'WINNING WITH NOTHING SPECIAL'

I am a firm believer in letting an opponent beat themselves and I have many theories on how to do it though one has always been in the fore front of my mind while playing. JUST GET IT BACK.
When I turned age 40 I went on somewhat of a personal quest to bury some old demons and try to win back some self pride. I had some personal issues that took time to recover from and I lost some matches to players who I once beat easily so for me it was all about making up for lost time as well as lost matches.
I played a regional club vs club competition and was up against a young kid who owned a State ranking for his 16's age bracket and I embraced the challenge as you do as a coach of any sport. There were many of my students watching so it was a chance to show them that you actually knew what you were talking about.
I had a theory of how to beat this kid though it wasn't going to be easy as he got most balls back but I knew that he didn't like certain situations. All I had to do was put him in those situations, easy in theory, tough to implement.
My biggest thing was to give him 'nothing' shots, balls with height and spin on them that had him scraping it off the back fence if he let it take it's full bounce or make him time it perfectly on the rise, that's a tough thing to do at his age. The other idea was to slice the ball short to his two handed backhand from my backhand side and make him bend low to hit his favourite shot or force him into the net where he was most uncomfortable.
To put it bluntly, I was only interested in making him play a type of game that threw his rhythm out rather than trying to actually beat him. I felt that I could in fact make him lose without me winning, if that makes any sense. Trying to both out think and out last a young kid when you are 40 years old isn't easy though it's a challenge and I believe that we all love a challenge as we age in sport, it keeps our minds and body active.
I don't remember hitting anymore than one double handed backhand all day except on a couple of passing shots when he came in. Apart from that I simply just worked a one handed slice back into play which conserved energy and also gave him no height to work with. Personally I hate sliced backhands to my backhand side, always have done, it's like trying to hit a ball out of a bunker with a sand wedge, tough to get under perfectly.
Looking back on this particular match I believe that through inexperience the kid played my backhand too much because he considered it my weaker side. In the end though it wore him down because my slice gave him a ball that either skidded through or dropped short. Either way it was not how he liked the ball to be hit to him.
Personally I prefer a bit of height so playing someone's forehand generally will allow a more comfortable ball to play and let's face it there aren't too many guys like Fabrice Santoro who slice their forehand.
I ended up winning this particular match in a third set super tie breaker and I basically won with nothing special, just a game plan which made the opposition hit a lot of balls out of their comfort zone. I don't recall the young fellow winning one point at the net and I brought him in at least a dozen times. I always made him hit a volley rather than go for an outright winner which I believed was risky against someone like that. I would have considered it a waste to miss a pass into the net or long against someone who hated the idea of volleying.
Quite often when he hit to my backhand I would simply send it back short, low and wide to his backhand rather than play it back deep all the time. I found that tactic to be invaluable to get a cheap point. Against a baseline 'robot' why keep feeding their diet with energy when you can sap them with other options that leave them confused and tired ?
I felt however that I just won that match in the nick of time as on my victory 'hop' I cramped up ! I limped all the way to the net to shake his hand. Playing baseline exponents is hard work but you can think your way through their play by simply putting yourself in their shoes in your thought process. Sometimes it also helps to be a 'dinosaur' of the sport as it can get you out of many situations.
It's like the 10,000 hours of training that many coaches talk about. If you have had that and more in your time as a player, coach or both then playing kids who have had way less court time will often hold you in good stead when you are up against them in tournaments. The sheer weight of numbers are on your side when it comes to match play situations and that's where matches are won, from memory and from practice situations that you can draw from.
Winning with nothing special is a form of thinking rather than going out there with big shots and an ego to match that generally will get you into trouble. 
A player with a 'nothing' game will quite often beat a player who looks magnificent in say the warm up yet cannot replicate that sort of smoothness into point play situations. Nothing game players are smart tennis players because they are thinkers and the thinkers of tennis are the most dangerous.
One of the funniest things that I ever heard after that particular match that I played was when a local 'guru' came out with 'Thommo won by HACKING' ! That was relayed back to me by an astute pupil who watched my match and heard the statement being relayed to another group of kids.
Apparently the way I played was called 'hacking' but I didn't mind that at all as my team won by a super tie breaker that day and no matter what you get called in tennis, if you win, well, you own 'bragging rights'.