The first tournament for 2009 is now over and it was a pretty good tournament for me...
Pro Supex Cup was played in Vetlanda on a slow Rebound Ace hardcourt surface and I wasn´t seeded at all. It was a 24 man draw and in first round I won 6-1 6-1. In the quarterfinal I played the no 4 seed, a guy I lost to 3-6 3-6 in our only previous meeting 3 years ago, but this time I was very sharp and won easy 6-0 6-2.
Into the semifinal I went and played the no 2 seed and I won 6-1 6-2. In the final I played a very very good player who used to play ITF tournaments and still plays on a very high level. He won 6-4 6-2 but I really played good and had him on the run for most of the match but he was a true fighter and won many points on passing shots when I wanted to finish the point at net.
I got a WC/Alt to the doubles tournament as well. One of the guys in the no 2 seed team was sick so I replaced him. It was only a 6 pair draw and we won semi-final easy 6-1 6-2 but lost the final to the state champions 6-2 6-2. The double final was the 4th match on the final day and both me and my doubles-partner was tired during the entire match.
Today I feel surprisingly fresh in the body despite the 4 matches yesterday. Only problem is my "golfers-elbow" that hurted like hell yesterday but i know it´s due to my rackets so hopefully this problem dissapear now when I have retired them for good....
onsdag 7 januari 2009
lördag 3 januari 2009
First hit with (one of the) new rackets
Had a hit today and tried one of my new Rackets, this time a 330 gram version of the Fischer Pro No 1. Strung with a Tecnifibre redcode main and a Yonex 850 cross (came with that combination) strung at around 54-55 pounds.
First impression was that this racket was very solid, decent power, decent spin but amazing control and feel. I played this racket for about 30 minutes in total and man was I satisfied with the answers this racket gave me. I felt i could push so much more and was able to go more flat on approach shots without the ball flying to long.
I guess when I have strung it with my Luxilon TiMo Banger in 52 pounds, this racket will be a real weapon, or atleast i hope ;-)
The most important thing of this racket was that I didn´t feel any pain in my elbow when using it. When I play with the Pure storm team with lead inside the handle to make it more head light and heavy overall I get a medium-pain in the location on the inside of the elbow that cause so called "golfers-elbow". As soon as I played with the Fischer-racket the pain stopped. Must be the racket, because it´s only with the Pure Storm´s I have felt such pain and it´s not fun playing with pain.
Now i´m waiting for the 4 new Pro No 1´s in the 320 gram version that will arrive next week. Hopefully the play the same when i have put on some more lead but I know I will look for 3 more 330 gram rackets....
First impression was that this racket was very solid, decent power, decent spin but amazing control and feel. I played this racket for about 30 minutes in total and man was I satisfied with the answers this racket gave me. I felt i could push so much more and was able to go more flat on approach shots without the ball flying to long.
I guess when I have strung it with my Luxilon TiMo Banger in 52 pounds, this racket will be a real weapon, or atleast i hope ;-)
The most important thing of this racket was that I didn´t feel any pain in my elbow when using it. When I play with the Pure storm team with lead inside the handle to make it more head light and heavy overall I get a medium-pain in the location on the inside of the elbow that cause so called "golfers-elbow". As soon as I played with the Fischer-racket the pain stopped. Must be the racket, because it´s only with the Pure Storm´s I have felt such pain and it´s not fun playing with pain.
Now i´m waiting for the 4 new Pro No 1´s in the 320 gram version that will arrive next week. Hopefully the play the same when i have put on some more lead but I know I will look for 3 more 330 gram rackets....
fredag 2 januari 2009
Beginners misstake
On the last day of the year the first racket of my new rackets arrived with the mailman..
It was very good timing because I was just on my way to the tennis-court so I grabbed the parcel and just cut it open. Very nice, i thought as I saw the cover saying "Fischer Pro No 1" and when opening the cover up, yep it was a Pro No 1 every day of the week, but...
The racket felt very light.. and i mean VERY light!! I quickly looked at the specs inside the racket "throat" and saw " Weight: 285 g"... Crap! I didn´t even know that the red/black/white Pro No 1 was made in an UL version. I want my rackets to be at around 330 grams unstrung and it will simply be to much to add 45 grams of lead to the racket and make it play the same as the other rackets I have orderd (which i know is 320 gram and 330 gram)
I have customized a lot of rackets in the past and i have a very good scale at home that shows the weight within 0,01 grams and with that it´s very easy to fine-tune the rackets to the same weight. The main trick is although to get the racket at the exact same balance, but it´s just to counterbalance with lead and fine-tune more after the playtests to make the rackets equal.
..but if the difference is so big as 45 grams it simply will be to big difference in the carbon-layup in the frame so I have actually already posted an add for the 285 g frame:
http://www.blocket.se/vi/19654589.htm?ca=17_s
Now I have to find a couple more of the Pro No 1´s in either 320 G or 330 G, and that´s not the most easy thing as this model was last made 2005..
I have 5 frames (or atleast 5 frames that will soon arrive) but i need about 3 more. 8 frames is a good number. Then I can have some frames with different tensions on the strings and don´t need to worry about humidity, temperature etc when I play.
I´ll have to take a pic of the racket arriving today and post later. It feels good to track the package online and KNOWING I can pick up a new racket when i get home from work :-))
It was very good timing because I was just on my way to the tennis-court so I grabbed the parcel and just cut it open. Very nice, i thought as I saw the cover saying "Fischer Pro No 1" and when opening the cover up, yep it was a Pro No 1 every day of the week, but...
The racket felt very light.. and i mean VERY light!! I quickly looked at the specs inside the racket "throat" and saw " Weight: 285 g"... Crap! I didn´t even know that the red/black/white Pro No 1 was made in an UL version. I want my rackets to be at around 330 grams unstrung and it will simply be to much to add 45 grams of lead to the racket and make it play the same as the other rackets I have orderd (which i know is 320 gram and 330 gram)
I have customized a lot of rackets in the past and i have a very good scale at home that shows the weight within 0,01 grams and with that it´s very easy to fine-tune the rackets to the same weight. The main trick is although to get the racket at the exact same balance, but it´s just to counterbalance with lead and fine-tune more after the playtests to make the rackets equal.
..but if the difference is so big as 45 grams it simply will be to big difference in the carbon-layup in the frame so I have actually already posted an add for the 285 g frame:
http://www.blocket.se/vi/19654589.htm?ca=17_s
Now I have to find a couple more of the Pro No 1´s in either 320 G or 330 G, and that´s not the most easy thing as this model was last made 2005..
I have 5 frames (or atleast 5 frames that will soon arrive) but i need about 3 more. 8 frames is a good number. Then I can have some frames with different tensions on the strings and don´t need to worry about humidity, temperature etc when I play.
I´ll have to take a pic of the racket arriving today and post later. It feels good to track the package online and KNOWING I can pick up a new racket when i get home from work :-))
tisdag 30 december 2008
Claycourt season 2009
Wow!! I´m really pumped up now! I just booked the airplane tickets for the 2009 officiall start of the claycourt season. Me and some friends will go down to Porec on the Istria Peninsula in northern Croatia the last week of April and slide and grunt it out on the beautiful red claycourts there.
Porec is a small town with a pop. of around 12000 and in this small place there is OVER 100 red claycourts!!! Amazing!!!!
I have played tennis in Rabac and Makarska in Croatia before and it´s amazing to have a see-view and feel the light breeze when playing on the red stuff.
More about this trip later. Now I see I jsut got a email from a Hotel in Porec about court-reservations :-))
Ciao for now!
Porec is a small town with a pop. of around 12000 and in this small place there is OVER 100 red claycourts!!! Amazing!!!!
I have played tennis in Rabac and Makarska in Croatia before and it´s amazing to have a see-view and feel the light breeze when playing on the red stuff.
More about this trip later. Now I see I jsut got a email from a Hotel in Porec about court-reservations :-))
Ciao for now!
Video
Here in Sweden it´s winter right now. Today we have -3 degrees celsius and to play outdoor is not an option. We actually remove the nets and lines from the claycourts early October and then let the courts rest until middle of April.
this time of the year we have to play on a very limited nr´s of expensive indoor courts. In my region we have 4 plexipave courts in Tabergsdalen, 4 LatexIte courts in Jönköping, 3 carpet in Bankeryd and 2 Carpet-granulate in Habo. Those locations are spread in a 50 km area.
An hour costs around 15 euro´s during the winter and it´s almost impossible to find a court from 3 pm until 10 pm weekdays. Only chance to play during winter is very late nights or late or very early on weekends.. To bad! The little touch that once was dissapear very fast.
I played an hour of tennis last week in Bankeryd, on a lightning fast carpet and to make things worse, bad lights...
This is a short video of how it went. I tried to make some experiments on my serve early on but in the end of the video i´m back to normal serve again..
this time of the year we have to play on a very limited nr´s of expensive indoor courts. In my region we have 4 plexipave courts in Tabergsdalen, 4 LatexIte courts in Jönköping, 3 carpet in Bankeryd and 2 Carpet-granulate in Habo. Those locations are spread in a 50 km area.
An hour costs around 15 euro´s during the winter and it´s almost impossible to find a court from 3 pm until 10 pm weekdays. Only chance to play during winter is very late nights or late or very early on weekends.. To bad! The little touch that once was dissapear very fast.
I played an hour of tennis last week in Bankeryd, on a lightning fast carpet and to make things worse, bad lights...
This is a short video of how it went. I tried to make some experiments on my serve early on but in the end of the video i´m back to normal serve again..
tisdag 23 december 2008
Damn u DHL!!!
I had big hopes that my new tennisrackets would arrive today. They was sent from Germany Thursday last week and was schedueled to be delivered today, but due to some strange reason DHL sent it back to the sender so I got a mail from the sender today that they had got the parcel back.. S * * t!!
Well, no big deal really as I have a lot of time to get used to them in the months to come. I will not play with them until after the next tournament which is played January 3-6 , 2009. Until then my old Babolat Pure Storm Custom will do the work one last time.
Now you might wonder what rackets it is that i´m waiting for?!?! Well, I like the "old" rackets a lot better then the modern rackets, so I found 6 brand new Fischer Pro No 1´s. Those sweeties are made around 1999/2000 in Vöcklabruck in Austria (or was it in Ried am Innkreis??) and have this old school heavy feel and you can just plow through the ball with brutal force. That´s not the case with the rackets made today in China. They are so light and stiff and I don´t like the feel of them at all.
The good thing with the delay is that it is good practice for my patient ;-)
Now it´s time to log out and hit the gym!
BTW: Merry Christmas!!
Well, no big deal really as I have a lot of time to get used to them in the months to come. I will not play with them until after the next tournament which is played January 3-6 , 2009. Until then my old Babolat Pure Storm Custom will do the work one last time.
Now you might wonder what rackets it is that i´m waiting for?!?! Well, I like the "old" rackets a lot better then the modern rackets, so I found 6 brand new Fischer Pro No 1´s. Those sweeties are made around 1999/2000 in Vöcklabruck in Austria (or was it in Ried am Innkreis??) and have this old school heavy feel and you can just plow through the ball with brutal force. That´s not the case with the rackets made today in China. They are so light and stiff and I don´t like the feel of them at all.
The good thing with the delay is that it is good practice for my patient ;-)
Now it´s time to log out and hit the gym!
BTW: Merry Christmas!!
måndag 22 december 2008
It´s alive!!!
Ok, ladies and gentlemen!! From now on I will updated this blog as often as I can. This blog will be almost 100% dedicated to the lovely sport Tennis.
Here you will find things like latest news from the ATP-Tour, the latest equipment, reflections on Davis Cup and ofcourse some updates on my own game.
I´m a 30 y o Swede and English is not my nr 1 language, so I hope you all can live with all the grammatical errors and wrong-spelled words.
I play for a club called Hagafors TK and we play in a league called "Region Syd div 1". Hagafors is just a very very small club and it´s this club I started to play tennis for about 16 years ago. Since then I have represented about 10 clubs, but I ended my "career" 3 years ago and when Hagafors called and asked if I could consider a comeback because they where low on players I felt I wanted to give tennis a go again. So now I have played about 8 months and I have a new love to the sport again...
I really wanted to write a longer post, but I gotta go from work now so more posts tomorrow :-)
Here you will find things like latest news from the ATP-Tour, the latest equipment, reflections on Davis Cup and ofcourse some updates on my own game.
I´m a 30 y o Swede and English is not my nr 1 language, so I hope you all can live with all the grammatical errors and wrong-spelled words.
I play for a club called Hagafors TK and we play in a league called "Region Syd div 1". Hagafors is just a very very small club and it´s this club I started to play tennis for about 16 years ago. Since then I have represented about 10 clubs, but I ended my "career" 3 years ago and when Hagafors called and asked if I could consider a comeback because they where low on players I felt I wanted to give tennis a go again. So now I have played about 8 months and I have a new love to the sport again...
I really wanted to write a longer post, but I gotta go from work now so more posts tomorrow :-)
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