Shenzhen Match Play Experience Tour Oct 2011
Benny Lin
Founder & Academy Director
Shenzhen Match Play Experience Tour Oct 2011
Posted at : October 02, 2011
Our first match play experience tour to Shenzhen was held successfully. Although we experienced some rain but the weather has been kind to us. Our team arrived at East Lake Yuetong Tennis Center in Shenzhen around 9:30 am.
On the first day our team got some tastes of a very high caliber players such as Zhao Le who is one of the top 3 players in all China for Under 12 age group. She played a match against Venia and although Venia lost marginally but she did her best and learned invaluable lessons.
Throughout the day the kids played against different level of players in both singles and doubles, mostly singles. Some matches were very close and others were one sided but overall everyone had at least 1 good match and played at least 2 singles matches.
After our matches finished around 5 pm, I gave the kids two presentations about mental toughness and I also showed the kids a tennis video about the importance of forehand which they enjoyed a lot.
On the second day, due to inclement weather we had to cut short our match play. We focused mostly on doubles but a few players also played singles. The downside of our last day's arrangement was the lack of players who showed up from the Shenzhen side which could be due to the long public holiday in China.
Nevertheless, I thought the kids gained a great deal of experience. We watched some good matches and a few of our players played outside of their comfort zone and was able to take their game to the next level. This match tour experience was definitely great for our players to learn how to play higher level of tennis and most importantly this experience provided our players a platform to learn how to win!
Before we left for home I reminded the kids to remember all their matches from this tour because only by remembering and knowing what they need to work on or improve they can be a better tennis player. I told the kids that everytime they play a match is like going for treasure hunting. In every match they will learn new things or improve certain areas sometime subconciously. When we go treasure hunting and find gold and silver to be brought home we have to remember where we put or store our treasure. If we brought home treasure but we don't remember where we store it, we are not getting any richer! What's the point of going to treasure hunt if we don't put it safely in our safety box? It's the same logic for each match that we played. When we finish every single match I assure you that we have learned something - whether we win or lose. Most importantly we have to remember what we had done in that match (our performance) and must be able to observe or reflect to our match because if you know what happened in your match you would be able to identify areas that needed improvement.
A very famous person once said, "If you lose, don't lose the lesson."
I have posted pictures on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hong-Kong-International-Tennis-Academy-HKITA/134959733197513