Today I played two rounds at the 2009 Irish International. My first round was against Morten Spurr Madsen of Denmark. I had never played him before and I had never seen play either. My guess was that he was a very technical player and would want me to challenge him in the more techincal aspects of the game. However in the first set I played a simple game by moving him around as much as I could. This strategy worked since he ended up making alot of easy mistakes and let me run away with the set 21-11. In the second set the reverse happened, he was moving me around the court and waiting for my mistakes…also he was quite used to my game at this point and was just waiting at the backline for me to lift. I lost the second set 21-7. In the third and final set it was a battle. I decided to take the net as much as I could and attack with variation. This worked very well and took an 11-5 lead. At the switch I started making 3 or 4 easy mistakes and let him back in the game. At around 14-14 I pulled away with some good digging as well as playing a few unexpected shots to get some easy points. In the end I won 21-15.
My next round was against a giant of a Russian, Vladimir Ivanov. This match was unfortunatly a dissapointing one. Playing this tall Russian was quite tricky since he has a great attack but can also play very good flats. But in the first set I really had his number and was able to stop all of his stuff while also getting my smashes down. I took the first set 21-11. Then in the second I was up 8-5 when everything started to go downhill. He started playing very good net and then attacking the crap out of the shuttle. We were even at 17-17 when I made two easy mistakes at the net that pretty much cost the game, which I lost 21-17. In the third I could not get away from him always taking the net and could not make the necessary changes in order to win the match. I lost the third 21-11. Its a real shame since I felt great and had the game to beat him but could not change my tactics and ended up losing.
Hopefully lesson learned:)
