Opening ceremony at the Hong Kong Football Club
Last night was the opening ceremonies of the World Masters Championships here in Hong Kong. 26 countries were represented with over 700 competitors and one “good luck” dragon. The ceremony was held at the Hong Kong Football Club which is quite a Club. I purposely got myself a bit lost so I could check it out a bit. There’s a 15,000 square foot indoor lawn bowling green, a full gym, a swimming pool, bowling alley, rugby fields, tennis and badminton courts along with 9 squash courts. It is a truly beautiful Club with endless photos on the walls displaying the many teams dating back to the Club’s founding in 1886. So you can see that I like this Club very much!
My first match is tomorrow against a good player from Russia. In the meantime I have been getting plenty of solo practice in at the local community sport center. Practicing solo is always a good idea, and I recommend that every player trying to improve get on the court at least once a week for a solo practice session.
A solo session before a match is different than a regular solo session in which you may be working specifically on mastering a shot or two or ingraining better movement. Before a match the focus is on calibration. It is not time to learn how to do something new, but rather to fine-tune your game. The three areas that need calibration are the stroke, your alignment to the ball, and your movement around the court. There are many ways to do this, but what I like to do is 1) straight volleys to groove the forearm movement through the ball, 2) straight and cross-court drop shots to groove alignment, and 3) ghosting around the court to get the feet engaged.
A 45 minute solo session focusing on these three things is just right for me. The other thing I like to do while awaiting my match is to watch a bit of top pro squash to get my head very much focused on creating good squash. I watched a great Nick Matthews-Ramy Ashour match this morning.
As I have said before, it is also good to get completely away from squash for a bit, so this morning we had dim sum in Old Hong Kong, this afternoon we wandered around Hong Kong just exploring, and tonight we will watch the fireworks and light show from the harbor. Then it is off to the Hong Kong Squash Center tomorrow for my first match.