Willy Beacher?

No. Not 54 times in a row anyway. I hate searching for things on Google only for it to throw up rubbish results. With that in mind and seeing as how a reasonable proportion of people arriving at this blog are doing so because they think I have some advice on beating Stick Tennis’ most annoying of characters I thought I should briefly share how I finally did it. With anything there is usually more than one formula for success and this is simply how I achieved it.

Before I begin it is important to note that if you have ever played or even watched tennis then you need to forget everything you’ve learned about how the game is played. In order to win you’ll need the forehand of Fernando Gonzalez, the amalgamated backhand of Roger Federer and David Nalbandian, the tenacity of Rafael Nadal and Federer’s ability to drop shot a tennis ball like it was a rock. Standing against you, Beacher has the pace of Usain Bolt, the stamina of Haile Gebreselassie, the wing span of Yao Ming and the accuracy of some sort of tennis robot. I forgot to mention that to make things worse you’re saddled with the positional awareness of Titus Bramble.

As you are unable (or I haven’t figured out how) to tell your guy to approach the net you’ll need to be able to dominate the baseline rallies. How do you do that? In essence it is very simple; all you need to do is time your shots close to or, preferably, exactly on the prac-o-meter line. If you are going to mistime your shots you need to make sure that you don’t fire the ball down the middle of the court. If you do it will enable him to move forward and either hit a clean winner or take a dominant net position. Once you are hitting the ball with decent timing the easiest way to win the baseline rallies is to push him cross-court a couple of times before peeling off a forehand winner. Note, during this process if your backhand cross-court is too good he will likely mishit it which will clip the top of the net and trickle over (he never actually nets). I don’t think it matters which side you serve to, I tend to prefer to serve to his backhand but I think that’s personal preference rather than decent strategy.

Holding serve shouldn’t be too much of a problem once you start to win the baseline exchanges. Breaking serve is a whole new proposition though. Willy likes to serve and volley, at a guess I’d say he does it 75% of the time and the best chance to have a greater than 3 stroke rally is to return to him cross-court. On the odd occasion he doesn’t charge the net (easier to tell on the second serve) I think the return down the line is more effective but when he does serve and volley I haven’t won a single point after using that shot. Once he is at the net, for some reason you’re unable to lob him so you only have two options, try and pass him or hit it straight at him. As I mentioned before he has a ridiculous wing-span and so only the most accurately timed of passes will beat him from the baseline. I think the best option is to drop shot it at his feet. IF your timing is good then hopefully you’ll rush forward and his dig will sit up nicely for you to put away. If not then he’ll more than likely lob you. The other option is your guy doesn’t run forward and he dinks it over the net, in this instance the best option seems to be to dink it back and hope you he sets it up for you to put it away. Drop shotting when he isn’t at the net or to the wings when he is, is a low percentage shot as 9/10 he’ll tuck it away.

Having finally beaten him 6-0 I’ve now uninstalled the game because it was driving me crazy and taking up far too much of my time. Best of luck.

Edit: Like a true addict I kept the game uninstalled for about 24 hours before giving in and playing again.