Congratulations to William Henzell for winning his record 7th Australian Singles title at the Australian Closed Championships last weekend in Croydon, Victoria. See his report from the event below as well as some info about the new Pryde 30 Degrees!

The Australian Closed Championships for 2009 finished last Sunday and what an interesting few days they turned out to be! It really capped off what has been an up and down last couple of months. I’ll rewind the clock a little:

Some players just have the ability to go out on court and wipe the opponent off the court, almost just by turning up. To take a local example – Simon Gerada was one of these especially at his peak a few years ago. I think I’ve always fallen into another category of player – if I’m not completely hungry, switched on and ready to battle it out then I’m not much good at winning table tennis matches.

As some of the people who have been reading my blog for a while would know, this has been a long running problem for me. I used to get around the problem by heaping as much pressure on myself as I possibly could. Doing so usually did help my results but was horrible to have to go through week in and week out and definitely contributed to cutting short my playing career in Europe. The work I did with a sport psychologist helped me change my whole approach to the sport but it was too little too late.

The long break from tournaments after the Olympic Games in August last year helped me get some hunger back and I’ve been really motivated to play and perform well for most of this season. I think I hit the motivational high point of my career at the Australian Open this year when I managed to lost just one set in the 27 singles matches I played at the event. More importantly I was very motivated for all 27 of the matches.

The last couple of months have been tough though. My work abilities and responsibilities have increased which has brought with it a fair deal of added stress. The daily routine of working all day, rushing straight to training and trying to get through a 2 hour session before making it home to collapse in a heap wears thin at times. I noticed a change at the Vic Open in early August. Even though I managed to win the tournament I could think of a million places I would rather be and wasn’t that fussed how the matches went. The Javor Cup was another step in the wrong direction and was more about surviving the day than playing good table tennis.

So I was understandably worried about the Australian Closed. I really, really wanted to win the singles event to make it 5 titles in a row but felt myself begin battling my own motivation to do so. I started the singles event well by beating Jesse Bricknell comfortably. I came up against George Tang in the next match. George played some very good table tennis by serving well and playing a fast risky game where he topspun everything fast off the bounce. Despite an 8-5 lead in the deciding 5^th set, I lost 11-9 and my first match against an Aussie for quite a few years.

After the match I felt extremely disappointed about the fact that I wasn’t disappointed that I’d lost the match. Here was one of the highlight tournaments for the year which I’d spent countless hours preparing for and I was indifferent about having lost. I didn’t feel like swearing or breaking my racket into half or biting my rubber into lots of little bits. In fact I didn’t even feel like breaking anything! I sat down, ate some of my prepared spaghetti bolognese and became increasingly angry about my apparent sanity in themidst of defeat. The loss had served me right. I had felt this coming on hadn’t done enough to stop it. I now had all the motivation in the world bottled up inside.

A stroke of good fortune came my way. George lost 11-9 in the fifth to David Powell in the next match and I needed to beat Dave 3-1 or better to be sure of finishing 1^st in the group. I beat Dave 3-0 and ensured that I held my seeding spot in the main draw.

John Tawadrous was my opponent in the quarter final. Johnny was somewhat of a prodigy. At 15 years of age he was one of the top seniors in the country which was a fine effort considering the stronger depth of players in 2001/02. I remember how he, at the World Championships in Japan in 2001, gave Primorac (20 in the world at the time) a serious run for his money before losing close in the 3^rd set. I wonder if Australia has seen many bigger talents than John was. After a few years out of the game, John returned last year. He’s been living in Melbourne for the past few months, training with the national squad.

I wonder how he does many of the things he does. His backhand flick is amazing – he hits the ball from under the level of the net with a seemingly flat trajectory with the ball skidding and staying low on the opponent’s side. Who knows how it makes it over the net at all. His backhand punch is a similar story. People say the same sort of things about some of my shots, especially my backhand topspin, but I am in wonder every time. So my tactics against John revolve around keeping him away from his strengths and punishing his slightly slower reaction time and shot efficiency. I got through 4-0.

Robert ‘Bob’ Frank was next up in the semi. He’d looked good against Powell in the quarter, winning 4-0. Bob and I have particularly unattractive matches. We both push each other’s serves short for the most part and get into short – short rallies. The ball goes quite high a lot of the time but we are hell bent on keeping the ball short regardless which makes it look funny at times. We practice a lot together which means we know where each other is going to hit the ball before they do.

I have a couple of advantages over Bob at the moment. I’m a bit quicker at picking off shots that go a bit high and I’m a bit better at hitting the white lines with my topspins which becomes especially important when two players are trying to play essentially the same game. I was playing really well by this stage of the tournament and despite 2 sets being decided by two points ran out with a 4-0 victory.

Simon Gerada had beaten number 2 seed Justin Han from NSW in an epic 7 set battle in the other semi. Simon and I were set for, yet another, big match showdown. We’ve been number 1 and 2 in every category from Under 11s to Seniors since our first match back in 1992 (I was 10 and he was 11). The upper hand in our ongoing battle has changed so many times over the years but I’ve had the best of the spoils in the last couple of years.

Simon played some very, very good table tennis in the final. I’d say the best anyone has played against me in Australia for as long as I remember. I was playing well and doing all the right things but had to keep on changing my strategy to keep him out. I was especially impressed by a few things:

• His forehand counter topspin has always been world class and I only remember him missing a couple for the match.

   

• Simon flicked much better than usual. Any time I pushed short but a bit high, he came in a played a strong flick and normally won the point.

   

• I struggled early in the match to get good spin on my tomahawk. When I tried, the ball went long and he was picking these ones off. This meant I had to go for less spin which meant he was able to play better returns and it was a bad spiral for me indeed. I didn’t get anywhere near the return I wanted for my servers.

   

Luckily my backhand flick was working well and I was able to get the upper hand in many points because of it. Simon has always been good at varying the length of his serve and adjusting it at different stages of the match depending on how the opponent is dealing with it at the time. Push short too many times and you can bet that he will through in a no-spin server where the second bounce is just off the end (which makes it hard to push short).

I won the first, he won the second. At 10-10 in the third set I knew the match was wide open. The standard in the first three sets was very high and both players were being ruthlessly effective in our separate games. The intensity died off a little in the fourth and fifth sets which I think suits me better as my passive game is probably a bit better than his. By this I mean that his big shots are better than mine, but I have more shots that can consistently win points. 11-8 in the fourth and 11-4 in the fifth.

As you can tell the tournament had its ups and downs for me. Luckily it all ended well and I got the result I wanted in the end. It served as an important reminder that I have to be very tough on myself and can never accept expecting less than 100% effort.

Arrives this coming week!

Pryde 30 Degrees is the softer-sponge version of Pryde. Slightly slower than regular Pryde but with more spin.

Also new; YASAKA Rubber Roller/Ball Holder. Solid aluminium.

Aussie Table Tennis; YASAKA’s Official Australian Agents.