“What does tennis have to do with the protagonist of Sex & the City?”
Absolutely nothing (I think) but my best friend did bring up that as the first person to lay her eyes on my blog, she started reading it like Sarah Jessica Parker was narrating one of the most iconic TV series to ever exist. And for me, that’s a win and deserving of a public shoutout.
That being said I have been thinking to do weekly recaps of my practices/ matches/anything else happening on court. Hence the title 14/26 – week 14 of 2026 so I actually can keep track of those posts. Probably a good way go over all the highs and the lows and the lessons learned. In a way I have done it since my first lesson in December 2024 – google sheets is the MVP. However, this here is a bit more freeform version of the very dry collection of my excel notes.
Monday – 1 hour – “serve” practice
Basket? Full of balls. Me? Only person there. AirPods? In and Spotify is humming in the background. I think these might be one of my favorite type of practices. Just grooving to the music and hitting balls is probably one of the nicest feelings I can experience regularly these days. I like the fact how it gives me an option to ‘trial and error’ different shots and techniques by myself and it’s surprising how much I have been able to figure out on my own since I started doing those solo sessions last fall. Initially I started doing them to fix my serve which majority of 2025 was as unpredictable as current US foreign politics and frankly, I got kinda tired of guessing what was going to happen every time after I tossed the ball in the air. Hence getting on the court and hitting 150+ serves in each of those practices to see if it was going to improve (fun fact: it did).
This time I actually started out with backhand slices because if there’s one shot that doesn’t exist in my repertoire it has to be BH slice. I have tried and failed enough times that at some point I just postponed learning it to a later date. Well, the time is now apparently. There’s about 1000 things to think about: weight transfer, prep height, contact point, swing path, racket angle during contact, racket angle after contact and spreading your arms like a bald eagle. This Monday it took a good 50 balls to hit about 3 that could qualify as a BH slice but I will take that over 0. I either get it to go long enough or I get it turn like slice is supposed to but those two are currently very much mutually exclusive. The day it starts to float across the court as tennis gods intended, it will be great day. It would be equally great if I wouldn’t feel like I’m throwing my elbow and shoulder out of their respective sockets each time. My physio stays employed.
Next up: actual serves. The first 15-20 always get put in a figurative ‘this is a warm up’ box so I wouldn’t immediately freak out that my toss is taking a world tour or my contact point is once again too low. However, with enough practice, the consistency has started to come a fraction quicker every time and some serves are really starting to resemble an actual serve. I remain #1 flat serve defender with slice coming in close #2 on days where I remember that the whole premise is to brush the ball on its side for it to work. Topspin serves can burn in hell for all I care. In my head, upwards brush is equivalent to quantum physics and I don’t know quantum physics. At some point I did put down some cones so that I would knowingly hit my serve wide. Considering it was one of the very first times I have done intentional target practice, it was not too bad. I guess it’s time to ramp it up since now that overall picture has gotten a bit better, I can start focusing more on the placement of my serve rather than praying that it would land in the service box in the first place.
Soundtrack of the practice: Renee Rap – Bite Me tour setlist
Wednesday – 1 hour – coached practice (1v1)
Mixed signals final boss. I think that’s the best way to conclude any practice session with a trainer because nothing gets me in a way more excited and brings me down at the same time then 60 min of tennis drills and working on technique. All of my coaches, past and present, should get some sort of gold star for dealing with me during those hours.
Since there’s a tournament (potentially 2) coming up in the next weeks and there’s a lot of work to do while playing points specifically, the focus was more on that rather than learning anything new. Did some drills to recognize good moments to hit ball down the line (hit, not send it to another orbit) and keep hitting the ball consistently with a smart placement rather than swatting the racket around like I’m trying to kill a fly and win a point 0.4 seconds into the rally. Success rate: moderate. Down the line shots were actually decent while whatever net clearance one should have during cross-court shots was enjoying its siesta. Note to self: net clearance is usually the result of brushing the ball upwards rather than hitting it flat and downwards (duh). Main positive outtake: being a second seed in the main draw in a packed tournament means that I can still have a few practices before it’s showtime.
Pre-practice soundtrack: 2016 EDM (DJs 
popular singers)
Friday – 1 hour – “serve” practice
Another day another slay. Actually was not so slay this time. In the past few weeks, my body has felt like it’s been hit by a truck so Friday was more about surviving.
Since it got pointed out on Wednesday that I don’t have enough net clearance, I chose to hit approx 20-30 balls with the sole focus of brushing it upwards. I don’t know if that problem applies only to me or someone else as well but hitting such balls when there’s no one throwing or hitting them towards me is so weird and half of my shots look like I have never held a racket in my life. Luckily still got some decent shots out of it. BH slices were up next and hurray, the slice started to look like slice exponentially quicker than on Monday. It still qualifies as #1 shoulder and elbow killer for me so either my new strings need to loose some tension or I’m doing something fundamentally wrong. Next week’s physio cannot come fast enough.
For the serves, I decided to first focus on placement, hitting as close to the T as possible while moving up and down the baseline. It was something similar to what I had to do in Wednesday’s practice because apparently “it’s better to know how to play 10 songs on piano in a decent way rather than 1 song very well” (not my words but my coach’s). The more towards the end of the court I moved, the harder it got and at some points it took a few good tries but overall I was impressed how okay it was. After moving on from this exercise I tried serving wide (both flat and slice) and god forbid girl hits every spot on the court but the sideline. Fml. Shortly put, everything from that point onwards was rather mediocre. Tried to get more hip rotation and/or whip of the arm for acceleration but then the whole timing/contact point fell off a bit so it was not as smooth sailing as I hoped.
And then I suddenly remembered that I have 1.5h interclub practice on Saturday. Everyone say ‘sike‘ right now. I will become one with my bed on Sunday to survive everything that’s scheduled for upcoming weeks.
Soundtrack of the practice: RAYE’s new album ‘THIS MUSIC MAY CONTAIN HOPE.’
Saturday – 2 hours – interclub team practice (singles & doubles)
An evening that was off to a good start as I decided that spraying hairspray straight into my eye before leaving to practice was a reasonable thing to do. Stupidity comes in all shapes and sizes. Despite being fully convinced I will lose all vision, I was relatively fine after 45min. First up we had doubles. Mind you, I have approximately 5 hours worth of doubles experience in me so these are somewhat uncharted waters for me. All things considered it went quite well. My serve showed up and showed out. With the returns and overall rallying the aim was to play good topspin shots rather than power through everything. Most surprising occurrence? I made a few points at the net. Absolutely unbelievable scenes!! After 30min I switched to play singles, which was not too bad either. Some great ball placement and saves that I didn’t even think were possible. Then another 30min sesh doubles and finished the evening with another round of singles. To be fair, after 2 hours of nonstop playing, I was pretty sure I was going to see the pearly gates and the sweat dripping off me could have filled a bucket but lots of good observations made and points played. It was great to have this just shortly before the tournament starts next week to get in the rhythm of playing points and smoothing out the sharp edges that keep popping out here and there.
Pre-practice soundtrack: Shawn Mendes – Shawn Mendes (Deluxe) & Need You Now by Lady A (timeless classic)
~ wishing you decent 2nd serves, S.