Kalypso Media’s newest release, Matchpoint – Tennis Championships, allows you the opportunity to embark on your own career as you seek to become a Grand Slam – or Grand Masters – champion. You’ll begin as an upstart with low ratings, working your way up the rankings and training your skills along the way.
Below, you’ll find everything you need to know about career mode in Matchpoint – Tennis Championships. Tips will also be included.
What is career mode in Matchpoint – Tennis Championships?
Career mode allows you to create a player and begin your own career in professional tennis. The big issue is you’ll start with ratings at or in the 20s and you’ll quickly find that players you’re competing against have ratings that are easily three to four times greater than yours. Still, you can create a male or female player and select from a bevy of nations to represent. Choose your handedness and backhand style, then proceed to customizing your gear and its colors.
You’ll immediately be thrown into a tiebreaker to determine the match winner after finishing your character creation. Simply win the tiebreaker to proceed to your career proper. On a side note, during playthrough, five trophies popped during the tiebreaker alone, including gold trophies Good Eye and Ace of Aces.
Gameplay tips for career mode in Matchpoint – Tennis Championships
The following will be tips for playing career in Matchpoint. While some of these tips can be found in general in the controls guide, the tips below will be more focused to career play.
1. Create mostly female and left-handed players in Matchpoint – Tennis Championships
There are five female players to choose from in exhibition and online matches in Matchpoint. That’s not many, but there are only 16 total players to choose (18 if you purchased the two legends). Further, only one of the 16 players is a lefty. Making both female players and lefties helps even out the selections as the six empty spaces on the character selection screen represent the six career slots.
Lefties also present different angles for opponents to receive the ball. This can prove extremely useful when serving (more below). However, it can take some time adjusting to playing with a lefty if you’re a natural righty, so keep that in mind.
2. Choose the difficulty that best represents the challenge you seek
There are three difficulties in Matchpoint: Amateur, Semi-Pro, and Professional. It may be easier to think of the as the traditional Easy, Normal, and Hard. Semi-Pro presents a good challenge for beginners, and Professional will really challenge your skills. On Easy, don’t be surprised if you win in straight sets every match until reaching the top 50.
When it comes to career, it really depends on your goals. If you want to be ranked first in the world as soon as possible, choose Amateur. If you want a challenge, but only enough that you still think you’ll wine every match, chose Semi-Pro. If you want to be tested and the results based off of your skills, then choose Professional.
It might be best to play on Amateur or Semi-Pro until you’ve unlocked all equipment or thoroughly raised your attributes. Playing on Professional against players with attributes between 70 and 90 while yours are still in the 20s may just be too difficult.
3. Focus on training and exhibition matches early on in your career
With the aforementioned low ratings, it’s recommended to focus on training and exhibition matches in the early stages of your career. On the calendar, you can see what can be played and when. Some days will have multiple events, forcing you to choose between one of them. Tournaments span several days and will cause you to miss other scheduled events. Training and exhibition matches always take one day.
Exhibition matches are a great way to test your skills on Semi-Pro or Professional. Even though there are rewards at stake, these are literally matches with no stakes as they don’t affect your rankings at all (more below). It’s also a good way to try out different tactics on the court.
While tournaments give you the most rewards with exhibition matches giving you less, unless you’re playing on Amateur, focus on training. If both training and an exhibition match are scheduled, choose training. The training exercises are rather simple and you should be able to hit gold each time. Your stats will increase gradually, including the added benefits from your chosen equipment, with your choice of coach affecting different ratings.
4. A breakdown of the three coaches in your career – at least initially
Speaking of coaches, you have three to choose from, two of which will need to be unlocked in tournaments as rewards (look for “Coach” as a reward when viewing tournaments and matches). Each coach focuses on two of the six attributes for your player, meaning you will need to choose between them for your player to create a well-rounded player. Simply head to “Coach” under your Player tab and select them with the D-Pad. That’s it, and just return to the previous page.
(The Player tab is also where you can change the equipment you win by the same method.)
First is coach Eddison Fitzpatrick of Ireland, who is unlocked when you start your career. Fitzpatrick gives bonuses in training to the Serve and Volley attributes. He gives a 120 percent bonus to Serve and a 110 percent bonus to volley.
Next is coach Alexandria Castaneda of Spain. Her focus is on the Forehand and Backhand. She gives 120 percent bonus to Forehand and 110 percent to Backhand, which is indicated by the “+3” and “+2+ in the image to begin this section.
Finally is coach Husam Omar of the UAE. His focus is on Power and Fitness. He gives 120 percent bonus to Power and 110 percent to Fitness.
You’ll notice their skill cap is listed at 40. This means that once you hit 40, you’ll need to unlock new coaches to help improve your attributes beyond 40.
4. Understanding MPT Points and MPT Ranking
In Matchpoint’s career, your ranking is based on MPT Points, or Machpoint Tennis Points. These translate to your MPT Ranking. The more points you accumulate, the higher you’ll climb in the rankings. Pictured is the accumulation from winning three tournaments, but it pales in comparison to the top ten, who have several thousand points. Still, it’s enough to have been ranked 54. There are no other function for MPT Points, such as an in-game shop (which is absent).
Each tournament will reward you with MPT Points depending on your placement, earning the full amount with a victory. The rank of the tournament will determine the amount of MPT Points at stake with the lower tier rewarding you the least and the top tier the most.
5. Understanding the five tiers of events
Of those tiers, there are five in Matchpoint. Each tier represents a different difficulty in opponents and tournament length. The tiers also have different names and because Matchpoint doesn’t possess the licenses to the major tournaments, the Grand Slam tournaments are instead called Grand Masters.
Tier 1 is the MPT Open tier (pictured above). These are the initial tournaments that you’ll qualify for once you begin your career as there is no rank limit. These have the fewest rounds and players, but also reward you the least amount of MPT Points.
Tier 2 is the MPT Championship tier. This tier has one more round and more players than the first tier. They will reward you with better awards, including double the MPT Points.
Tier 3 is the MPT Elite tier and while it does have “elite” in the name, it’s not the top tier, but that doesn’t mean you should take these tournaments lightly. They have the same rounds and players as the second tier, but again reward double the MPT Points with 1000 instead of the 500 from Tier 2.
Tier 4 is the MPT International tier. These will all be tournaments as part of the International Series. There is an added round and even more players (64 from 32), and importantly, the matches are five sets rather than three sets. Instead of doubling the MPT Points, you’ll instead receive 500 more points for 1,500.
Finally, Tier 5 is the aforementioned Grand Masters tier consisting of the four premiere events: Matchpoint’s version of The Australian Open, The French Open, The U.S. Open, and Wimbledon. These are the biggest tournaments with seven rounds and 128 players. Like with Tier 4, these are also five sets. These tournaments reward you with the most MPT Points at 2,000 and the best equipment.
You’ll also notice that as the higher tiers become more prevalent, you’ll need to be ranked at a certain threshold to qualify. The French Grand Masters requires a rank of 100 or higher, for example. Otherwise, those tournaments will remain blocked to you. That just means you’ll need to win some tournaments after raising your attributes to qualify!
6. Use opponent positioning for easy aces and points
The quickest way to score points – thus the quickest way to victory – is to serve aces. However, aces aren’t so easily achieved. That being said, there is a simple way to game the system a bit and land some aces. Use your opponent’s positioning to your advantage.
If your opponent is standing closer to the sideline, then stand middle and aim a flat or kick serve right down the middle. If they’re far enough over and you placed it well with great power, you should have an ace that shows your opponent flailing at the ball.
If your opponent is shading toward the middle, then move a bit to the side and aim for the far corner of the serve box. Don’t aim too close to the net as you’ll likely hit the net instead. If done well, then the ace should be simple to land.
If you’re having trouble unlocking the Ace of Aces trophy or achievement for landing three aces in one game, then use the positioning of your opponent to achieve this. During playthrough, many sets were won with not three, but four consecutive aces by using positioning. You’ll also pop Ace Master for landing 100 aces.
7. Discover other players’ strengths and weaknesses
As you play and force your opponent into different situations – or the reverse – you’ll unlock the strengths and weakness of your opponent. A box will appear in the top right of the page. You can see what strengths and weaknesses you’ve unlocked with an opponent in the pause menu during the match. The pictured strength is that the opponent “becomes tougher during break points.” It’s kind of difficult to avoid break points, so this is one of those you’ll just to play through.
The pictured weakness says the opponent has a frail forehand. In that case, keep hitting toward the forehand side of the opponent. More mistakes means they’ll be more prone to hit the net or hit the ball out of bounds with the forehand.
Other strengths include Long Game (tougher with long rallies) and Top Spin Master (excels with top spin shots). Other weaknesses include Gives Up (makes more mistakes when down by three or more sets), Set Point Pressure (chokes on set point), and Too Close (slower reactions at the net). You’ll need to face opponents multiple times to find all of their strengths and weakness.
Play to your opponent’s weaknesses, forcing them to make mistakes. Avoid playing to your opponent’s strengths lest you want to give up points.
Now you have everything you need to know about career mode. Train your player up to present a formidable challenge to all opponents. Win those Grand Masters and leave your mark on the tennis world!
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