GDTTL

A day at a big TT competition for those new to TT competitions,. !!!

The day started well,... I woke when it was still dark,.. then I opened my eyes,... it was the big day,.. the " Lambeth Open " ( my first big TT competition ).

I made sure I had breakfast ( beaniez on toast ) as I was gonna need a lot of energy to stay to my best for the whole day. I had packed up all stuff in the car the night before and was feeling good and ready for the journey.  Arriving at what I thought was the location, I found that another car was driving round trying to find the entrance too. we were both in the wrong location, the place was opposite, thank goodness for mobile phones, I rang to find real location.

Parked up near to the hall and reported to the "Tournament Referee" and was told “your not on the list“,.. but they would try and get me in at midday,.. so only 4 hours to wait,!!! I watched a few matches, got a cuppa, watched a few other matches and it was then high noon,.. I was ready, got the ok from Referee that I was in both the "Banded" and normal open competition,..

I  wasn’t really nervous, but had a little bit that was good for my "Attack" mode for the game,.. I had noticed the better the player, the steadier their game play, ( letting the weaker players make the mistakes ),.. I was drawn to play the no4 seed in Great Britain along with 2 others in a 4 group,... still not worried ( I should have been ),..

As the bottom ranked player of the day, I was on a win, win position, the pressure was on them to beat me,.  all I had to do was to try my best and see what happened,..

I played Xtra safe so I didn’t get 11-0 thrashing and was surprised to see I was 6-6 in my first game, then the other player upped their game and I got a good lesson how to lose 11-8 11-8 11-6,. not too bad for my first game all I had wanted was to try my best and try and concentrate on every point, I did make a few bad serves and hit the net losing the point to myself ( how could I win any points if I didn’t even get a serve over !!! ) It was the same for the next match of the group for me, until the 4 seed game,.. I was expecting the worse and knew I had to try a few risky shots, it worked and I managed to get 9 points in the 1st game, so I was happy.

I was the whipping boy of the group but did have some good rallies, with the main lesson being "don’t serve long" it just gets a smash back!!!

It was the end of the first round I headed for my car to have some liquids, chocolate and energy food intake deserving a peanut butter sandwich for the main "open singles".

On the way in, I bumped into a superstar and said " hailooo Darius " ( it was Darius knight ), I got a "Hiya, how are you" back to my surprise, I let him shake my hand and replied " good luck, I'll see you in the final", which made him laugh,... ( yes I have washed my hands since, wow a super TT star,.. )

I did some umpiring too, ( which I enjoy because you get the best seat in the house to watch a match), the best match was easily the junior semi-finals, the large crowd were supporting their local player who was losing 2-0 and made a great comeback to level off at 2-2, the rallies were unbelievable with both players attacking and counterattacking away from the table, the little chap ( with the biggest heart ) won the day which pleased the crowd!!!

It was the end of my day, so headed home and treated myself to a curry for managing to play ok ( I normally play better) and at least I never got a 11-0 thrashing and did manage to take a British league player to the 5th game, which I just lost. I was happy and the day was a very good experience and recommend it to any TT player that wants to try and stretch themselves,.. !!!

Andybod,… (Hopehill) :o)