JOOLA USA

Since my children started playing competitively, I hardly get the chance to participate in tournaments, specially the US Open or the Nationals.  As a parent and also a photographer at tournaments, it is definitely a hardship on my part to even play in one event.  I reluctantly accepted to play U3200 doubles with Alan Tanti, a 9 year old from Grace Lin's San Gabriel Valley TTC.

Playing doubles is fun and over the years I have had the chance to play doubles with a few aspiring juniors from SGVTTC; Alicia Wei, Jasmine Nguyen and now Alan Tanti.  What is different in this instance - Alan likes to back off from the table like myself which I feel might present a problem.  Over the last few weeks, we practiced a few times at the club and did very poorly even against lower rated doubles teams.  Finally, the week prior to the Nationals, I made Alan stay close to the table.  We finally made progress and was able to beat a few stronger teams at the club.

Alan and I had a first round bye, and had to play 5 rounds to get to the finals.  Through these 5 rounds, we played two teams that used 100% inverted, the other three teams had combinations of inverted and long pips rubber.  Our game plan was simple.  Against inverted, I would slow loop to open and Alan had to either counter or smash the ball back.  Playing the teams with combination rubber sheets, our tactic was simply to serve fast long underspin or no spin and attack the return.

We glided through 3 rounds without much difficulty.  Our first test came in the Semifinals where we faced Odo Wang and Ryan Allen, a local Las Vegas team.  Both used inverted in their forehand and long pips in their backhand.  We were up 2-1 in games and 6-2 in the 4th game.  Alan lost his groove after missing one easy smash.  We eventually lost 13-11 in the 4th.  We played poorly at the start of the 5th trailing 5-1 when we changed sides.  We caught up to 5-5 and was very close.  Then we found ourselves behind 8-10 in the 5th with me serving.  We got to deuce and fortunately scored the next two points to win 12-10.

Our first match started at 9:45 in the morning, it was almost 7:30 PM, the finals was to start in a few minutes.  I was familiar with our opponent.  Months before Jasmine Nguyen and myself played them in the finals of U3200 in Walnut Creek, where we lost 3-1.  Stanley and Claire are very experienced doubles team using long pips strategically to their advantage.  We went up 2-0 in games and was coasting 4-1 in the 3rd then we lost our focus and lost the 3rd game 11-5!  I felt we could pull this off and the serving combination for the 4th game favoured our team.  I would be serving to Claire who would use the long pips to return.  I constantly served fast, long side underspin balls and Alan would smash for winners.  While we won the 4th game 12-10, we were ahead by 4 points for most of the game until the end.

Playing doubles takes a lot of team work.  I was able to show my young partner never give up, dont show any frustrations and keep focused even when the situation does not look good.

Gerry