Game/Stroke Analysis - Mike Owens

Chris Edler's Analysis

   Mike Owens asked Jack Olmsted to look at the above video and comment on what Mike could do to improve his game.  Jack suggested that I take a look at it and make comments too.  What follows is a very detailed analysis that I did as I watched Mike in the above video, which I originally did as comments on the video's YouTube page, so my comments below are addressed to Mike.  Although my comments are specific to Mike's play in this game, I see all of the things I commented on below in the game play of pretty much everyone I watch play Pickleball...


   When you watch your video again, it's a big help to use some YouTube playback shortcuts:

1. The space bar toggles between play and pause.
2. The left arrow key jumps back 5 seconds in the video each time it's pressed (and the right arrow key jumps forward 5 seconds).
3. The period/right-angle-bracket key (./>) advances a paused video 1 frame each time it's pressed.
4. The comma/left-angle-bracket key (,/<) backs up a paused video 1 frame each time it's pressed.

   After watching the first point it's clear that you are very agile and are fast getting to the ball, so I watched the whole video to see if I could see something worth commenting on.

   What stands out is that your weight transfer during your forehands is inconsistent.  Although you transferred your weight from your back foot to your front foot (which is the best way to do it) on every one of your 16 serves (which are forehands), only about 50% of the rest of your forehands had that weight transfer (great examples of good weight transfer are at 0:27 and 0:46) and during about 50% of them you instead transferred your weight from your front foot to your back foot (at 1:02, 1:05, 1:20, 2:35, 3:08, 3:45, 3:56, 6:43, 7:44, 7:46, and 8:36).  This second best way is OK if it's the only way you can get the ball back, but it's a much weaker shot, so you should avoid it if you can.  It's a weaker shot because stepping from the front foot to the back foot means you are moving away from the net, and the speed with which you do so is subtracted from the speed you hit the ball, resulting in a slower ball, giving your opponent more time to get to the ball and hit it.  If your desire is to hit the ball slower, it's much better to just slow your swing down -- not back up while you're moving (it's easier to hit the ball while standing still rather than while you're moving).  In reviewing the video, it appears that you're having to back up because your opponent is hitting the ball deep to you and you're not standing far enough back (e.g., behind the baseline) to return his shot without backing up.  You're very fast on your feet, so I don't think you have to stand inside the baseline in order for you to run in if your opponent dinks the ball -- you should only stand inside the baseline if your particular opponent never hits the ball deep, or if it's a good gamble that a ball you hit to your opponent is likely to come back short.

Here's your proper weight transfer at 0:46, starting with a split-step:

Next, you started moving towards where the ball was going to be at ball contact:

Then, you set your back (away from the net) foot, which you'll step off of to hit the ball:

Next, you have stepped off your back foot, and just before ball contact you are about to land on your front foot, which is the foot you should balance on while making ball contact:

Finally, you can see that you're still balancing on your front as you follow-through:

This was a very-well-executed weight transfer (from your back foot to your front foot)...

Here's your weak weight transfer at 3:45, starting with setting your front foot (instead of your back foot):

Next, you stepped off your front foot onto your back foot (instead of the other way around):

Here you've lifted your front foot just before ball contact:

Finally, at the end of your follow-through your front foot is even higher up in the air, finishing the improper front-foot-to-back-foot weight transfer:

It seems appropriate that Jack chose this final picture as the thumbnail for the video, as a weak weight transfer was the most common unforced error during this game...


   As to your unforced errors, at 1:36 you are volleying a slow, dropping ball, using a very short, nearly horizontal fore-swing with a vertical racket face and a short follow-through, and the ball ends up hitting the net about halfway down its face.  With a slow, dropping ball you have to counter the ball's drop with a low-to-high swing if you want to hit with a vertical racket face (the best choice) or hit with an open paddle face if you want to use a horizontal fore-swing (a distant second choice, because if you swing the paddle hard the ball is likely to go long).  Also, a slow incoming ball has very little energy, so YOU have to supply the return energy (as opposed to hoping the ball will simply bounce off your paddle back over the net, as would happen with a fast incoming ball), so you would do better with a bigger (but not huge) backswing, and a bigger follow-through.  (You don't want your backswing to be so big that you are late making ball contact.)

Here's the ball at its highest point (in the upper-left corner of the picture), a bit less than one net-height above the top of the net:

At ball contact (the ball is just barely visible behind the paddle) you can see that the ball has dropped to below net-height, so it's dropping relatively quickly, and thus requires a low-to-high stroke to lift it over the net since the paddle is vertical at ball contact:

One frame later you can see that the ball isn't rising (you can see it below your left shoulder), which means it isn't going to go over the net:

The next time you can see your paddle (at the end of your follow-through), it's only waist-height, which means that your stroke wasn't low-to-high, which is required when having a vertical paddle face at ball contact when the ball is below net-height:

   At 4:02, during a point that looked like you were going to win, your opponent got a lucky break when one of your shots hit the net and gave him more time to hit the shot, resulting in him being able to hit a great crosscourt shot that you barely hit wide, at which point you cried out in frustration -- your yell was an unforced error, putting you in an upset state, and giving your opponent encouragement -- he'll expect you not to play as well in an upset state (and he would be right).  Instead of yelling, you should tell your opponent "good shot", which is the truth of why you hit the ball wide -- it was a forced error -- so you don't have to play in an upset state.  Your game, which you had been playing very well until then, went downhill right after this point; and your opponent immediately began to play better (he had lost the previous two games, so he hadn't been confident he could beat you).


   At 4:36 is one of your weak weight transfers (from your front foot to your back foot), at ball contact the paddle face is open and aimed past the right sideline, and it looks like you've lost interest in the game (you're moving much slower than you had been).
Here the paddle face has the correct orientation (vertical paddle face, aimed toward the back-right corner) just before contact:

At ball contact, one frame later, the paddle face has both opened (tilted up a bit) and changed its aim significantly to the right; both things contributing to the ball going wide to the right:

As the ball leaves the paddle, one more frame later (it's visible between the paddle and your forearm), the paddle face opens even more and aims even farther to the right, confirming the rapid wrist movement that doomed the shot:

   At 5:30 you are returning to the center of your baseline, but then you take an extra step that puts you too close to the line the ball is traveling, jamming yourself, although that's not your real problem.
You start the point by serving from about halfway between the centerline and the left sideline:

Notice that your opponent isn't standing at the center of the baseline -- he's standing almost at the back right corner of the court.  He's done this to center himself with respect to the court area you can easily hit the ball into (which means if you stood close to the centerline he would stand a bit to the left of where he's standing here -- I'll return to this topic later in my comments.)

Your opponent has just hit the ball to return your serve (the ball is the little white to the right of his right hand), and by this time you've moved almost to the centerline (plenty far, because you need to stay a bit to the left of the centerline to balance your opponent's position way to the right of the centerline):

Then you take one more, unnecessary step to the right, and in the process, jam yourself (which you could recover from by stepping back along the baseline):

You can see how jammed you are when the ball bounces as you transfer you weight to your left foot (which is a good weight transfer, except it moves you into the path of the ball):

In spite of jamming yourself, and not stepping backward to give yourself more room to hit the ball, you manage to make good ball contact by keeping your eye on the ball and bending your elbows to bring your paddle closer to you, and properly make ball contact with a vertical paddle face:

But at this point things go south, because you're hitting a ball that's approximately net height, but instead of using a low-to-high stroke to lift the ball over the net, you used a relatively horizontal swing, as is evidenced by the first frame showing the paddle on the other side of your body:

Two frames later you're near the end of your follow-through, and your paddle definitely hasn't risen above your shoulder (which is the result expected from a low-to-high stroke):

   At 5:46 it looks like you're trying to aim the ball downward by rolling your wrist -- but having the perfect paddle angle at ball contact during a wrist-roll when you're swinging the paddle very fast is very difficult -- don't roll your wrist in the contact zone!
It's hard to see because of your dark paddle against a dark background (you might want to borrow a light-colored paddle when you do videos on this court), but it looks like your paddle is slightly open (tilted up):

One frame later it appears that you've rolled your wrist to close (tilt downward) the paddle face, so as not to hit the ball long:

Another frame later confirms that you are doing a wrist roll, as you can clearly see that the paddle face closed (even more than the previous frame), resulting in the ball going into the net:

Contributing to the ball being hit down into the net is the fact that the stroke was a high-to-low stroke rather than a low-to-high stroke (still possible when the ball contact is high in the air), as evidenced by the low end to the follow-through (the paddle is obscuring the right side of his opponent's body):

   At 6:01 you return the serve long, and it looks like you're at a loss as to what to do -- what's gone wrong with your game?  Since you're clearly you're a talented player, it's because you're playing upset (I know that you haven't suddenly forgotten your skills).  I myself have never been able to play well when I'm upset, so I do my best not to get upset, and if I do get upset I get over it as soon as possible.


   At 6:44 is another one of your weak weight transfers, producing a weak shot which gives your opponent an easy put-away shot.  (When you lift your front foot, you tend to lean away from the net which can result in an open the paddle face, which pops the ball up higher than you intended.)

You start the point with your serve, and properly do so from behind the baseline:

After you served the ball, you went to center and got in the ready position:

After your opponent hits the ball, you initially start to step forward:

But almost immediately after starting to step forward, you realized that the ball is going to be deep enough that you'll actually have to step backwards instead, which you do, landing on your back foot just before ball contact:

After ball contact you finish your weight transfer from your front foot to your back foot (notice that you've lifted your front leg:

Because you are moving backwards, that velocity is subtracted from the speed of your return, and instead of the ball travelling to the back right corner of the court (a good choice, because it's the farthest point in the court), the lowered speed causes it to come down short of your target, where, unfortunately, your opponent is now standing, having been given plenty of time to get to the net because of his deep approach shot:

Being at the net allows him to hit the ball with more angle than if he had stayed at the back line, making it impossible for you to run from corner-to-corner in time to get to the ball:

   I don't know why you started in toward the net after your opponent hit the return of serve, whether it's out of habit (perhaps because most of your opponents can't return your serve deep, so you just automatically start to go in when they hit the ball), or whether you misjudged how deep his shot was going to go, but you need to figure out as soon as you can in each game how deep your opponent tends to hit the ball, and if they tend to hit it deep a lot (like your opponent does in this game), you should stay back far enough to return his ball without having to back up, which seems to be the main cause of your weak weight transfers.


    At 6:58 you made ball contact with an open paddle face rather than a vertical paddle face, and your return of serve went long as a result.
Here's ball contact, showing the open paddle face:

   At 7:07 you hit a great return-of-serve, but then followed it up with a slice whose follow-through is parallel to the net, pulling the ball wide (the ball tends to be dragged in the direction the racket face goes, so your follow-through should start by moving in the direction you want the ball to go).
After you hit a great return-of-serve, you ran up toward the net and as your opponent starts swinging at the ball, you properly went up on your toes to do a split-step to prepare to adjust for the direction the ball goes:

You properly land in the split-step just after your opponent hit the ball, ready to change your position:

You see that the ball is coming right toward your right shoulder, and immediately start to do a side shuffle step to the left by pushing off your outside (right) foot, to get out of the ball's line of travel:

As you set your right foot down, you lift your left foot to continue the side shuffle, turning to the right a bit so that your hips are properly lined up with the direction you intend to hit the ball:

As you plant your left (front) foot, you start to step off your right (back) foot to do a proper weight transfer and take the paddle back with an open face to prepare for slicing the ball:

By ball contact, one frame later, the paddle has just started to drop, which is not a good idea, because the ball is dropping fairly quickly -- it's not helpful to hit down on an already dropping ball.

Here is ball contact, another frame later.  You have rapidly accelerated the paddle, giving the ball too much punch for such an open paddle face, which causes the ball to go up and then wide:

One more frame later, you can really see the paddle start to drop into the pendulum swing:

Two frames later, when you can see the paddle again, the paddle is at the bottom of the pendulum, and the paddle face is roughly vertical, with your palm facing the camera:

Near the end of the long follow-through (the length indicating a hard swing) the palm is nearly facing upward (turning the paddle under like that is done by "supinating" the wrist):

So what it looks like happened here is that you've seen people slice with a pendulum follow-through and a quite open face (which is done with fast incoming balls), but know from experience that without punch, the ball won't make it over the net, so you postpone the start of the pendulum until after ball contact to allow a horizontal fore-swing to give you that punch, but without reducing the amount that the paddle face is open, the ball goes up and out:

  I don't know if it's talked about much, but there are two radically different situations that you slice in.  The one you are in here is with a slow, dropping incoming ball (the other is with a fast incoming ball, which doesn't drop much as it comes in).  The two slices are hit very differently.  Because this slice is coming in slowly, YOU have to supply the power to hit the ball with enough punch to get it back over the net.  To get punch, you need a relatively horizontal follow-through; and to not pop the ball up too high (causing it to go out with the punch you give it), you don't want the paddle face to be tilted up (open) too much (which you've done here).  The stroke you are using here is appropriate for the other situation -- a fast, slowly dropping ball, which requires very little punch from you (so you use a vertical, pendulum follow-through), and because you aren't punching it, you can tilt the paddle up more (like you did here).  Try these two strokes during practice! 
Here is Federer slicing a slow incoming ball (notice the length of the blur, which is an indication of ball speed):

He started with the racket face a bit open and higher than his left shoulder (above), and then opens the face more:

As he starts swinging the racket forward, he starts dropping the racket face (hidden behind him in this frame) just before ball contact (the ball blur is the same length):

Just after ball contact, the ball leaves faster than it arrived (the blur is fainter and longer) because Federer is punching it, and notice that the racket face is not open as much:

As he follows through, the racket face is even less open and isn't dropping as fast:

As the racket swings just a little bit farther, the racket is moving horizontally:

Finally, the racket face starts to rise, and is approximately vertical, and notice he didn't supinate (roll his wrist):

So instead of supinating during a vertical follow-through (discussed below), as you did, he is pronating during a horizontal follow-through.

   At 7:35 you serve with an open paddle face and the ball goes long as a result -- if you want to hit a hard serve, you should make ball contact with a vertical paddle face, which means you have to cock your wrist back and make ball contact out in front (to hit with a rising paddle) to execute the serve properly.
Here is your serve at ball contact -- look how open (tilted up) the paddle is at ball contact -- no wonder it went long:

   The point that starts at 7:40 has two more of your weak weight transfers, which reduces the power in your shots, both caused by starting toward the net before your opponent hit the ball back to you.
As soon as you hit a return of serve, you started toward the net -- you have already stepped over the baseline before your opponent has made ball contact, so you can't be certain how deep his shot is going to go (so why are you going in?):

You realized at this point that the ball return is going to be deep, and you step off your front foot (notice your back foot rising) to back up to be able to hit the ball properly:

Here you've just planted your back foot as you continue to move back:

Here you've finished your backswing and you've completed your weak weight transfer (your front foot is just starting to lift) but you're still moving backwards:

At ball contact you attempt to step off your back foot, but because you went back to the point that your body was balanced over your back foot, pushing off that foot just raises you up, instead of forward (your front foot is about 6 inches off the ground here):

Here you've just finished setting your front foot down near the end of your follow-through, and that foot is about a foot in back of the place it was lifted from (see the picture before last), so obviously it wasn't a weight transfer forward:

This  error was caused by starting toward the net prematurely, and needing to go back because the ball you were going to receive was deeper than you expected.  Only cross the baseline if you know you can make it to the net before the ball comes back to you, or after your opponent has hit the ball and you can see that it's going to be short -- you are plenty fast to go in to get it.  After your follow-through, you stepped back into the court, perhaps hoping that your shot low to your opponent's backhand would produce a weak short return (you can see his return here just to the left of your head):

Unfortunately, his return is deep enough that you decided to step back to receive it (the other option would have been staying in and hitting a half-volley):

Again, your weight is transferred backwards (your right foot obviously hasn't stepped forwards), reducing the power in your shot:

The result is that your shot goes into the net (and here you can see that your right foot definitely stepped backwards):

   At 8:36 is your final weak weight transfer -- undoubtedly tilting your body back and opening your paddle face (but I can't see it because it's off-screen), and the ball goes long as a result.

   That's a large percentage of unforced errors that involve a weak weight transfer -- I'd work on that.

   Also, a couple of the unforced errors were due to wrist-roll, so I'd avoid doing that as well.

   And especially work on staying positive during the game -- I think your upset took you out of the game.

   By the way, I've done some Pickleball coaching videos (at the Port Townsend High School tennis courts), and I suggest that you take a look at them.  I'm a retired engineer, and I've analyzed strokes with respect to their physics, with an emphasis on error-reduction.  Here's the first one in the playlist:

   In response to my initial analysis (the above comments), Mike said that he hadn't noticed his weak weight transfers when he watched the video, so I expanded on the topic:  Weak weight transfers are typically due to two things. Beginners sometimes develop this habit because they usually have an open paddle face at ball contact, and if they do a good weight transfer, the extra power that it produces tends to make them hit the ball long. The instinctive solution to this? Back away from the ball as you hit it to subtract power. The correct solution? The simplest solution is: don't swing the paddle so fast, but a beginner might not be able to do that because beginners usually have a late backswing, so if the incoming ball is fast, their late backswing causes them to have to swing the paddle fast to make ball contact before the ball goes past them. And if the incoming ball is slow, then a slow swing might cause them to hit the ball into the net. The correct solution is to hit a proper groundstroke: make ball contact with a vertical paddle face about two feet out in front of the hitting shoulder using a low-to-high swing.

   But YOU are not a beginner, so even though you may have gotten into the  weak weight transfer habit as a beginner (and you might not have -- you might simply be standing inside the baseline when it's not appropriate, and have to back up too quickly to return a deep ball using a proper weight transfer), it appears that the current cause of your weak weight transfer is being late getting to the ball, so that you don't have time to set up properly for having a good weight transfer.

   You have what I call "The curse of the physically gifted", which is my wording for the following:

1. You are physically gifted, meaning you have above average hand-eye coordination, foot-speed, anticipation, etc.
2. As a result, you can make do with less than optimal Pickleball skills (strokes, footwork, strategy, psychology, etc.).
3. Because you can usually beat someone with the same skill set, but not physically gifted, there isn't a big motivation to improve your skill set.
4. But as you play more skilled players, especially physically gifted ones, you get frustrated by losing to these people, get upset about it during the game, and in that state, lose when you think you should have won.  

   The way to overcome this curse is to improve your skill set, which includes psychological skills.  You are taking the first step toward improving your skill set by asking for advice, which is excellent! The biggest hazards in this path are:

1. Finding someone who knows what they are talking about (and there are lots of people on the Internet who don't). There are even a lot of 5.0 players that can't give you good advice, because pretty much all of them have the same curse as you do, and they too can get by with less than optimal strokes (etc.).
2. Properly following the advice given. I have made numerous changes in my strokes over the last couple of years, and there have been times when I thought I had modified a stroke properly, but reviewing a video of my new stroke showed me otherwise. It's very helpful, and sometimes essential, to video your strokes to make sure you are executing the changed stroke properly.
3. The final hazard is that it can be extremely difficult to make a habit of the new skill, as I continue to discover. I can have a great practice session with the new stroke, but as soon as I play a game, I tend to revert to my old habits of 40-odd years.

   Do I know what I'm talking about? As a retired engineer I'm able to analyze strokes from a physics/mechanics point of view, and also from an error-reduction point of view. I also have a tennis background, including tennis lessons from a pro tennis player (he was on the Tour at one time), looking at numerous tennis coaching videos online (and ferreting out the few that have good advice), looking at a bunch of tennis pros in super-slow-motion and single-frame-at-a-time to see exactly what they're doing (and using my engineering skills to make sense of what I see), and practicing more than I play.  There seems to be an unwarranted bias against using tennis strokes in Pickleball (e.g., if you hit hard more than a few times, you're called a "banger"), but there are millions of dollars at stake in tennis matches, so tennis coaches have optimized the physics of the strokes they coach to minimize errors; and the same physics governs Pickleball strokes (albeit scaled down to the court size, paddle length, ball bounce, etc.)  Of course, the proof is in the pudding -- if you follow my advice and your strokes get significantly better, it's likely I've given you good advice.


   [Mike also mentioned that he had only done two lobs in the game -- seeming to imply that (at least for him) lobs were a bad idea, to which I responded:]  Of all the things you could have commented on, I'm not sure why you mentioned lobs. Lobs can be very effective, and often times they are the best shot choice (and sometimes the only good shot choice) -- I lob whenever it intuitively seems to be the best choice (based on 45 years of playing Pickleball).
   Your lob at 6:44 was ineffective because it was hit right to your opponent as he was standing at the non-volley line -- to be effective, it's best to hit it deep. Your weight transfer from your front foot to your back foot (instead of the other direction) took power out of the shot, yielding a shallow, short lob, rather than a deep one.  (See the analysis of this point, above.)
   Your lob at 8:47 was the right idea (deep), but the execution of the lob failed (it went long). Because you were mostly out of the frame, I have to do some speculation, but it appears that you were late getting to the ball (because your opponent saw you returning toward the centerline and wisely hit the ball so that you would have to change directions), you were leaning left (to reach the ball) and lifted your right foot (weak weight transfer again), and when your paddle comes back into the frame it ends up tipping toward you, so you might have used too much wrist to elevate the ball.  (See the analysis of this point, above.)  So if the reason you mentioned lobbing was that both lobs were unsuccessful, and that perhaps lobbing is a bad strategy; that would not be the right conclusion -- the two lobs were simply poorly executed (and you need to practice them a bunch, but not during a competitive game, if you want to use lobs effectively).

   One more thing I noticed: at 4:16 it appears that you gave a point away by not calling an out ball (use the frame-at-a-time YouTube controls to see it). It was probably a very difficult ball for you to call because you were on the run and fairly close to the ball looking down on it, so I myself might have had to call it good if I'd been playing it. But you ran it down very well, so it was playable.  Your problem was that it was very difficult to return using a two-handed backhand -- I think it would have been returnable using a one-handed backhand. So you should consider adding a one-handed topspin backhand to your arsenal (not to replace your two-handed backhand, but to use when appropriate). I've always hit with a one-handed backhand, but a couple of years ago I added a two-handed backhand, and it's saved my bacon many times. Look at my Pickleball coaching videos for details on how to hit a one-handed topspin backhand.
Here is the frame just before the ball bounced:

Here is the frame just after the ball bounced:

I suppose it's possible that the ball landed on the line between the two frames, but if you watch the video, it doesn't look like it...


   [Mike had, himself, commented on a number of his points, which I addressed individually, starting with: "My forehand 3rd shot went way too high, saving grace was the fact it went to his backhand".]  It's important to notice what your opponent is not doing well, and play to that, as you did at 1:21 (his backhand wasn't working well at the moment), so that if you yourself don't execute a shot well (in this case you hit the ball too high, and a high ball is more difficult to hit properly with a one-handed backhand than a low ball), you've reduced the effect of your error.  A contributor to your shot going high was another weak weight transfer (notice that your right foot is lifting at ball contact).
Here you are planting your front foot in advance of receiving your opponent's return of serve:

Here you have planted your back foot and are just starting to lift your front foot:

Three frames later you are about to make ball contact, but because you are not stepping into the ball (which you do very well at least half the time), your paddle face is open instead of vertical (which it would have been IF you had been moving forward, and it's the open face that causes your ball to be "way too high":

The frame after ball contact gives you a better view of just how open the paddle face was:

Notice also how much horizontal rotation there was in just one frame of video (1/30 of a second, as this video was shot at 30 frames per second), which adversely affects the accuracy of your horizontal aim (using a "windshield wiper" follow-through is the way to improve this accuracy, which will be discussed below -- Note: all tennis pros use it, for this reason).  Ironically, this rapid horizontal aim change is what caused your shot to go as far as it did to your opponent's backhand rather than to a position that would have allowed him to hit a forehand, which is a much stronger shot for him than his backhand (and the weak weight transfer popped the ball up, which made his backhand even harder to hit).  The success this shot gave you (your opponent hit the ball wide with his weak backhand) can subconsciously reinforce these bad habits (weak weight transfer; rapid horizontal paddle face rotation), making them difficult to correct; and when you subsequently play someone with a good backhand, you will become frustrated because these bad habits won't work with someone who has good strokes.

At the end of your follow-through you can see that your weight transferred backwards instead of forwards (after lifting your front foot, which was on the baseline, you set it down next to your back foot, behind the baseline):

   ["I was in great position but missed an easy volley."]  You called the shot you missed at 1:36 "an easy volley", but in fact it was a difficult one (you were quickly approaching the middle of the net and had to make a sharp left turn when you saw the ball head for the left sideline, at which point you had to execute perfect footwork, and then properly hit a well placed, below net-height, dropping volley).  In spite of this difficulty, it was within your capability to return it (which is probably why you called it "easy"). Your stroke execution is what sunk you, for the reasons I laid out in my initial set of comments and pictures, above.


   ["Well executed backhand, but would that have worked if my opponent came into the net instead?"]  You asked a "what if" question about the point that starts at 3:27.  Here's a blow-by-blow of the point, starting with your serve to an opponent who is properly standing in the center of the area you can hit the ball to easily:

   Your serve is deep to the left sideline, forcing your opponent to move laterally to return it:

His choice after hitting the ball is: 1. To return to center along the baseline, or 2. Run to the center of the non-volley line.  He wisely chose to return to center along the baseline, because his return wasn't deep enough in your court to assure him that he would get to the non-volley line in time, and even if he did make it in time, you had an easy shot that you could hit shallow back toward the right sideline to win the point:

   Your shot back to your opponent is deep enough to give you time to get to the non-volley line, plus, your opponent has to move laterally to get to the ball before he hits it, plus it's to his backhand (weak) side, so you could confidently go in:

The result of you hitting deep to your opponent's weak (backhand) side, giving you enough time to follow your ball in, is a weak return from your opponent into the net with you in good position at the net to play it had it cleared the top of the net -- you made a good choice.

   The answer to your question: "...but would that have worked if my opponent came into the net instead?" depends on how your opponent comes into the net.  If he comes to the center of the non-volley line, a shot to the back-right corner of his court might have been within his reach because of its relatively shallow angle, so you would need to react to him coming in that way by hitting with more angle on his backhand side to keep it out of his reach -- hitting to his backhand in this case would be more effective than hitting to his forehand because if you hit to his forehand he would be moving in the direction needed to get to that forehand, whereas hitting to his backhand would require him to move in the direction opposite to which he was coming in, requiring him to change direction, which takes extra time.  If, on the other hand, he knows you like to hit to his backhand, and comes to the net closer to your right sideline instead of toward the centerline, you simply have to react to that by hitting the ball toward the left sideline (his forehand side) instead to keep the ball out of his reach.


   ["Forehand went too high again, saving grace the fact it went to his backhand?"]  At 3:45 you are indeed correct -- you were saved by the ball being high on your opponent's backhand side (the higher the ball is, the more difficult it is for it to be hit well by a one-handed backhand, especially if your opponent's backhand is weak to begin with).  And again, your weak weight transfer contributed to you hitting the ball high.


   ["Missed backhand, should I have taken that in the air and not let it bounce? Should have used my 1-handed backhand slice."]  Here's what happened during the point at 4:17: Your opponent's serve landed about halfway through the service box, and you took advantage of this short serve by stepping off your back foot (for a good weight transfer), giving you an early start to going in ("going in on a short ball" is a classic strategy):

You ran in to the center of the court to cover a crosscourt shot, and did a split-step, but you opponent wisely hit down the line instead (you can see the ball here coming  back to your court):

You did a great job of turning on a dime, which was made possible by your split-step (because your left leg, above, was angled sharply to help you stop):

As you arrived at the right sideline, it looks like you had time to hit the ball on the fly, and since your opponent didn't move back to center, you could have hit a one-handed backhand, crosscourt shot for an easy winner, because, being at the net you can hit with a greater angle than you could from the baseline:

But you didn't hit the ball in the air, probably because it looked like the ball was going out, and you followed the ball back and let it bounce to verify that fact.

It did indeed land out (at least it looks like it to me when I watched the video), but unfortunately you were looking down at the ball and apparently couldn't see that it was out (which is why you played it and didn't call it out) -- here is the frame just before the bounce:

Here is the frame just after the bounce:

Your opponent either couldn't see that the ball landed out, or perhaps saw that it was maybe out (it certainly was a close call), and deferred to your judgment for the call (and you called it in).  Having decided that it was in, you definitely should have used a one-handed backhand. Since you currently only have a one-handed slice backhand, that's the shot you should have hit, but you were in position early enough to hit a one-handed topspin backhand, which would probably have been more effective (a reason to work on adding a one-handed topspin backhand to your arsenal).

Here you are just about to make ball contact (you can just see the ball peeking out from behind your left hand):

Your feet are set nicely in a square stance; your paddle face is vertical; and your knees are bent to get low to hit the low ball, but your shot ended up not even making it to the net, so what went wrong?

You can't see the paddle face at ball contact, so the first sign of what went wrong is when you can first see the ball after you hit it -- the ball doesn't appear to be rising:

Looking at the ball one frame later confirms that the ball isn't rising, so why not?:

One reason can be seen in the above picture -- notice that even though your paddle is significantly out in front of you, it's not significantly higher than it was at ball contact, and since your paddle face was vertical one frame before ball contact, you needed a significant low-to-high swing at ball contact.

The other reason is that you are moving rapidly toward the baseline to chase down the ball, so that speed is subtracted from the paddle face speed at ball contact, resulting in much less power transferred to the ball.  The evidence that you are moving quickly backwards is where you ended up just before the ball bounced on your side of the net after you hit it:

   ["Missed wide right on simple forehand shot. Did not set my body correctly?"]  Your forehand at 4:35 is a great one to analyze.  You are properly returning to center as your opponent is getting ready to hit the ball back to you:

You are properly starting your "split-step" as your opponent hits the ball:

You properly land in the "ready" position as the ball starts back toward you:

You properly immediately do a "unit-turn" (a turn from facing your opponent, to putting your right side toward your opponent) and take a nice big backswing:

But that's when two unforced errors hurt you.  You do another of your weak weight transfers (front foot to back foot), which moves your body back away from the incoming ball:

This is deadly, because this incoming ball is slow, and moving back away from it instead of towards it requires you to make ball contact farther out in front of you (toward the net).  That's when the second unforced error occurs: if you freeze the video at ball contact, you can see that the paddle face orientation, which is good just two frames earlier (1/15 of a second), has turned significantly toward the right sideline, which is why the ball ends up going wide past the right sideline:

If you had moved forwards instead of backwards, your racket face orientation would have been good (you would have made ball contact two frames earlier).

   But there is also another lesson here: at ball contact the paddle face didn't have the right orientation.  Although this happened during a weak weight transfer, this could have happened during proper weight transfer, but with a shorter ball, which would also cause you to hit too far out in front.  The solution to this dilemma is to modify your stroke: you need to change your follow-through to a "windshield wiper" follow-through (which is the follow-through that all tennis pros use -- see my coaching videos for details).  This follow-through reduces horizontal angle errors (like the one that occurred during your forehand here).  It does so by minimizing the angle change the paddle face goes through in the "contact zone" (you predict a contact point, but if there is a gust of wind, or spin on the ball, which can change the ball speed after a bounce, your actual ball contact point can be in front or behind the predicted contact point, resulting in a "zone" of possible contact points -- hence my term "contact zone").  So even though the weak weight transfer is what caused the error here, and should be cured; you should also adopt a windshield wiper follow-through to help all kinds of ball contact mistiming.  And as a bonus, this follow-through adds more topspin, which helps keep the ball from going long when you hit the ball hard.  This is the best thing I've added to my topspin strokes in the last two years (an intensive period of change for me).

   Another thing you did during this forehand that is not a good habit, is: you twisted your shoulders toward the net earlier than is good.  This twist can creep into ball contact and pull the ball in the direction of the twist.  One reason to twist the shoulders is that you want to face your opponent to be equally ready for a forehand or a backhand.  But if you're at the baseline you have tons of time after ball contact before the ball gets to your opponent, so you don't need to be in a hurry to twist your shoulders to help accomplish that.  The other reason to twist your shoulders is to get more power, but the extra power your shoulder twist added to this shot was probably the amount needed to hit the ball wide.  You would end up with a much more accurate shot if you rocked your shoulders vertically (which is another way to add power), just as your follow-through is vertical, instead of twisting your shoulders horizontally.  Note: if you look at the end of your follow-through, you over-rotated your shoulders to the point that your shoulders were orientated about 45 degrees past facing the net, an indication that you used your shoulder rotation for adding power to your shot rather than for facing the net to be ready for your opponent's return.

   Here's a sequence of pictures showing Roger Federer (the best tennis player of all time, in my opinion) hitting a forehand that has a windshield wiper follow-through:

Here he has just finished his backswing --notice that his right arm is straight (for maximum power):

He then starts his fore-swing by both twisting his shoulders to the left and swinging the racket forward as well:

Notice that the butt-cap of the racket is pointed at the ball, and that the racket head is lagging behind his right hand's forward movement -- this is known as "loading" the arm tendons, which are stretching and storing energy.  As the tendons spring back to their original length during his fore-swing, that stored energy supplies more racket head speed before ball contact.

Here his shoulders have almost slowed to a stop, and the racket is still lagging his right hand:

Here his racket head is about halfway from the last picture to ball contact --  notice that his shoulders are barely turning and his wrist is un-cocking as the racket swings like a pendulum tilted about 45 degrees from the horizontal:

Here he makes ball contact -- notice his arm is still straight at contact, he has un-cocked his wrist a bit more (it's cocked just the right amount to orient the racket face in the direction he wants to hit the ball), he's looking at the ball, his shoulders have barely turned since the previous picture and his racket has finished the pendulum motion to the ball:

Here he has started his windshield wiper follow-through -- instead of the paddle face rotating horizontally to the left, his arm is just starting to bend as he tilts his wrist up and to the left (here it's tilted about 45 degrees), and the racket tilts forward toward the net due to the centrifugal force of his swing -- notice that the racket face, although tipped toward the net, is still facing roughly in the direction that the ball is going, rather than facing off to the left, which would have happened if he had followed through like his paddle face was a swinging door:

Notice that the ball is going in the direction the racket face was oriented in at ball contact (as seen in the previous picture). 

Here he's halfway done with his follow-through (here it's tilted about 90 degrees) -- notice that his arm has bent a little more and his shoulders have again barely turned since the previous picture:

If he had swung his racket to the left like a door instead of the way he did, the racket face would have been pointing toward the left side fence instead of toward the net as it is in the above picture.  Keeping the racket face pointed in the direction you're trying to hit the ball means that if you mistime ball contact the ball will still go in roughly the right direction; whereas if you swing the racket like a door, mistiming contact will result in hitting the ball a different direction (e.g., if the incoming ball is slower than you expected, you'll make ball contact farther out in front than planned and you'll hit the ball to the left of the intended direction).

Here his racket has tilted about 135 degrees -- notice that his arm has bent still further and his shoulders have again barely turned since the previous picture:

Here his racket has tilted about 180 degrees with respect to ball contact -- notice that his arm has bent still further and his shoulders have again barely turned since the previous picture:

Here he is just past the point where his arm could continue folding toward his chest, and so the residual force of his swing finally sets his shoulders in motion as the arm tugs the right shoulder after it -- notice that he is still looking in the direction that he was looking at ball contact (it also, coincidentally, is the same direction that the ball is travelling, but he would be looking that direction if he had instead hit to the back-left corner of the court):

Here Roger is at the end of his follow-through, and his shoulders have turned significantly since the previous picture -- evidence that the inertia of the swing continued to pull on his right shoulder:

If you were to look at this swing at normal speed, you would be left with the impression that his shoulders were turning continuously throughout his swing, but clearly that wasn't what happened.

   A few notes on the windshield wiper follow-through:
1. Because you start tipping the racket head up just before ball contact, you end up with more topspin than you would get from a standard swing with a low-to-high swing and vertical racket face, so the windshield wiper is especially good for returning fast incoming balls, which people tend to hit long because they swing hard to make ball contact in time, and the power that generates added to the power of the incoming ball makes it hard to keep the ball in.
2. If you don't need the directional accuracy and shorter ball travel provided by the windshield wiper (e.g., if you're at the net and most of the court is open because you've moved your opponent to one of the sidelines), NOT using the windshield wiper will result in a more powerful shot, giving your opponent less time to get to the ball.
3. If you haven't ever hit a forehand with a windshield follow-through and when you try it the ball goes over the net higher than you like, you are either transitioning your swing from a pendulum to the windshield wiper, and not getting enough "punch" (which is supplied by the pendulum motion), or you are trying to do the windshield wiper totally vertical, instead of letting the racket tip toward the net during the follow-through.
4.  The windshield wiper follow-through also works on the backhand side, although you don't see the pros who have two-handed backhands use it much (look at Federer's one-hander to see how it's done).


   ["Return of serve needs to get deeper."]  The point that starts at 5:03 begins with a serve that lands only about a third of the way from the non-volley line to the baseline, yet you make ball-contact near the baseline (I can't be sure, because ball-contact happens out of the video frame) -- here's where the ball bounces:

Here's a few frames after ball contact -- it's obvious that you're standing behind the baseline at ball contact:

A serve this short was an opportunity for you to come in to meet it sooner, which means it would get back to your opponent sooner as well (a shorter distance from the serve to your ball contact, followed by a shorter distance back to your opponent, each shorter ball travel distance taking less time to traverse).  Your return of serve landed about halfway between the non-volley line and the baseline, so you're right -- it could have been deeper.
   But that wasn't the sole reason that your opponent was able to hit a winner.  The other issue was your court position.  You want to be at the center of the area that your opponent can easily hit to.  An easy example to understand is, that if your opponent is at the center of his baseline, you should be about at the center of your baseline, because that results in there being an equal area on each side of the centerline (where you're standing) for your opponent to hit to (you might want to stand a foot or two toward your backhand side because most people have less reach on that side):

Your opponent can hit the ball a little bit farther (45 feet, 1 1/2 incher an extra 1 foot, 1/2 inches) to a corner of your end of the court from the center of his baseline than to the center of your baseline (44 feet), but the net is 2 inches higher at the sidelines than at the centerline, which results in the ball hit to a corner having to be 1 inch higher when it clears the net, which at least partially cancels the benefit of the extra length to a corner, and indeed may be the intent of having a 2-inch net height difference).
   But if your opponent hits the ball from his back right corner, as he did after you hit your return of serve, you need to shift toward your back left corner to compensate, but instead you nearly ended up at the centerline.  The reason you need to shift left a bit is that when your opponent shifts to the right, he has a longer distance that he can hit to your back left corner, because the distance from the right end of his baseline to the left end of your baseline (48' 4") is significantly longer than the distance from the center of his baseline to the left end of your baseline (45' 1.5").  This means that the same shot hit from the center of his baseline that lands exactly on the left end of your baseline would land short of that point (4 feet, 4 inches shorter, which is well in) if hit from the right end of his baseline, which means he could hit with more angle (past the corner) and the ball would sill land in; meaning his hitting area on your left side extends farther to the left.  Also, because the diagonal shot is longer than the down the line shot, your opponent can hit the diagonal shot harder than the down the line shot, and it will still land in.  Finally, unlike a crosscourt shot hit from the center of the baseline having to go over a higher part of the net, a crosscourt from the end (corner) of the baseline passes over the center point of the net, which is the lowest point of the net, making the shot even easier to hit hard and deep:

Looking at the above diagram it's tempting to think that you still should stand at the center of the baseline (where I put the "You?" text) -- after all, all of the shots have to land between the sidelines -- but to understand the situation, you don't consider where the ball bounces, but where you make ball contact, which is typically about 5 feet past where the ball bounces (note: the grayed-out "You" shows where you would stand if your opponent was hitting from the center of his baseline):

You can see that the ball contact point is about 2 feet past the baseline, so you need to move to the left at least a foot (and move further, if you tend to get a slow start toward the ball, because if you arrive late, the crosscourt shot is "running away from you", and you'll make ball contact more than 2 feet from the sideline).  Also, since your opponent can hit the crosscourt harder than the down the line and it will still land in, you will have less time to get to it because it will be moving faster, so you should stand even further to the left.
   When your opponent comes to the non-volley line and hits from there, you need to move even farther to the left, because he can hit with more angle:

   And if your opponent hits a short shot from the non-volley line, he can hit with even more angle, so if you see that he's committed to a short shot (e.g., he has a short backswing), you need to move even a bit more to the left as you come in to be in the center of his range:

   One last thing to adjust for is that if you are moving to the left (for example) as you come in, you should move a little less to the left to be "centered", because "centered" is with respect to how long it takes you to get to the ball, so if your opponent hits the ball to your right instead of to your left, there is a significant delay caused by changing direction and moving to the right to get the ball.

   In addition to you not being in the center of your opponent's hitting zone, he also took advantage of the fact that you were moving to the right -- hitting the ball to your left as you're moving to the right requires you to reverse direction, which takes extra time.  Here you've just moved from the left sideline, where you returned the serve from, and are landing in a split-step at the centerline:

You were moving to the right as you did the split-step, so you had to change directions, which slowed you down:

So even though you took off fast, the angle he was able to achieve because he was hitting from near the far-right corner made it extremely difficult for you to get to the ball:

In spite of that, your quick reaction and foot speed nearly allowed you to get the ball over the net -- here's where it hit the net:

   ["Remember to get the ball at the right distance away from you, and not that close."]  Your comment about (your two-handed backhand) being hit too close to your body at 5:30 is correct (as I mentioned in my first set of comments).


   ["Ball was going out, why swing. But even so what did I do wrong?"]  The shot you hit into the net at 5:45  may not have been going out -- your opponent hit the ball after it bounced just inside his baseline, and it an it looks like it started dropping just after it passed the net; and because the ball slows down due to air resistance, I think that it might have dropped in.  Since you were nowhere near the baseline when you hit the ball, making it hard to judge whether the ball would be in or not, it made sense to hit it, just to be safe, and since you were close to the net and up high, it should have been an easy, high-probability-of-success shot.  You did a lot of things right, including getting a reasonably early start coming in; coming in toward the center; doing the weight transfer properly; rising significantly off the ground to get high enough to hit the ball; but as I said in my first set of comments, you rolled your wrist over rapidly, which dumped that ball into the net -- you should have used a windshield wiper follow-through instead.


   ["Notice the depth on that return, good return."]  The return of serve at 6:10 is a good shot.  Your opponent's serve is relatively short, but unlike the short serve he hit at 5:03, where you didn't appear to move forward to play the short serve -- here you did, which is good (you are moving in quickly to meet the serve in this picture):

Your paddle face looks like it was vertical at contact, which is why it didn't go long, in spite of your hard swing:

If you had mistimed ball contact, however, it most certainly would have gone long because of the way your paddle face turned during your follow-through.  Look at your paddle one frame (1/30 of a second) later:

See how much it's tilted up?

Your ball would have gone long if you had just mistimed it 1/100 of a second, because your return was very close to your opponent's baseline (it's barely visible here at the baseline through the 4th "hole" in the net mesh):

That's why a windshield wiper follow-through would have been a better choice, since the paddle face doesn't tip up like the follow-through you used.

Then you reacted nicely to his attempt to hit the ball down the line -- you started your split-step as he hit the ball -- here you are ready to land shortly after that:

Then you stepped off your right foot to cover the shot, but the shot went wide, which ended the point:

    ["Should I have been up at the net sooner? Or was staying back the better response?"]  When you're a beginner, you have to experiment with coming to the net to end up with a good sense of when it's a good time to go to the net. When you're experienced, the general rule is: if you're in doubt as to whether to go in to the net or not; stay back. The time to absolutely stay back is if you pop up the ball to an opponent at the net, or if you're well behind the baseline when you hit the ball and don't have time to make it to the net before your opponent can return the ball to you (which can result in the dreaded "foot shot"). But if you keep the ball low, and can get to the net before your opponent can return the ball, it's usually good to go to the net. If the ball lands close to the net on your opponent's side and the bounce is low, they can't hit the ball very hard without hitting it long (since they have to hit the ball relatively steeply up), so you'll be receiving a slow ball, which you'll have time to intercept (unless they try to hit you with the ball with a fast shot, in which case it's still OK to come to the net if you're good at dodging the ball). And if they're at the baseline, you'll have more time to get to the net while your shot travels to them.


   For the point that starts at 6:22, it's a tough call as to whether to come in or not, because your opponent is relatively close to the net, so he has a relatively wide angle to hit to, and it's hard to guess which direction he's going to hit the ball.  Based on this doubt, it was a reasonable decision for you to stay back.  Here you are receiving his return of serve, at which point your opponent is just arriving at the net:

The rule to "go in on a short ball" (that you've hit to your opponent) only applies when your opponent is near the baseline.  The overarching rule is "go in if you have time to get in before your opponent returns the ball (so that you're not caught in no-man's land, where the ball can land at your feet), so you can derive another subsidiary rule: "go in if you hit a ball that will bounce significantly below the net height", which will force your opponent to hit the ball upwards to get it over the net, giving him two choices: 1) dink the ball back to you, which will result in a slow ball, giving you time to get to the net, or: 2) hit the ball hard upwards in hopes of hitting you or giving you no time to think (that it's going long) and so you swing at it.
   In retrospect, if you'd come in straight toward your opponent, you would have ended up in the middle of the right half-court and the shot that your opponent hit cross-court would have been unreachable. And if you came in along the centerline, and he noticed that, he would have hit down the line on your backhand side, which would have been harder to reach than a forehand. The critical thing here is that if you are both at the net, a fast ball hit by your opponent travels the distance between the two of you very quickly, giving you almost no time to move to the ball laterally to intercept it, but if you stay back at the baseline, the ball has more travel time before you have to hit it, so I think you made the right choice staying back. I know it goes against the common Pickleball wisdom, but your soft short 3rd shot gave your opponent plenty of time to get to change direction and still get to the ball, stay in the point, and even put pressure on you with his fast shot. I would have hit the ball harder to give him less time to get the ball back.


   ["WHERE'S THE SPLIT STEP!? Remember to split step"]  At 6:40 I don't think that your forgot to do a split step -- I think you were discouraged by your mistakes and were no longer that interested in playing. That being said, a split step would have been good, to help you get a quicker start toward the ball. You also appeared to have misjudged how deep the ball was going to be, because you started to go in (your right foot stepped into the court), but then changed direction and went back away from the net, which delayed you getting to the ball.  Here you are serving:

Here you're in the ready position after your serve:

Here's the frame where you've just started to move after your opponent hit his return:

You can see that the ball is still well on his side of the court.

Here is where you ended up before you realized that you misjudged how deep his shot was going to go -- you're stepped into the court, but have lifted your left foot to start moving backwards (the ball has reached the net, is at it's highest point, and it's now easy to see how deep the ball is going to go):

Here you are as the ball arrives in your vicinity -- notice how far behind the baseline you are and you still haven't made ball contact yet -- a sign of how seriously you misjudged how deep your opponent's return was going to be:

More experience will help with this issue -- you'll get better and better at judging ball depth as you continue to play games (and practice).


   ["Push that into the back corner, don't try to force the slice onto the shot"]  At 7:09 a slice is a reasonable choice, but it has to be executed properly -- your follow-through was just in the wrong direction as I mentioned in my first set of comments (if I had hit a topspin backhand with that follow-through, the ball would have traveled parallel to the net).


   ["Paddle face was not the same as most other serves."]  Good comment about the shot at 7:34 -- your paddle face is open at ball contact, which made it susceptible to being hit long, which is what happened:

The solution to this problem is to cock your wrist back so that when you make contact with the ball the paddle face is vertical -- that allows you to hit a very hard serve without hitting it long (because the paddle face isn't open) and still have a legal serve. See my serve coaching video:

   ["I feel like I could have played that point better, outside of the obvious unforced error at the end."]  You're being a little hard on yourself by saying you think that you could have played the point that starts at 7:40 better. Your opponent hits a nice hard, deep serve (it makes it about 80% of the way from the non-volley zone to the baseline), which makes the ball hard to return well:

But you made a decent return, which landed about halfway between the non-volley zone and the baseline, which is not bad, considering:

After you served, you wisely went to the center, and when you saw where his return was going to go, you got there in plenty of time and appropriately got sideways to hit your forehand:

At this point you had a little trouble, because you misjudged how deep the return was going to be, and you had to step back, so you're a bit off-balance when you hit the ball, so perhaps you could have read the ball better:

In spite of this you hit a pretty good forehand, with a nice straight arm for maximum power, and to your opponent's backhand, although he didn't have to move much to get to it.

And the error at the end you mentioned happened from a shot with a weak weight transfer, which reduced the amount of power you transferred to the ball, so the ball hit the net instead of clearing it. If you had executed the last stroke properly, you would have easily won the point (which means you simply have to work on your strokes).


   ["Return of serve was to his forehand, should have stayed back and forced the point a bit longer?"]  This is an excellent "what if" question.  How you should have played the point that starts at 8:14 depends on the abilities of your opponent.  As seen by the outcome of the point, your opponent can play well, so you can't just go in as a matter of course because you returned the ball deep (which, against a less-capable opponent, would be reason enough to go in).  Here your return bounces near the baseline, and at this point you've clearly committed to coming in:

Based on the outcome of this point (your opponent won the point off your return of serve), it was a bed decision to come, but what exactly caused that to happen?  You mentioned the most obvious thing in your comment: "Return of serve was to his forehand..." -- you were hitting to his strong side, which means you wouldn't have a high probability of a weak return (like there would have been on his backhand side).  Another thing working against you is that your opponent wasn't under time pressure when he hit the ball back -- although he had to move to get to the ball, he got there in plenty of time to set up for the shot.
Here he is just after he started his fore-swing (you can just see the ball peeking over the net):

And here he is at ball contact:

Notice that he didn't move to the left between the above two pictures, which confirms that he wasn't under time pressure to hit the ball -- this means he could use his full ability to make the shot.

Now let's look at where you ended up in a split-step:

You ended up to the left of the centerline, which means that you expected your opponent to hit his shot down the line, and you moved to the left to cover that shot.  Unfortunately, your opponent noticed where you were going (you started coming in to the left as you were making ball contact, so your opponent had plenty of time to notice your direction), and confidently hit a crosscourt instead of a down the line shot.
And because you were almost to the non-volley line and moving to the left, there was no possibility of you changing direction and moving to the right to get to the ball in the short time it took the ball to get to your non-volley line, as evidenced by you not even trying to do it (as the ball bounces on your side of the court, you haven't moved to the right at all):

Your opponent was helped by you not being in the center of the area he could hit to, leaving lots of room to your right for him to hit to, but that was the result of your choice to go in -- you had to commit to picking a shot to cover (down the line, which you chose, or crosscourt), because if you're at the center of his hitting area that close to the net, you don't have time to reach a fast ball hit even conservatively to either side of you.  So, staying back would have been the right choice; moving to the center of the area your opponent could hit to (a little to the right of the centerline), which would have made it possible to return the crosscourt shot he hit.  Another thing to realize is that you have more reach with your forehand than with your backhand, so being a bit to the right of center (toward your backhand side) is good for that reason alone.  Also, you don't automatically want to cover the down the line shot, which perhaps you think your opponent is going to hit because of the feeling of accomplishment he'd get by doing it, because it's a harder shot to hit than the crosscourt shot (which is why you feel so good when you do it successfully). If you're opponent is in the back left corner like he was for this shot, the down the line distance is 44 feet, but the crosscourt distance is 48 feet 4 inches, which is 4 and 1/3 feet farther, and it is over the lowest part of the net (2 inches lower in the center than at the sidelines) which makes it easier to keep the ball from going long if he hits it hard.


   ["What was I thinking trying to lob again?"]  Hitting the lob at 8:37 was a good idea -- you just didn't execute it well. You were off balance at ball contact; and I couldn't see your stroke, but I suspect you just have to practice the correct stroke a bunch (but not during a competitive game).

Chris