I may as well chime in with my comments on the final from Roland Garros yesterday. Federer definitely played a very good match. He was hitting his shots the first seven games. My feeling at the time was that it would be tough for him to sustain that level throughout the match. That's been everyone's problem in beating Nadal over five sets in Paris. Soderling did it once. On that surface over three out of five sets, Rafa's defense is simply too good for anyone's offense.
I thought that Federer did a couple of things tactically that I think helped him beyond just great shot-making. I liked when he stepped up and drove second-serve returns against Rafa. Rafa is a great defender who is in his worst defending court position immediately following his second serve. Rather than defending from 10 feet behind the baseline, Rafa has to defend that shot from very close to the baseline. That's not easy to do.
I also liked Roger's use of the slice backhand and drop shots as the match wore on. I thought those drop shots kept Rafa unsure of how deep to play in rally and defending situations. Roger hit several outright drop shot winners and that threat kept Rafa up a bit closer than he would have liked, allowing Roger to hurt him with backhand drives on occasion.
Roger also took a few more balls out of the air with his forehand. That's a risky play for sure, but you have to take risks to beat Rafa on clay. That's why people rarely beat him on clay. Rafa forces players to play lower margin of safety shots to beat him.
Perhaps I'm a man with a theory looking for confirmation, but I found confirmation of my general theory that at most levels on most surfaces, defense beats offense in tennis. Roger Federer is the greatest offensive player in tennis history. His serve and forehand are two of the best weapons in the history of the game, if not the best weapons. Yet they are not good enough to beat the greatest defender in the history of the game on the clay of Roland Garros.
ADDENDUM: One more thing. I was very impressed by Federer's forehand in the first seven games. It seemed to me, without going back and looking at the tape, that virtually every time Nadal played a ball to Federer's forehand, he lost the point. Maybe not right away. But Federer was in utter control once he was able to hit a forehand. That's tough to sustain, obviously, but I was struck by just how fabulous a weapon Federer's forehand can be when he's in full flight.
Monday, June 06, 2011
Saturday, June 04, 2011
Threat Assessment
Rather than asking a coach or a teacher what I should do during a tennis match, my modus operandi was to go down a quick checklist.
1) Can this person put enough balls in play to beat me? I usually assessed this in the warm up. As a kid I played tennis in Minnesota and in the early rounds, the answer to this question was often "no". If the answer was "no" I simply hit balls over the net and waited for the opponent to miss. If, "yes", on to...
2) Does this person have an obvious weakness? Again, obvious weaknesses show up in the five minute warm up. Usually this will be a backhand. Forehand weaknesses are usually more subtle. Volley and overhead weakness, movement trouble, short second serves, etc are often pretty obvious. If I found a weakness, I exploited it. If I couldn't find a weakness, I'd move on to ...
3) Can I find a weakness? This is tougher than spotting an obvious weakness. To do this you have to move the ball around more during play. You have to mix up velocities and spins. Perhaps the backhand is sound, but not so sound on the run or high or low. Modern forehands often break down under pressure or when the player is on the run to their dominant side. Usually what I'll do is just move the person around the court and observe the shots I receive in reply. If I can't find any weaknesses...
4) I'll begin to try different game plans to see if I can win points. In my case that was generally to serve and volley. Hitting winning shots is easier to do from the front of the court than from the rear of the court. If you're a good defender, maybe you draw your opponent forward so you can pass or lob them. Maybe you just grind them down, forcing them to beat you with winning shots from bad court positions.
In the course of going down this checklist, hopefully I found some way to win the match. Finding a weakness and being able to exploit it to win a match are two different things. It may be that your opponent can't do something as well as something else, but you can't get to the weakness, or worse, the weakness is still better than your strength.
There is no magic bullet for every opponent. But going down some sort of checklist will help you find ways to win more matches.
1) Can this person put enough balls in play to beat me? I usually assessed this in the warm up. As a kid I played tennis in Minnesota and in the early rounds, the answer to this question was often "no". If the answer was "no" I simply hit balls over the net and waited for the opponent to miss. If, "yes", on to...
2) Does this person have an obvious weakness? Again, obvious weaknesses show up in the five minute warm up. Usually this will be a backhand. Forehand weaknesses are usually more subtle. Volley and overhead weakness, movement trouble, short second serves, etc are often pretty obvious. If I found a weakness, I exploited it. If I couldn't find a weakness, I'd move on to ...
3) Can I find a weakness? This is tougher than spotting an obvious weakness. To do this you have to move the ball around more during play. You have to mix up velocities and spins. Perhaps the backhand is sound, but not so sound on the run or high or low. Modern forehands often break down under pressure or when the player is on the run to their dominant side. Usually what I'll do is just move the person around the court and observe the shots I receive in reply. If I can't find any weaknesses...
4) I'll begin to try different game plans to see if I can win points. In my case that was generally to serve and volley. Hitting winning shots is easier to do from the front of the court than from the rear of the court. If you're a good defender, maybe you draw your opponent forward so you can pass or lob them. Maybe you just grind them down, forcing them to beat you with winning shots from bad court positions.
In the course of going down this checklist, hopefully I found some way to win the match. Finding a weakness and being able to exploit it to win a match are two different things. It may be that your opponent can't do something as well as something else, but you can't get to the weakness, or worse, the weakness is still better than your strength.
There is no magic bullet for every opponent. But going down some sort of checklist will help you find ways to win more matches.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Player Development Systems
I ended my last post with a comment that the changing tennis landscape has implications for the USTA's Player Development Program. Any system that's purpose is to produce world-class tennis players is a system that takes time. Ten years at a minimum. The kids get into the system at a young age and by the age of 18-28 one or two or more of them dominate the international tennis scene. That's the goal anyway.
So you're in charge of such a system, nationwide. What do you do? Well Patrick McEnroe is that person in the US and he has hired Jose Higueras as his head coach. Together they map out the training of young tennis players. Both men agree that young American players are hurt by not playing enough on clay. With an eye toward the success of Spanish and French players, and of Federer and Djokovic, all of whom played predominantly on clay as kids, McEnroe and Higueras are making the top US juniors train more on clay. They have installed clay courts at their regional training centers and at the National Tennis Center in New York. Training on clay has worked for the current generation of stars, so we'll have to train our next generation of players on clay if we want them to be stars.
That's the argument.
Notice any problem with that line of reasoning? Ever heard of a general fighting the last war?
If the landscape does not change over the next ten or twenty years, then starting our young players off on clay is a good call. But what if it does change? What if the game speeds up again for some reason? Increased skill or different technique or another type of string. What if the courts or balls of ten or twenty years from now are much faster or much softer or much harder or something that doesn't suit players who grew up playing on clay?
Any long term plans are subject to this type of risk. Ask any business person or government planner. The best laid plans of mice and men...
The longer the plan, the longer the process, the greater risk that the plan will not work out as you hoped.
So what's a national tennis federation to do? Ah, another post!
So you're in charge of such a system, nationwide. What do you do? Well Patrick McEnroe is that person in the US and he has hired Jose Higueras as his head coach. Together they map out the training of young tennis players. Both men agree that young American players are hurt by not playing enough on clay. With an eye toward the success of Spanish and French players, and of Federer and Djokovic, all of whom played predominantly on clay as kids, McEnroe and Higueras are making the top US juniors train more on clay. They have installed clay courts at their regional training centers and at the National Tennis Center in New York. Training on clay has worked for the current generation of stars, so we'll have to train our next generation of players on clay if we want them to be stars.
That's the argument.
Notice any problem with that line of reasoning? Ever heard of a general fighting the last war?
If the landscape does not change over the next ten or twenty years, then starting our young players off on clay is a good call. But what if it does change? What if the game speeds up again for some reason? Increased skill or different technique or another type of string. What if the courts or balls of ten or twenty years from now are much faster or much softer or much harder or something that doesn't suit players who grew up playing on clay?
Any long term plans are subject to this type of risk. Ask any business person or government planner. The best laid plans of mice and men...
The longer the plan, the longer the process, the greater risk that the plan will not work out as you hoped.
So what's a national tennis federation to do? Ah, another post!
Sunday, May 22, 2011
As California Goes
As California tennis goes, so goes American tennis. Simplification? Sure. But California is our most populous state and a state with a long and rich tennis history. It's reasonable to expect great American tennis players to come from California. They have in the past.
California tennis is played on hard courts. Players generally hit the ball fairly flat and take the ball on the rise. They hug the baseline and play a forcing style of play. That's what Tom Stow taught in Northern California and I think Robert Landsdorp favors that style in Southern California, too. I don't think that's an unfair or misleading characterization of California tennis.
So how does that style of play work at the top levels of tennis in 2011? I think not well.
Two primary changes in the tennis environment have worked against the California style. The first is the strings. The new co-polyester strings allow for much greater spin generation. This allows players to hit with higher ball speeds and get the ball over the net and into the court. The second change is to the court surfaces. The hard courts are far slower than in the past and even Wimbledon's grass courts favor baseline players.
Playing up near the baseline, taking the ball on the rise, and attacking behind those sorts of groundstrokes is very difficult now. Players who grew up on clay, playing well behind the baseline, have time to get to the ball and rip shots with their co-poly strings. The neutral balls from these types of players even give the California-style player a lot of trouble. A ball hit fairly high over the net with a lot of speed and spin is extremely difficult to hit on the rise, with authority, and adequate margin of safety to keep errors low enough to win.
Unless California tennis changes to reflect the new conditions under which top-level tennis is played, I don't think we can expect many great players to come from California. That dramatically reduces the chance of there being any great American players in the near future.
If the conditions on tour change maybe the California-style will re-emerge as dominant. If not, the players and coaches in California will have to change or be selected against by the very competitive tennis environment.
UPDATE: This is awesome. As soon as you write something it can become obsolete. I turned on the French Open a few minutes ago to watch Ferrer and Nieminen play. Brad Gilbert says that he's seeing more and more hard court tennis being played on clay this year. The balls on tour are quicker than the last few years and the clay courts are playing much quicker. So players, like Djokovic and Ferrer, are moving up onto the baseline much more consistently. Gilbert says that he's seeing a lot more "one two" tennis, meaning serve and forehands ending points.
I saw one point where Nieminen hit a second serve and Ferrer ripped a return from inside the baseline. Nieminen got the ball back, but weekly and Ferrer unloaded on another forehand from inside the court. This time Nieminen barely got the ball back and Ferrer finished him off with a high forehand winner from about the service line. One, two, three. Receiving. On the clay of Roland Garros.
Can the return of the dominant Californian be far behind?
The landscape can change quickly. What does that mean for the USTA Player Development system? The subject of another post...
California tennis is played on hard courts. Players generally hit the ball fairly flat and take the ball on the rise. They hug the baseline and play a forcing style of play. That's what Tom Stow taught in Northern California and I think Robert Landsdorp favors that style in Southern California, too. I don't think that's an unfair or misleading characterization of California tennis.
So how does that style of play work at the top levels of tennis in 2011? I think not well.
Two primary changes in the tennis environment have worked against the California style. The first is the strings. The new co-polyester strings allow for much greater spin generation. This allows players to hit with higher ball speeds and get the ball over the net and into the court. The second change is to the court surfaces. The hard courts are far slower than in the past and even Wimbledon's grass courts favor baseline players.
Playing up near the baseline, taking the ball on the rise, and attacking behind those sorts of groundstrokes is very difficult now. Players who grew up on clay, playing well behind the baseline, have time to get to the ball and rip shots with their co-poly strings. The neutral balls from these types of players even give the California-style player a lot of trouble. A ball hit fairly high over the net with a lot of speed and spin is extremely difficult to hit on the rise, with authority, and adequate margin of safety to keep errors low enough to win.
Unless California tennis changes to reflect the new conditions under which top-level tennis is played, I don't think we can expect many great players to come from California. That dramatically reduces the chance of there being any great American players in the near future.
If the conditions on tour change maybe the California-style will re-emerge as dominant. If not, the players and coaches in California will have to change or be selected against by the very competitive tennis environment.
UPDATE: This is awesome. As soon as you write something it can become obsolete. I turned on the French Open a few minutes ago to watch Ferrer and Nieminen play. Brad Gilbert says that he's seeing more and more hard court tennis being played on clay this year. The balls on tour are quicker than the last few years and the clay courts are playing much quicker. So players, like Djokovic and Ferrer, are moving up onto the baseline much more consistently. Gilbert says that he's seeing a lot more "one two" tennis, meaning serve and forehands ending points.
I saw one point where Nieminen hit a second serve and Ferrer ripped a return from inside the baseline. Nieminen got the ball back, but weekly and Ferrer unloaded on another forehand from inside the court. This time Nieminen barely got the ball back and Ferrer finished him off with a high forehand winner from about the service line. One, two, three. Receiving. On the clay of Roland Garros.
Can the return of the dominant Californian be far behind?
The landscape can change quickly. What does that mean for the USTA Player Development system? The subject of another post...
Monday, May 16, 2011
A Helpful Nudge
OK, I've been pretty harsh on the value of coaches and coaching lately on this blog. It's only fair that I toss up an example of where coaching helped. In this example, I think nearly all the credit should go to the player. I've given this sort of advice to countless players without any effect. Same message. Same messenger. Different recipient. I say the recipient matters more than the messenger and the message. In any case, some coaching did help.
Below is an image of a player at a critical moment in his service motion. He is just about to lose contact with the ground.
You can see that at his final push off the ground the force vector from his foot through his mass center angles toward the back fence. Not good.
I took a video (from which the drawing was made) and showed him his serve. I told him to let his weight flow forward more as he was pushing against the ground. Here is a similar picture of his very next serve:
With one video and one sentence of instruction, this player improved his service motion dramatically.
Let's insert the before and after videos. Before:
And here is the better (after) video:
Look at how much better his weight flows into his serve on the second video. Look at both his hip motion as he pushes off and where his left foot lands relative to where it started (the baseline is a nice reference).
As I said, the lion's share of the credit goes to the student. He is a great athlete who possesses more body awareness than most people. But I have to admit that this little bit of coaching helped improve his service motion.
Total elapsed time of the lesson? Between one and two minutes.
Below is an image of a player at a critical moment in his service motion. He is just about to lose contact with the ground.
You can see that at his final push off the ground the force vector from his foot through his mass center angles toward the back fence. Not good.
I took a video (from which the drawing was made) and showed him his serve. I told him to let his weight flow forward more as he was pushing against the ground. Here is a similar picture of his very next serve:
Let's insert the before and after videos. Before:
And here is the better (after) video:
Look at how much better his weight flows into his serve on the second video. Look at both his hip motion as he pushes off and where his left foot lands relative to where it started (the baseline is a nice reference).
As I said, the lion's share of the credit goes to the student. He is a great athlete who possesses more body awareness than most people. But I have to admit that this little bit of coaching helped improve his service motion.
Total elapsed time of the lesson? Between one and two minutes.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Style or Substance
Do you want to look like a good tennis player or do you want to be a good tennis player?
Too many players, parents, and coaches think looking like a good tennis player will cause a person to be a good player. Not so. It's possible to have strokes that look like the strokes good players use, but to be a poor tennis player.
Too many players, parents, and coaches think looking like a good tennis player will cause a person to be a good player. Not so. It's possible to have strokes that look like the strokes good players use, but to be a poor tennis player.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
"I want to win state this year."
A young fellow I know recently said "I want to win state this year." He meant this as an individual, not as a team. Easier said than done. Many states allow lots of kids to say they "won state" each year by having multiple singes and doubles flights. Fair enough. I'm not really talking about the three or four doubles "state champs" here, but this post applies with diminishing relevance to any kid who hopes to "win state".
My question for those kids who want to win state is, "Do you want to do what it takes to win state?"
It's easy to say you want to do something, but putting in the work necessary to give yourself a chance to achieve that goal much tougher. Practicing and training can be tedious at times. Maybe you'd prefer to spend Saturday nights with your girlfriend instead of practicing. Who can blame you? But don't come crying to me when you fail to win state if you don't do everything you can to prepare in the months and years leading up to the tournament. Talk is cheap.
I italicized "give yourself a chance" in the paragraph above because that's really all you can do. You cannot do anything that guarantees you will win state. Very rarely will one person become so much better than all the other kids in a state that they can realistically expect to win state, especially "this year". It takes many years to distance yourself from the pack. Most years two or three or four or five kids have a legitimate chance to be the state tennis singles champion.
If you're one of those kids with a legit shot to win state, keep the tournament in perspective. The tournament only happens once each year, but if we run a thought experiment and play the tournament a hundred different times I think you'll realize that the person who wins one year and those who lose one year may not be the same over all one hundred trials. The best person entering the tournament may win 60 of those trials, for example, with the second player winning 20 times, the third winning 10, and the fourth and fifth each winning 5 times. Those numbers are pulled out of thin air, obviously. The point is that if you win or if you lose this year, keep it in perspective.
If we ran the tournament again the next day, it's likely the results would have been different.
I'm reminded of my own experience as a high school tennis player. I, too, wanted to win state. My junior year I almost did, but lost in the finals to a better player. That better player and I had been frequent practice partners over the previous few years. I knew I could beat him because I had in the past, as recently as the regionals the week before the tournament. But I also knew he could beat me because he had beaten me more times than I had beaten him, including the team regionals right before the individual regionals. Tennis can be that way, can't it.
Anyway, my senior year I was the heavy favorite going into the season. I was runner-up the previous year and had been the top player in my section my age or younger for four or five years by then. But as sometimes happens, a very good player moved into our state the fall of my senior year. In my state we played high school tennis in the spring, so I had a year to practice with this kid. Or not. My choice.
The downside to practicing with a competitor is that by practicing with someone you help them get better. That's tennis. In this case, the kid was a sophomore and wasn't as good as I was. That meant that he was at a different place on his learning curve than I was. My curve was not as steep as his was, which meant that he was going to be getting better faster than I was throughout the year. Trouble.
But I never thought of it in those terms. Just like my friend who beat me the year before and my teammate who won the two state titles the two years before that, I was more than happy to practice with younger players. I wanted to practice with the best players available. He was available and he was damn good. The second best junior in my area. So we practiced together often, probably weekly as I recall.
Luckily I was able to beat him every time we played during that spring season, including in the state championship match. Timing is everything. I got him when he was young. He went on to become much better than I did, I think, winning the title a couple of times and playing tennis at Harvard. I played at a somewhat lesser university (what isn't, huh?). One of the younger kids that he beat, I think maybe even the next year, went on to achieve a top 20 world ranking. Again, timing. That kid was only in 8th grade at the time!!
So you can see how the tennis generations in my state all worked together, though we were fiercely competitive, to get as good as we could. Not all of my practice partners won state, obviously. This can't work out for everyone. Only one guy wins each year. But I don't think the guys who didn't win regretted practicing with me. Sure they helped me get better, but they got better, too.
That's the nature of competition.
So if you "want to win state", get off your ass, find the best people you can to compete against, and get after it. I guarantee the person who wins will have done just that.
My question for those kids who want to win state is, "Do you want to do what it takes to win state?"
It's easy to say you want to do something, but putting in the work necessary to give yourself a chance to achieve that goal much tougher. Practicing and training can be tedious at times. Maybe you'd prefer to spend Saturday nights with your girlfriend instead of practicing. Who can blame you? But don't come crying to me when you fail to win state if you don't do everything you can to prepare in the months and years leading up to the tournament. Talk is cheap.
I italicized "give yourself a chance" in the paragraph above because that's really all you can do. You cannot do anything that guarantees you will win state. Very rarely will one person become so much better than all the other kids in a state that they can realistically expect to win state, especially "this year". It takes many years to distance yourself from the pack. Most years two or three or four or five kids have a legitimate chance to be the state tennis singles champion.
If you're one of those kids with a legit shot to win state, keep the tournament in perspective. The tournament only happens once each year, but if we run a thought experiment and play the tournament a hundred different times I think you'll realize that the person who wins one year and those who lose one year may not be the same over all one hundred trials. The best person entering the tournament may win 60 of those trials, for example, with the second player winning 20 times, the third winning 10, and the fourth and fifth each winning 5 times. Those numbers are pulled out of thin air, obviously. The point is that if you win or if you lose this year, keep it in perspective.
If we ran the tournament again the next day, it's likely the results would have been different.
I'm reminded of my own experience as a high school tennis player. I, too, wanted to win state. My junior year I almost did, but lost in the finals to a better player. That better player and I had been frequent practice partners over the previous few years. I knew I could beat him because I had in the past, as recently as the regionals the week before the tournament. But I also knew he could beat me because he had beaten me more times than I had beaten him, including the team regionals right before the individual regionals. Tennis can be that way, can't it.
Anyway, my senior year I was the heavy favorite going into the season. I was runner-up the previous year and had been the top player in my section my age or younger for four or five years by then. But as sometimes happens, a very good player moved into our state the fall of my senior year. In my state we played high school tennis in the spring, so I had a year to practice with this kid. Or not. My choice.
The downside to practicing with a competitor is that by practicing with someone you help them get better. That's tennis. In this case, the kid was a sophomore and wasn't as good as I was. That meant that he was at a different place on his learning curve than I was. My curve was not as steep as his was, which meant that he was going to be getting better faster than I was throughout the year. Trouble.
But I never thought of it in those terms. Just like my friend who beat me the year before and my teammate who won the two state titles the two years before that, I was more than happy to practice with younger players. I wanted to practice with the best players available. He was available and he was damn good. The second best junior in my area. So we practiced together often, probably weekly as I recall.
Luckily I was able to beat him every time we played during that spring season, including in the state championship match. Timing is everything. I got him when he was young. He went on to become much better than I did, I think, winning the title a couple of times and playing tennis at Harvard. I played at a somewhat lesser university (what isn't, huh?). One of the younger kids that he beat, I think maybe even the next year, went on to achieve a top 20 world ranking. Again, timing. That kid was only in 8th grade at the time!!
So you can see how the tennis generations in my state all worked together, though we were fiercely competitive, to get as good as we could. Not all of my practice partners won state, obviously. This can't work out for everyone. Only one guy wins each year. But I don't think the guys who didn't win regretted practicing with me. Sure they helped me get better, but they got better, too.
That's the nature of competition.
So if you "want to win state", get off your ass, find the best people you can to compete against, and get after it. I guarantee the person who wins will have done just that.
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