Over the weekend, I participated in the Equinox Irvine Squash tournament.  It’s one of the two SoCal tournaments with the other being the San Diego Squash tournament.  In the previous tournament entry, I washed out of the consolation round relatively quickly. At that time, I lost the first match putting me into the consolation, won the second match in the consolation bracket but lost the third match in the bracket.  I had played horribly as well.  My serves were not effective.  None of my rails were effective.  None of the shots were effective as well.  And having come back from a vacation, I also was not relatively fit.

This time around, I won the first match, lost the second and lost the third.  My serves were better overall, my shot selection was much better than last year and my fitness was improved but still not as good as I need to be to.  In the two matches I lost, I made too many unforced errors giving the opponent free points.  In one match and over the span of two games which I lost 11-8, 11-9, I made about 7 unforced errors.  That’s 7 free points that I just gave to the opponent.  For that match each of the games were very close and very competitive and it came down to the player who makes the least errors in all 5 games.

In another match, I made at least two critical mental lapses resulting in giving the opponent 2 free points.  As the referee told me before I left, he honestly though that I lost the game as opposed to the opponent winning the game.  Although I didn’t make as many errors in the match, I started to get tired and winded.  My form started to break down during certain points of each game affecting both the placement and execution of the shot.

The biggest take away from this weekend might be that improving my fitness should lead to fewer mistakes due to fatigue.