The Journey continues…
As I let most of my readers and friends know, last week I became the new Greek National Champion and Number 1 in Greece. In my last blog, I left you in 2007 where I was an 18 year old who thought he was invincible and working way too hard for someone my age. I am going to skip ahead a few years to the end of 2013.
This was my 3rd National Championships in Greece and nothing I have ever experienced in Australia, Belgium or the Netherlands where I have played quite a few tournaments and trained could have prepared me for this.
Like all the tournaments I have played in Greece, I started off the same way. I usually arrive in a Greek city that is cheap, easily accessed and all expenses including flight tickets and food costs having been paid off from coaching leading up to the tournament. Since I live in the squash centre, I don’t have any daily travel or accommodation expenses. I’m usually provided with a pretty nice room with an office where I am happy to run away from the noise of the squash courts or the gym located in the centre, but not this time. Due to the hard times in Greece, currently there are permanent residents in my room who are the owner’s family members. I was optimistic and was sure the owner, who happens to be a very good friend of mine, would help work something out. In the end, the best we could think of without inconveniencing any of my clients was the massage room. Yes you heard right, for just over a week leading up to the national championships I slept on a massage table in a room that was about the size of a toilet. But hey, it beats sleeping at train stations or airports which I am also accustomed to.
Each day I would have my 3 or 4 hours of coaching which was a lot better this time as they were only in 45 minutes sections which took off 15 minutes as per my usual. My training over the last couple of months was intense and awesome but the week before would be all up to me to do alone. Motivation wise, this was extremely bad for me but I knew I had to do something. I couldn't just rely on the hours I was coaching to keep my eye on the ball, so I organised a few hits with the better local players and I tried to do as much ghosting as I could..... I did it twice in 8 days like I said motivation was hard.
This may seem a little harsh, but it is the truth and well, I don't think anyone is going to change after hearing it...Greeks talk too much. In all of the tournaments I have ever played, the most someone will say to you is good luck and play well. Nice and simple, with no pressure, but not in Greece. From 2 weeks before the tournament I was receiving emails and Facebook messages asking how my training is progressing and whether I was ready to win the Championships. Apparently this was because my opponents were letting everyone know that they were training twice as hard each day. I can now safely say that before I went to Greece I doubted myself and had moments where I thought it would be so much easier to just miss my flight. Once I arrived in Greece, matters only got worse. Everyone came up to me personally and informed me of all the rumours, what is going on with the other players and that it was up to me to win it for everyone else. Yeah, no pressure at all Harry, none what so ever…
The closer I got to the tournament, the less I actually cared about it and at times I asked myself why I was actually here. This doesn't change who I am or how people think of me. So why should I care if I win or lose, as long as I play well. For the 3 matches up to the semi-finals, I tried to play well but it was more just for fun. I knew I was fitter then all my opponents, so I just made them run from corner to corner. It felt really great being the one making them run and not the other way around.
The semi-finals were now a little different. My opponent was Kosta Kargiotis and we have been really good friends for the last couple of years whilst playing together in local tournaments around Greece. Kostas’s game is good because he is physically a strong player who hits the ball hard and low 90% of the time when he is not slowly playing the ball down the side walls to create time. In our match, it was more me running from corner to corner, but this time I was lucky he made a few more errors then I did during the game. Never the less it was a great game for me to focus on what I need to do for the finals. I made sure I hit as few errors myself as possible prepared myself for Petros Tzamaloukas .
It is safe to say that then the pressure was really starting to build up in my head. The Saturday night dinner that was organised as a group function. I ate pretty much straight after I got out of the shower after my match which is never for me an ideal time to eat. I managed to have one plate of food and some great conversations about the matches played that day. I tried to get back to the unit early so that I could chill a little before the four other guys I was staying with came back. Eventually the guys came back and the juvenile antics of five guys actually helped take away the stresses I was concocting in my head, which I add was multiplied by a thousand since having everyone telling me that I should win.
I easily got next to no sleep that night and went to the bathroom about 12 times the next morning. As the day went on and it got closer and closer to the match, I somehow managed to calm myself down even with all the hype of being finals days. By some means I managed to walk on court and get the first game a little too quickly, it is not normally in my game to play hard and fast but it felt like everything was moving a million miles an hour. Even though this was happening, I managed to play some good error free squash. The second game was a little different as my opponent was a little warmer now and had a better idea of what he needed to do to get more points than I did. It was a close game but Petros edged ahead just a little towards the end of the game. The third and forth game are all a little bit of a blur to me now as it just seemed like one long game. I constantly told myself not to do anything stupid and just do what I do in training. This was now the only thing going through my head between each point. I thought to myself to apply what I practise, not the stupid crap I think will be cool and win points faster. Luckily I was able to stick to that track of thinking and won the fourth game 12-10 thus winning myself a National Championship.
As happy as Iam with winning the Championship, I am happier about that tournament being over. The pressure that I felt there probably won't be able to be replicated again and thank God for that because everything else now seems easy. Knowing I am capable of crossing the line first and being a winner only makes me now want to do it more. So back to training, back to the insane amount of court sprints, now looking for the light at the end of the tunnel which will be some sponsors that will allow me to join the Professional Squash Association (stupidly expensive for someone in my position) and to able to travel to those higher quality tournaments to really test my measure.
So onto the next step...the world.
