Warm up felt OK, or very OK actually. I was able to strike the ball very clean and the frame felt really really solid. Decent spin and higher power-level then what i expected. Volley´s was like a joke. It was TOO easy to hit them with this frame. So solid it was ridiculous. Serve was easy and powerful and i felt confident going into game-play...

But... As soon as i had to move and hit the ball on the run i started to have problems with the small sweat spot and i misstimed some returns big time. Lost first game and onto my own serve. Missed a lot of first serves. All serves got caught in the tape and 2:nd serves was killed by my opponent. I faced 15-40 before i really dug deep on a couple of safety points and won the game on first game point.

Then I switched to my Wilson KFactor Six.One 95 and I straight away felt at home with the fantastic power, feel and spin in this magnificent frame. Of the next 9 games I won 8 with really good baseline game.

So those fantastic Prestiges will soon be sold to someone that really enjoys this frame. It´s not something that should be stored at some collectors home, it´s a frame that should be played on a daily basis!!

I am really 110% sure i will continue with the fantastic white/red/black 95 inch Wilson-frame and I think it will help me win a lot of matches..

Tomorrow I will post a couple of pics and videos from the hockey-weekend in Malmö and Jönköping.. BTW; The game on Friday between Malmö and AIK was the best hockey-experience I have ever been on, apart from when Frölunda won gold back in 2003 in Scandinavium

New bag from Head

.. No, I have not bought a new bag, but Head have FINALLY listened to their buyers and made a GIGANTIC bag. A normal combi-bag have a volume of 60-70 liters, but this gem fits 120 liters. Sweet!! No more bursting stitches due to a bag thats filled to the bursting-limit.

A place here in Sweden sells this bag on pre-sale right now, for f#%&ing 1299 SEK (around 115 euros) SICK! Or is the gold-color actually Pure 24 carat Gold? Must be for that price..

Anyhow, it look´s nice and IF i like the Prestige´s more then the Wilson´s this is the bag that will carry my gear 2009.. It´s out of the question to have a bag from one brand and the rackets from another... ;-)

Cold...

Not much happening right now. I have got such a unnecessary cold that will destroy most of my practices this week. We played a icehockeygame last weekend and i played first period and 10 minutes into the 2:nd before we made a scheduled goalie-change. Until I was replaced I had recieved 35 shots on 30 minutes and gave up 4 goals. That´s pretty good and i was really warm and sweaty so when i was sitting on the bench i was starting to freeze and ..voila!! A cold arrived on Sunday evening like a letter in the mailbox.

Gotta put in some equipment-talk in this post as well. I re gripped and strung one of my "new" Wilson´s on Sunday. Strung it in 55 lbs with a new sample string from Raj in Germany. Some kind of poly-string with a hexagonel shape. Will try it on Thursday and see how it plays.

Oh! I made a bargain as well on the swedish trade-site "Blocket". A guy was selling 3 Head Prestige Classic 600 in grip 4 1/2 for an amazing price. As a racket-collector/addict it was an easy decision to spend some hard earned dough on those babes. I have never before tried the Prestige Classic frame, only the Prestige Tour 600 and the i.Prestige mid, so it will be fun trying those vintage-frames.

I don´t know yet if i will pimp them with calfskin-grip and new bumpers and put them up on ebay or if they will end up as an actual playing-frame. The Wilson Ksix.One felt really nice and I think the Prestige is a bit to demanding for me, but as I said,, it will be nice to at least try.

* The ATP World Tour is in Costa do Sauipe in Brazil this week. There the weather is like 25-30 degrees Celsius and a nice, warm sun. Here, in south-central Sweden on the outskirts of the south Swedish highlands, we have minus 4, 2 dm´s of snow and a cold northern wind. D A M N , the clay court season seems to be 600 days away right now...

Wilson

Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiilsssssssssoooooon!

Yea, that´s the name of a Volleyball in the movie Cast away with Tom Hanks. It´s also the brand I will use from now onwards.

I had a first 90 minutes hit with the Wilson K Factor 6.1 95 (18*20) racket tonight, and i played really solid! I normally don´t play so solid with a new racket, nor with a trusted old racket....

Power was good
Spin was good
Touch and feel was amazing

Will post some pics later,.. now I will send a mail-order to my racket-contact in the states

Cheers