…spoiler alert: it wasn’t a success!
It had been a while since I was itching to participate in an ITF Masters Tour event. From friends’ personal experience and other various sources online (including our very own Tennisnerd Jonas) I had heard only good feedback about it. The international flair of the environment, the very pro-like look and feel of the brand and organisation and, not least, the high level of the game, made it all very appealing to me. I am myself an expat, I myself work in the field of branding and communication and, as for my tennis, well it’s getting better and was curious to test it at that level.
For those of you who don’t know, the Masters Tour is the old Senior Tour and it is the ITF’s official competition dedicated to mature players and one can participate only if they are over 35 years of age. Each category is then divided in brackets of five years of age difference (Men/Women 30, 35, 40 and so on). Tournaments have their own categories, from 100, the lowest, to 700, the highest. To participate in any of these tournaments is sufficient to sign up online and one doesn’t have to be member of the given tennis federation where the tournament is held (to give you an example, when I go back home to Italy, I cannot enter any of the local tournaments because I am not member of the Italian Tennis Federation).
My experience
Anyways, enough with explanations and back to my direct experience.
I sign up for an MT200, therefore not exactly the lowest level but almost, played on the very peculiarly German carpet surface. That’s a moquette, just like the one that many of our beloved grandmothers in the 80’s had in their bedrooms (and for you in the UK, the very same one you still have all over your flats ?). Even though I haven’t yet exactly understood how these carpets play, they are somewhat fast but very often the ball bounce is almost as high as clay, and even though I don’t play regularly on this kind of surface, I decide to go for it. I am sure I will enjoy the experience. Not to mention that, despite Germany being a country with many of these ITF Masters Tour tournaments even in winter, it’s rather difficult to find one that is only 50 minutes drive away from home.
It is common knowledge that the lower the age category the higher is the level of tennis, therefore I decide for something unusual and invest my 85 Euros (yes, you read correctly, eighty-five Euros) for the Men 40 category.
And if you are wondering, 85 Euros is almost twice as much as any regular indoor tournament I normally play organised by local tennis clubs and sanctioned by the German Tennis Federation. But I am sure it will be worth the price. Or will it?
The Draw
Very excited, almost a week before the commencement of the tournament I receive an email with the draw: two groups of three players, I am the only non-German. Uh. I go check my opponents’ rankings: 6 and 5.5. As most often than not, Germans take everything very seriously. I don’t stand a chance. Similar situation in the other group.
I have a look around the other draws, Men’s and Women’s: another Italian, one Brit, one Dutchman, but that’s pretty much it. So much for the international vibe.
The organisation is very friendly and they accommodate my requests in relation to the scheduling of my two matches. I will have a bit of time to show up early, have a look around, have a nice warmup and enjoy the atmosphere and perhaps have a chat with some fellow foreigner.
At my arrival though, again, I am slightly disappointed. I show up at the registration desk, sign up, pay my juicy fee of 85 Euros and…that’s pretty much it. I am not sure what I was expecting but my feeling is that something was missing or very understated, sort of. I have taken part in a couple of local tournaments where I was offered a goody bag (nothing special, but like a bottle of water, a muesli bar, a packet of tissues and some Haribo – I live right where they make them!), or where fruits (bananas, apples, strawberries) and nuts were always available for free and at times even thermos with tea and coffee (for those brave enough to stomach German coffee ?), or again where I was pointed to the stringing service should I need it and even offered a court for a slightly longer pre match warm up. Small things, but nice small things that can make the overall experience much nicer than just go, play, go home.
In the hall there were five courts, but one could watch only what was happening on court 1, as there was no access for viewers to the other courts. Pity. The lounge was very small and very quiet. I ask for a place to do some warm up but there isn’t. For a second I thought of warming up in the car park, but immediately suppressed the thought when I remembered that the thermometer of my car was suggesting 2.5 degrees celsius. Thus, a little saddened, I opted to instead head for the locker room, hopeful that maybe there I would have found some space for a bit of stretching. Well…not really! The locker room was jam-packed and not even that warm. I could do some stretching, yes, but only standing and definitely there wasn’t room for a little sprint or a couple of jumps. Sgrunt!!
When it was time for me to step up on court, I soon realised that warming up in the car park would have been the best idea to get me prepared to the temperature conditions awaiting in the hall. I am not joking when I say that it was 10 degrees celsius max! It was the first time that I saw my opponent dressing up after the initial 10 minute warm up, instead of dressing down! Thankfully, I was prepared and quickly jumped into my ski gear.
Still though, getting warm and getting into the rhythm of play during match time was basically impossible, especially on such a fast surface where the points are played in three, four shots tops and most of the time it’s really just serve plus one. Changeovers were no use to gather my thoughts and come up with strategies to contain a better opponent because it was really freezing and we both decided that it was better to shorten them to a quick sip of water and wipe with the towel. So it went the first match, rather quickly and not very pleasantly; but as I was scheduled to play the second one at 3pm, I was sure the situation, both at game and climate level, would have improved.
Only it didn’t.
They said the heating started showing problems on the very same day and, because of that, they had not been able to start heating up the hall before noon (that’s when I started my first match). However, in all fairness, the temperature at 3pm wasn’t much different from three hours earlier.
On the contrary, my tennis had improved and I was definitely able to offer more resistance to yet another better opponent. As far as tennis is concerned, what I took away from playing a 6 and 5.5, is that: one, there are no interlocutory shots. A short, loopy ball means you’re going to lose the point the stroke immediately after or the one after next, if you’re lucky; two, maximise your effort. I threw away ten break points in two different games that would have given me a three game lead in the second set. You cannot afford that. How many break points was I able to save? A couple, maybe three, not more than that. And that’s a huge difference: when they see a chance, they go for it and most times they grab it. Aspects of the game to work on, especially mentally and in terms of decision-making.
Conclusion
To conclude, even though I lost both matches, I learned a lot and was sort of happy with the fight I put up in the second match (I know your opponents’ compliments at the end of the match are sort of ritual, but I’d like to think that in my case were genuine). It’s tough to adjust to a surface one seldomly plays on and on top of that with players of a level one is not used to encountering. However, the way I see it, that’s the (perhaps hard) way to improve (if one takes the lesson the right way).
All in all though, the general experience was a little underwhelming. The facilities and the conditions we had to play in were very poor, possibly the worst I have ever encountered and, to make the situation even worse, in the tournament for which I had to pay the highest entry fees ever. There was no indoor space to warm up (and in December in Germany that should not be an accessory condition) and the welcoming was, to say the least, lukewarm (which is still 100 degrees warmer than the tennis hall).
Some told me it can happen at the level of Masters Tour 100 and 200 and that usually, the higher one goes the better the experience. We will see. I would definitely like to give it a go in the summer, mostly to play on clay, and perhaps I will look for something higher than a 200. But if you ask me, I am not going to repeat this very particular experience.
Sebastiano Sali
