Well, after back to back rackless weeks - I got the pressure of putting up a third in a row off my back right off the bat. Lost the lag pretty convincingly (I'm pretty sure you need to get the ball to come back more than half the table length to win a lag usually, right? Heh). I had a 4-3 race tonight against a guy that was definitely and by his own straight up admission a banger. He wasn't too bad, and actually was a nice bank player - but he always hit it hard. No real speed control.
After winning the lag he proceeded to take down a tight first game on me. Clustered up table, and I couldn't break things out. Gave him ball in hand with a single ball plus the eight to go when I went for a side-draw safety in an effort to bring the cueball off the rail and behind the eight. Instead I hit a little too much draw and it caught felt and snuck into the pocket. The second game was another cluster. His breaks were straight on the nose and just simple firm hits. He was blaming my racks, but they were tight as hell. He just didn't seem to get how to put his body into his breaks, all arm. I would have pulled out the second one but I followed the eight in - too much speed on the hit, I should have hit it with a low pop and instead I followed through it and gave it enough speed that it carried through the hit.
After that, though - I just rolled. The first two games were tight because he was nailing his bank shots, and some pretty nice ones at that, but that didn't keep up. Once he stopped hitting his banks he wasn't tough pickings and I swept out the next four games in a row to take down the set. And once I got the break I opened the table up wide with solid breaks, and he couldn't hang on with those tight clusters at one end of the table. Lot of pretty easy rolls from that point.
Overall disappointing night though. The team followed up last week's 85-4 win by squeaking this one out 39-38. We won, but first place won their match with 47 points and moved to 32 ahead for the session. We still have the next two weeks against bottom-feeder teams and the final week against a middle-pack team, so we've got a shot... but the window is closing on us. Our strongest player lost, and our second strongest player got swept. Though with me moving out to the highest rating and our number three guy (also our captain) now picking up his third rackless in the first nine weeks of the session those designations are becoming questionable. We need those guys to start picking it up so that we can pull this out.
All the personal victories in the world are hollow if the team isn't getting it done. I've got a monster disc golf tournament next weekend too, so I'm really going to need to buckle down and avoid getting distracted. Luckily I quit my summer job with the school year starting in a mere three-plus weeks so I've got some personal time before I need to start lesson planning for my ninth graders.
Time for a week of games!