Hey Deep, Happy new year! This is great and will for sure be a good match experience for you to help in the future. I agree with the errors that you spotted yourself, in particular the recovery after your serve, which I feel will really help a lot if you can improve this area. The forehand counter shot I feel as you said it’s a bad habit which has crept in, to improve this some irregular training and forcing yourself to counter even a short compact shot rather than block.
To be fair Deep I think you’ve done a good job of analysing the key points and the positives too. A lot of the time with the backhand switch you maybe forced it slightly as you mention instead of just staying solid in the rally. I feel this is the biggest area where you can work on and improve. Just being very solid, moving into position well, no fancy shots but being hard to beat and not giving away cheap points. Of course this is the goal for everyone but for your style I feel this will have a big impact and also give you more confidence going forward.
Also definitely being more positive on your return of serve will help you improve a lot, I saw a few times in both games where perhaps you were a bit passive or too careful on the return of serve, so training stepping in quickly and being decisive and focusing on playing a positive shot, even if that’s a push or touch, make it a deep push or a quality touch.
So I think the return of serve are and the first couple of shots being solid and playing lots of irregular block drills where you don’t know where the ball is going, my favourite which I use a lot myself and is simple but amazing. Is just you serve, the opponent pushes long anywhere and then you topspin into the backhand block and they can block you anywhere. This is great for being solid at the start of the rally but also keeping the pressure up and being consistent in a random type rally.
Hope this helps and let us know if you have any other questions on these matches, keep up the good work Deep, some encouraging stuff here to take forward from these matches!
Cheers, Tom
