Not as much improvement as I had hoped

Was it a case of nerves?  Lack of confidence?  I am not really sure...but though a practice session on Saturday went pretty well, my first Straight Pool match on Sunday could not be considered a success.  We were both playing to 75, and I started off badly by losing the lag by a wide margin (not a huge deal - just meant I had to break) and then scratching on the break (a big deal - loss of two points).  I dug myself out of the hole, and after five racks I actually held a slim lead at 40-36.  I was missing shots I should have been making, though, especially shots to the pockets at the head of the table.  My safeties were pretty bad too.  My only good shots seemed to be the shots coming out of a cluster - deciding which balls would go into a pocket when a cluster of balls was hit a certain way.  My position play was pretty bad, too.

My opponent ran 13 in a row in the middle of the match, easily more than either of us had run up to that time, and soon he was ahead by 20 at 69-49.  In the last rack, I actually had a chance to catch up a bit, but then my last mistake hit - I miscued on an easy shot, giving him a runout of the match.  Final score was 75-58.  

I think I learned quite a bit about the need to concentrate at all times on all shots, and to play better safeties.  My second match will be sometime in the next few days, so we'll see...