Purple

Yes, I have been moved up to the purple division. I am excited about this division, but I am eager to actually get started. We just completed week three, yes I know that was fast, but I will explain.

So many new players have joined the league, the directors did not want to turn anyone away. I like this since I prefer more players anyway. I do not like the gaps between season as it is, so a longer season is okay with me.

Week Zero was a flex week and my opponent was not available to play. That will be completed in the near future.
Week One was cancelled. My opponent contacted me to let me know he could not make it.
Week Two was cancelled. Again, my opponent was not able to play.
Week Three, Four, and Five I am playing people from my last division. Since there were so many new people more people with good records moved up. I went 3-0 vs these competitors for a combined score of 118-26, so I am not busting at the seems to play them, but I am going to be comfortable.

In addition, since I always look at the numbers, my week zero through two opponents are a combined 1-3... so again not to read too much into it... I may be off to a good start. The major assumption is that I start - soon!

To purple I also bring a new serve. It is not new to racquetball by any means, but it is new to my playing style. I have added a pretty effective lob serve to my array of shots to mix things up at the service line. As I have communicated in previous posts, my money maker is a low fast drive serve to their backhand. I make it more difficult by shifting over to the extreme left side of the court, but not too far to make it an illegal serve. This does many good things for my overall service effectiveness, but I benefit mostly from the weak return serve offered by opponents.

To review, I do not serve the ball to the other side of the court until I have them at the breaking point. Here is my outlook for this approach. If I am constantly busting you with drive serve after drive serve to your backhand, rarely if not ever giving you anything else to hit, then people end up cheating, which means they start to move over to cut that option off. Since I am so far over already, opponents really need to cheat to negate my aggressive stance. Once more, for most of the match even if they are blatantly moving over, I will maintain serve. Luckily for me, the shot is still pretty hard to hit or the return shot is so weak or calculated I end up getting more points. So, if I get and hold a lead pushing the score to specific break points, opponents will get very aggressive and basically move to cut the serve off altogether. That is when I simply switch sides with an obvious weaker serve, but they are so far out of position it does not really matter how hard I hit it... it will go without return. The best part is after getting burned on a weak shot I completely get them out of their cheat and then I go back to the grind all over again. In practice matches, as well as prior league play, it has worked almost like clock work. There are a few players that can return this shot very well, however, they do not have much of an angle to hit their shot. The return must be perfect, so I can live with that shot percentage!!

As I stated, for purple I have added the lob serve and this will have immediate impact. Number one and the most important, I do not have to exert as much energy in volley and volley of drive serves. It takes a good amount of energy to hit those drive serves and I am thankful we only play to 15 twice! Purple level players will undoubtedly push me to play harder and for longer periods of time, so energy conservation is not important. Another big benefit in store for me is the change in speed. After a few low hard shots, it does take an adjustment to be patient and wait for the lob shot to develop. It is a high arching shot that just barely misses the ceiling and hugs the wall without hitting it directly to the corner. The effective return shot is to wait for it to bounce off the back wall and take your best low shot possible. In the purple division, players just do not have this shot in their array at a high percentage. This includes me as well! The hardest serve for me is a high slow lob serve to my backhand. I put up a defensive shot every time, which is exactly what the opponent wants. The lob serve is also called the error maker. More self made errors come off trying to hit a great shot instead of a high percentage or defensive shot.

I can't wait to see how it plays out this season. I'll keep my 1 and a half loyal readers posted!! (P.S. My oldest child reads this, so her plus me is 1 and a half.)