I’d played against former World number 1 Vladimir Samsonov once before, in 2005 at the World Singles Cup, but a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. I did not expect to be playing him again in the last 32 of the Olympic Games after having had my best win ever the day before!

Vladi has basically been ranked in the top 10 in the world for the past 15 years or so. He is tall and has great control in his game. I followed the same procedure as I had done in my previous two matches and performed some video analysis with team-mate Robert Frank and coach Jens Lang. Our thoughts were that:

- His strength is to play fast, attacking flicks and pushes which force the opponent to play a weak opening attack. He has amazing touch on his first bloc/counterattack and places the ball in an awkward position before playing a strong counterattack on the next shot.
- He is strong in the backhand to backhand diagonal.
- He is susceptible in the forehand to forehand diagonal.
- He doesn’t seem to attack well against pushes and flicks that go half-long OR fast and deep to the middle and pocket (cross-over between forehand and backhand).
- His serve has more spin than it appears.
- My backhand topspin down the line to his forehand would be crucial.

I was having the time of my life at the Olympics. I was so unusually relaxed and happy before my match against both Monteiro in the 2nd round and against Vladi in the round of 32. Normally I would be irritable and generally unhappy with everything around me – a highly strung mess.

Feeling unusually relaxed

I felt pretty comfortable right from the start of the match. I was surprised by just how good and deceptive his pushes and flicks are. On videos it looks as though he is just going long and waiting to block or counterattack. But his shots are incredibly varied – some slower and short, some much faster, some bouncing up at me and others staying low. In addition he mixes between putting topspin kick (not just a little – he gives the ball a high trajectory which means that it really hops up at you) or low, sliding backspin (sort of like a backspin push however the speed and straight trajectory means the ball is ‘heavy’ to lift). I made a few too many mistakes especially off the long sliding backspin returns to my middle. The most effective use of his returns is that I am unable to go really hard off that first ball and must play with more margin to maintain consistency. That fits in perfectly with his strength of placing his first block well and then counterattacking. That is how you build a successful tactical game – not just several good individual shots but rather strings of shots that fit well and complement each other.

My general strategy was to be aggressive and try to play fast attacking topspins off the bounce. I did not think I would be able to outrally Vladi as he is too consistent and would move me out of position too easily. I had to take risks and go for fast topspins out wide to his backhand, into his middle or out wide to his forehand. I’ve done a lot of work over the past couple of months especially to practice changing position of my backhand topspin – ie being able to change between going crosscourt and down the line easily. It really paid off.

I was having great success with my tomahawk serve. It is wrong to say that I am still surprised by how much trouble these top players have against it as it has worked well each time. I kept it mainly to sidespin/topspin and to the middle and forehand. That gives me good angles to work with. If I serve well and keep the serve low, fast and spinny it restricts the receivers ability to play fast flicks as he must ‘lift’ the ball a little on his flick which adds to the risk that he will underestimate the spin and flick too long. I can mostly expect faster flicks to my forehand (the longer crosscourt distance allows for faster flicks) or slower flicks to my middle/backhand (the short distance means he can’t flick as aggressively). It also protects my middle as he can’t get the ball angling into my middle from the backhand, which would require more movement and probably a weaker opening topspin from me. I tried to play fast and aggressively off my first attack and constantly change the position of it so he wouldn’t start expecting it.

As I thought I had to be careful of playing slow, spinny topspin. He has such a talented first touch on the ball that if I gave him a slow first attack, he would place it out wide and then topspin strongly off the next shot.

His serves were spinnier and more difficult than I had hoped. I won a lot of points using my backhand sidespin flick, however I also made a lot of mistakes directly on the receive. He is good at mixing between serving short to the forehand and long to the backhand which can make using the backhand flick difficult. So I had to make sure I mixed up my returns and used my forehand returns as well.

I’ve found that someone has uploaded some highlights of the match to youtube. I’ve talked about some of those points below: Henzell vs Samsonov (external youtube link)

I got back to 10-10 in the first set after being down 7-10, however I took the set 12-10. I fought back to take the next set 11-8 to level at 1 set all. At 1:08 in the video is a point I would not have been able to play before my time at the Werner Schlager Academy. The footwork sequence there to step in on my forehand is something new and has helped me a great deal. The next point after that is my favourite for the match!! Who says you can’t play 4 backhands in a row from the forehand side?! He again led 10-7 in the 3rd but I came back to win 13-11. I was playing very, very well by this stage – probably at about my maximum level. I had small leads in the 4th and 5th sets (such as 8-7 in both) but lost both 11-9. He looked like he was going to pull away at 7-6 up in the 6th set but I played an amazing point to level scores at 7-7 (3:11 on video). The crucial point at 10-8 where I used my tactics well to get him to play a weak attack from the pocket and then attack strongly to his wide forehand sent the match into a deciding 7th set.

No hard feelings with Vladi after the match

He won the first point but I took the next 4 to lead 4-1. It looked as if I would be in with a shot! A 5-3 lead was as close as I would get. He played several very strong points from then onwards and I made a couple of errors after that, when the pressure of having to play over my ability got to me.

It took some time before the excitement and adrenalin left my body after the match, but once it did the sadness of realising what I had been close to achieving began to take over. I woke up the net day feeling hungover – no joke.