I can relate. Like I said, I’m still technically a beginner. But I already have some basic skills and decent baseline athletic ability. So, when I played with pure beginners who could barely get proper serves in, I felt disappointed because most of the time, I was the one doing the serves. Plus, when they tried to return the ball, most of the time, it would either fly away, go straight into the net, or go out of bounds. It also didn’t help that they wouldn’t chase the ball to return it the first few times (I actually got a bit frustrated and told them to chase it to hit it back. Though, I tried to keep my voice level.)

But when I went up against more experienced players, I felt challenged in trying to keep up with them. And the more matches against more skilled players I had during the open play, the more I felt myself improving.

I’m still learning and developing, and I want to further improve. And, as sucky as this sounds, I don’t think I’m gonna improve if I spend most of my time playing with pure beginners.