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Thursday, July 16, 2015
THANK YOU CITI OPEN - BARRY MACKAY 1990
Recently the tennis world lost one of the good guys - I'm sure there's some fellow out there that might have a bad thing to say about Barry Mackay, but I'm just as certain that he has long since forgiven him, such was the kindness and generosity that became as much his hallmark as that endearingly long face, booming voice, and broad shoulders that stood tall for years at tennis courts around the world.
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
THANK YOU CITI OPEN - GUILLERMO VILAS 1984
Everything about it was blistering hot - the seats, the air, the sidewalk, the parking lot - the kind of heat that makes you want to hide somewhere dark, the kind of heat that makes you feel that one more second of sunlight is going to put you over the edge of your sanity. It affected everything we did - where we parked, the matches we chose to watch, where we sat in the stadium, and how long we waited for autographs afterwards. I had trouble keeping hold of my father's hand as we walked through the complex because the sweat dripping for his hand, mixed with mine, made it more like holding onto a newly caught fish. And there were so many people walking around here and there, that I worried I would let go of the grip and get lost.
He never did let go, though.
He never did let go, though.
I remember the stench of stagnant, standing water everywhere - it's been long since resolved, but back in the day, it just wasn't well irrigated, and after frequent DC midsummer deluges, the combination of heat and trash and ever-present insects, made it oppressive. It was so pungent, I swear, I could taste it. And as we walked towards the stadium for the first match of the DC National Bank Tennis Classic in 1984, my first time at the tournament, and in the stadium, my thoughts were invaded repeatedly by the fear of taking one wrong step and placing some part, god forbid any part, of my body in that repulsive stagnant water that had accumulated near the concession stands, under the admin tents, and even at the entrance to the stadium seating.
But the minute we entered that makeshift colosseum, the sensory overload of seeing Guillermo Vilas, languidly stroking backhands from 12 feet behind the baseline in the warm up, left no room for the potential revulsion that had consumed my mind 10 minutes earlier. Already drenched in a full sweat, with his barrel chest protruding ominously through the fibers of an almost effeminate Carolina blue and white striped Ellesse shirt, and his feet twitching endlessly as the sound of the har-tru crumbling under the weight of his mammoth legs and tiny feet, the sight of Guillermo Vilas on a tennis court, was enough to make a 10 year old boy feel like he'd seen the other side of the galaxy.
He didn't so much hit the ball as bully it - an abusive muscling of it hither and fro, the racquet disappearing in a blur of wood, fiberglass, strings and grit. And although I had played tennis already for 6 years, and had seen it on television for four, I didn't truly comprehend the full extent of the human capacity to manipulate something, anything, in such a violently balletic way, until I saw him run around a backhand return to hit inside out to the opposite corner of the court.
Sending his opponent, one Jimmy Brown, scrambling comically to his right to retrieve his opening salvo of the point, the racquet head disappearing behind his head in my first live sighting of a reverse forehand, Vilas made a kind of music with the slide, the grunt and the melodic pinging of the ball against his strings, that belied the overbearing nature of his strokes. By the end of the point, Vilas was at the net hitting a drop volley, and Brown was lampooning some cartoon characters whose slipping feet take all the power out of their desperate lunge forward, only to remain in the same place and watch the ball bounce two, then three, then four times before it was retrieved by a ball boy.
How I wanted to be that ball boy! How I longed to be on that court!
I had read about Vilas, even seen him lose to Ivan Lendl in the semi-final of he US Open the year before, but here in person, he seemed enormous, nothing more so than the bulging meat hook masquerading as a left forearm, that I imagined being strong enough to lift me in one fit of dismissive brute force. His sultry black locks bounced perpetually off his shoulders, with each shuffle to the left, and shuffle to the right, then up above the back of his head as his body contorted mercilessly to apply the finishing touch on another forehand, this one hit inside-in, up the line, for another winner. There wasn't a moment of hesitation in him, nor a hint of expression on his face, such was his concentration on the minutiae of hitting a tennis ball, and this too was a revelation. Because it never dawned on me, until that moment, watching Guillermo Vilas pummel some poor American kid from Florida, into a dusty green oblivion, that a tennis ball could be hit with such apparent abandon, but actual precision.
And as he galloped timidly towards the net at the conclusion of this match, despite evidence to the contrary (the heavy breathing, the sweat and the strings of his racquet askew in every direction) Guillermo Vilas looked more like he had finished a practice session than a three-set victory over a woefully overmatched, but resolutely committed opponent, that poor Jimmy Brown from Florida. He looked like he could have played three more sets, like he wanted to play three more sets, and in that moment, my understanding of just how incredible these athletes really are, exploded like a little big bang in my mind, that continues to expand and expand to this very day.
And then I felt that damn heat again.
There are moments in my personal history with tennis that are etched indelibly in my mind - moments that if I close my eyes, and lose myself in thought, are as rich and vibrant today as they were some 31 years ago. For one of those moments, watching Guillermo Vilas play a tennis match on clay, and the inspiration that it continues to provide me to this day, I owe a debt gratitude not easily repaid, to this marvelous tournament - I'm damn well going to try.
Thank you Citi Open.
I've just received word that I have been approved for press credentials at the Citi Open in Washington, DC, from August 1-9. And during the tournament I'll be posting my impressions, and interviews, and images from the William H. Fitzgerald Tennis Center at 16th & Kennedy. So be sure to check in daily to The Tennis Column for updates.
I've just received word that I have been approved for press credentials at the Citi Open in Washington, DC, from August 1-9. And during the tournament I'll be posting my impressions, and interviews, and images from the William H. Fitzgerald Tennis Center at 16th & Kennedy. So be sure to check in daily to The Tennis Column for updates.
Monday, July 13, 2015
WIMBLEDON 2015 - CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR
So, what did we learn from the final this year? Not much, to be honest. Actually, the result this year, is really the result we should have had last year, where Federer was down a break and (miraculously) found a way to tie the match at two sets a piece. But this year there was no respite from either Djokovic's improved serve and his ever-present return, which neutralized his opponent's greatest strength yet again. There's been a little talk this year in the blogosphere about what is the key to success on grass, and I've always been of the opinion that the return is far more important.
If you needed any more evidence of that, just take a look at the way Djokovic broke the serve of Federer as frequently as he needed to, and how much trouble Federer had doing the same. Both of them have been strong in the serve throughout the tournament, Federer even longer, losing one service game out of the previous 96, before the final, and then proceeded to be broken 4 times today. So while it may seem that the serve is the key success factor, it was clear that with all of the failed break point opportunities on one side, and the successful ones on the other, and who wound up winning the title, it's clear that the key was the return.
The interesting thing is that while Federer appears to continue to be the best player in the world on grass (with one glaring exception) it is Djokovic's viability that I begin to question - after all, how long can he expect to remain as nimble and pliable as he is now? How long can we expect lightning quick responses with impeccable hand-eye coordination, the stretching out of points over and over again, and the impenetrable wall of defense that he's putting up these days? With the exception of his outlier Wimbledon title in 2012, Federer hasn't really won a major for 5 years, and before that he held three at a time and had made the last 7 major finals in a row - that was after making 10 finals in a row before that. Nadal was at the peak of his powers in 2010 and again in 2013, after taking 6 months off - since then, he's won a single major and hasn't made it past the quarterfinal round in his last 3.
So we come to Djokovic, and he appears to be at the peak of his powers, having made 14 major finals in the last 5 years, winning 8 of them, it would appear he is well on his way to the end of the rainbow, but it remains to be seen if there is a pot of gold, or leprechaun waiting for him. The end comes quickly, for those who choose it, and those who do not, and it's hard to imagine him doing much better than he's doing now, but not hard to imagine him doing much, much worse.
On the women's side, Wimbledon has confirmed the one thing that we've all known - Serena Williams is far and away, the best player in the world, and it remains to be seen if she will anoint herself the greatest player in the history of the game. But there is something that hasn't been brought to light, out of either deference or political correctness, that bears discussion: is the state of the women's game the equal of the men's game? And if not, does the palpable absence of reverence for her accomplishments result from one of the "isms" she is wont to claim, or simply an acknowledgement of the paucity of quality that surrounds her?
Gone are the great competitors, with games that had the capacity to challenge her on a regular basis (including her sister's) and left behind is a litany of weak clones with all the aesthetic appeal of her game, and absolutely none of her capacity. I don't usually subscribe to the weak era argument, but watching one paltry substitute after another play exactly the same way, only much much worse, for the last 3 years, has begun to make me wonder. In a quote often ascribed to Albert Einstein that, "...madness is defined as doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result." If so, women's professional tennis is a mad, mad world, indeed.
But on the men's side, the result of the final, was exactly what we should have expected from last year - with only the first and second set results reversed. According to Chris Evert, Federer did what he did last year with a bad back, and as such, with his ruthless dismissal of Andy Murray, there was an expectation that he would be able to get a different result this year. But as it turned out, the one who played better than last year was Djokovic, and the result was equally more in line with where they are in their match up.
Federer still depends heavily on the quality of his serve, and although it had been firing on all cylinders for the past 12 matches, in this one, the quality of Djokovic's return forced him just beyond his comfort zone, and whereas he was broken just once in 12 matches, he was broken 4 times in this one. One can question whether it was the chicken or the egg (did his serve falter or was it caused to falter by the quality of the return), but these are largely academic questions. As it stands, without his serve affording him 1-2 free points per game, the remainder of his arsenal is insufficient to trouble the best player in the world on his worst surface, where he now has 3 Wimbledon titles to his name, and has never lost a final.
This tournament had the potential to mean a lot of things to a lot of people - Nishikori petered out early with an injury, Dimitrov lost to an inspired Gasquet (with the loss looking better and better as he progressed through the draw), Raonic looked right at home on what should the best surface for his serve, and then promptly lost to the first person who could return it with any level of consistency. Gasquet looked like he would finally fulfill the potential of his talents, lauded on the covers of French magazines since he was 9 years old, but he too ran into the juggernaut that his Djokovic and was largely ineffective. His last victim, Stan Wawrinka, was on the verge of entering the pantheon of great players in world tennis, but he, perhaps prophetically, confirmed before the fact, that he is not at the level of those that precede him in prestige and success.
Murray was playing some of the best tennis of his career at Queens and then at Wimbledon, but even the totality of British support for him couldn't overturn the advantage that Federer has over him when it counts. It wasn't to be for him, nor his conqueror. And finally, Nick Kyrigos impressed us with the breadth of his personality, and the shallowness of his game, but in the end, he failed to leave much more of an impression than that of a petulant manchild with more bark than bite. Only time will tell if he can become something more than an Australian Monfils, and finally deliver to that country the major champion it so desperately seeks.
Tangentially, the one area that did surprise me was the extent to which ESPN took advantage of the considerable knowledge and analytical skills of Jason Goodall, who along with Robbie Koenig, is part of the internet's most insightful analyst team in the game, and has been for the last 10 years. But with the advent of hawkeye technology and statistics, to supplement his propensity to analyze the only thing that matters in tennis - the technical - Goodall put to shame the perfunctory pseudo-psychological drivel that normally passes for analysis in the studio. All the talk about pressure and confidence and belief sounds more like the expression of their own perceptions of what they felt as players, but brings us no closer to the answers to the question that we all (should) want to know: how the hell do they do it? It could be that Goodall's long overdue inclusion at the table, and his clear prowess at it, was the only surprise this year.
So in the end, the Championships at Wimbledon 2015 had the potential to make an impression on the tennis world, but once again failed to do so, and as such we learned little from this tournament that we didn't already know. Will the US Open do the same?
I have a feeling that just like the last 5 years of that tournament, the last major of the year will turn out the last surprise of the year as well - because this one sure didn't.
If you needed any more evidence of that, just take a look at the way Djokovic broke the serve of Federer as frequently as he needed to, and how much trouble Federer had doing the same. Both of them have been strong in the serve throughout the tournament, Federer even longer, losing one service game out of the previous 96, before the final, and then proceeded to be broken 4 times today. So while it may seem that the serve is the key success factor, it was clear that with all of the failed break point opportunities on one side, and the successful ones on the other, and who wound up winning the title, it's clear that the key was the return.
The interesting thing is that while Federer appears to continue to be the best player in the world on grass (with one glaring exception) it is Djokovic's viability that I begin to question - after all, how long can he expect to remain as nimble and pliable as he is now? How long can we expect lightning quick responses with impeccable hand-eye coordination, the stretching out of points over and over again, and the impenetrable wall of defense that he's putting up these days? With the exception of his outlier Wimbledon title in 2012, Federer hasn't really won a major for 5 years, and before that he held three at a time and had made the last 7 major finals in a row - that was after making 10 finals in a row before that. Nadal was at the peak of his powers in 2010 and again in 2013, after taking 6 months off - since then, he's won a single major and hasn't made it past the quarterfinal round in his last 3.
So we come to Djokovic, and he appears to be at the peak of his powers, having made 14 major finals in the last 5 years, winning 8 of them, it would appear he is well on his way to the end of the rainbow, but it remains to be seen if there is a pot of gold, or leprechaun waiting for him. The end comes quickly, for those who choose it, and those who do not, and it's hard to imagine him doing much better than he's doing now, but not hard to imagine him doing much, much worse.
On the women's side, Wimbledon has confirmed the one thing that we've all known - Serena Williams is far and away, the best player in the world, and it remains to be seen if she will anoint herself the greatest player in the history of the game. But there is something that hasn't been brought to light, out of either deference or political correctness, that bears discussion: is the state of the women's game the equal of the men's game? And if not, does the palpable absence of reverence for her accomplishments result from one of the "isms" she is wont to claim, or simply an acknowledgement of the paucity of quality that surrounds her?
Gone are the great competitors, with games that had the capacity to challenge her on a regular basis (including her sister's) and left behind is a litany of weak clones with all the aesthetic appeal of her game, and absolutely none of her capacity. I don't usually subscribe to the weak era argument, but watching one paltry substitute after another play exactly the same way, only much much worse, for the last 3 years, has begun to make me wonder. In a quote often ascribed to Albert Einstein that, "...madness is defined as doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result." If so, women's professional tennis is a mad, mad world, indeed.
But on the men's side, the result of the final, was exactly what we should have expected from last year - with only the first and second set results reversed. According to Chris Evert, Federer did what he did last year with a bad back, and as such, with his ruthless dismissal of Andy Murray, there was an expectation that he would be able to get a different result this year. But as it turned out, the one who played better than last year was Djokovic, and the result was equally more in line with where they are in their match up.
Federer still depends heavily on the quality of his serve, and although it had been firing on all cylinders for the past 12 matches, in this one, the quality of Djokovic's return forced him just beyond his comfort zone, and whereas he was broken just once in 12 matches, he was broken 4 times in this one. One can question whether it was the chicken or the egg (did his serve falter or was it caused to falter by the quality of the return), but these are largely academic questions. As it stands, without his serve affording him 1-2 free points per game, the remainder of his arsenal is insufficient to trouble the best player in the world on his worst surface, where he now has 3 Wimbledon titles to his name, and has never lost a final.
This tournament had the potential to mean a lot of things to a lot of people - Nishikori petered out early with an injury, Dimitrov lost to an inspired Gasquet (with the loss looking better and better as he progressed through the draw), Raonic looked right at home on what should the best surface for his serve, and then promptly lost to the first person who could return it with any level of consistency. Gasquet looked like he would finally fulfill the potential of his talents, lauded on the covers of French magazines since he was 9 years old, but he too ran into the juggernaut that his Djokovic and was largely ineffective. His last victim, Stan Wawrinka, was on the verge of entering the pantheon of great players in world tennis, but he, perhaps prophetically, confirmed before the fact, that he is not at the level of those that precede him in prestige and success.
Murray was playing some of the best tennis of his career at Queens and then at Wimbledon, but even the totality of British support for him couldn't overturn the advantage that Federer has over him when it counts. It wasn't to be for him, nor his conqueror. And finally, Nick Kyrigos impressed us with the breadth of his personality, and the shallowness of his game, but in the end, he failed to leave much more of an impression than that of a petulant manchild with more bark than bite. Only time will tell if he can become something more than an Australian Monfils, and finally deliver to that country the major champion it so desperately seeks.
Tangentially, the one area that did surprise me was the extent to which ESPN took advantage of the considerable knowledge and analytical skills of Jason Goodall, who along with Robbie Koenig, is part of the internet's most insightful analyst team in the game, and has been for the last 10 years. But with the advent of hawkeye technology and statistics, to supplement his propensity to analyze the only thing that matters in tennis - the technical - Goodall put to shame the perfunctory pseudo-psychological drivel that normally passes for analysis in the studio. All the talk about pressure and confidence and belief sounds more like the expression of their own perceptions of what they felt as players, but brings us no closer to the answers to the question that we all (should) want to know: how the hell do they do it? It could be that Goodall's long overdue inclusion at the table, and his clear prowess at it, was the only surprise this year.
So in the end, the Championships at Wimbledon 2015 had the potential to make an impression on the tennis world, but once again failed to do so, and as such we learned little from this tournament that we didn't already know. Will the US Open do the same?
I have a feeling that just like the last 5 years of that tournament, the last major of the year will turn out the last surprise of the year as well - because this one sure didn't.
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
WHERE IN THE WORLD IS RAFAEL NADAL?
That's four years in a row now - four years in a row that Rafael Nadal, one of the greatest players in the history of the game, has lost to players that he has no business losing to at Wimbledon. For a man who made 5 finals in a row (with a one year hiatus when he skipped the tournament in 2009) to go from a man to be dealt with to this is as surprising as his demise, at this venue anyway, was precipitous. And ironically, while the agents of his struggles on this surface, one that is in many ways well suited to his particular set of skills, have changed, the more things change, the more they remain the same.
The outlier in this 4-year nightmare, was actually the first in 2012, when he lost to an unknown and unremarkable Belgian Steve Darcis. A player with almost no record of success to speak of (other than his generous ranking of 100+), and absolutely no grass court record, didn't win the match so much by his prowess, as his persistence. Rafa didn't appear to be at his best from the first ball tossed to the last, and afterwards the oddity of his opponents qualities along with the ever present undertone of some mysterious injury to which the result was supposedly indebted, most of us chalked this up to the exquisite unpredictability of sports.
But 2013 began an unnerving trend, that has persisted to this year, and without evidence to the contrary, one must finally now begin to wonder if this is the new norm. Lukas Rosol readily filled the role of villain in 2013. He supposedly distracted Rafa with an elaborate return routine, rivaled only in complexity by Rafa's well known intricate serve routine - an irony not lost on those who are fed up with both types of indulgences. He didn't back down emotionally, nor did he play the supplicant, deigning to insist on the right of way at the change over, to which Rafa responded with an Irina Spirlea-styled shoulder to the chest. These little trinkets did nothing to endear himself to the legion of Rafanatics who viewed those indignities as a lack of respect owed to the object of their collective affection.
But what really got their goat, what really stuck in their craw, what really pissed them the hell off that day, was that Lukas Rosol played his socks off - way above his pay grade. Not for three flash-in-the-pan sets, which could be dismissed as a moment of perfect lunacy major upsets are typically perceived to be, but for five blood thirsty, sledgehammer wielding, ball busting sets. He never backed down, he never blinked, and he never took his foot off the pedal - for those trespasses he was despised. But at the end of the match, even having added to the litany of complaints against him by, at once, dismissively and exuberantly chucking his racket through the net and onto the other side of the court in celebration, nobody who'd actually watched the match could contend that he hadn't merited the result. There were no strange bounces, sleeping line judges or shouts from the peanut gallery that could be cited as explanation.
The brave bull had simply been slaughtered.
Revenge was sweet in 2014 when, despite further acts of benign petulance like knocking over Nadal's carefully stationed water bottles at the changeover, the result we'd all expected the year before came to fruition, and Nadal was through to face another who would gape to have his taste of glory. But nobody bothered to tell Nick Kyrgios that his role as understudy was non-negotiable, and so he didn't negotiate. He took what was rightfully his by playing the exact brand of ball-bashing, first strike heaving, savage attack tennis that had unnerved the great champion the year before, but that he had appeared to have rectified a round earlier.
The bigger the moment, the bigger Kyrgios hit the ball. The more Nadal dug in, the deeper into a technical hole he seemed to fall, where nothing he did reduced his deficit, and nothing he thought of made a difference. Everything Rosol had done, Kyrgios did better, and while it appeared Rosol had reached the zenith of his career, and thus the result could again be dismissed as an outlier in the sample, the same could not be said of the young Australian buck. Here, the rumblings of something afoot became more than the low guttural murmur of Rafanatic hearts fluttering at the unbearable scene playing itself all over again. But as Kyrgios continued to amass results against top players the rest of the year and earlier this year, some may have taken solace in the growing perception that Kyrgios is the second coming of an Australian messiah.
But how in the world can we explain Dustin Brown?
Yes, he had beaten Rafa the year before at Halle, but he was coming off of a three day separation from his 9th title at Roland Garros against the one man that most believed could and would usurp him on that throne. So one could be forgiven for chalking that result up to the cup having runneth over. Yes, grass is by far, the best surface in an otherwise abjectly indistinct career of a journeyman whose talent has frequently appeared to be inversely proportional to his understanding of the game and/or his technique. But nobody expected lightning to strike twice - not now when Nadal had a relative vacation as compared to years past, giving him plenty of time to recover, including a win in Stuttgart along the way for his first second title of the year and his first on grass for 5 years.
So how did he do it? And what does this say about Nadal?
First how he did it: technically Nadal is by far a more consistent player, with better margins for error, far superior fitness and infinitely greater stamina of concentration. As such, the only way for Brown to overcome this, was to eliminate those advantages from the equation, and intentionally disrupt all of conditions which would normally be in his favor.
He served almost as hard on the second serve as the first, giving Nadal few legitimate looks at the serve in which he could impose his superior return game. He blasted flat hard shots off both wings to the corners, preventing Nadal from taking control of the point or playing points at his preferred cadence. He took away his movement, athleticism and concentration, by restricting points to less than 4 shots - win lose or draw - and as such was as likely to impose his will on the great champion, as the great champion could do the same to him. If the flat hard shot didn't elicit a winner, a drop shot would follow, disrupting Nadal's comfort level in the point, as well as his preferred court positioning. And rather than hitting volleys through the court, giving Nadal a chance to keep the point alive for one more shot, he decided to kill the ball and the point with angled and drop volleys.
The tactical approach was perfectly planned, and shockingly well executed, and as such it's hard to find fault in Nadal's game, but there was of course a great deal to find fault with, as is always the case on the losing end.
First, Nadal's serve earned him few free points, which is not a problem when you are a player who is better at earning points than anyone else in the world - perhaps in the history of the game. But because Brown had on his mind to take away that distinct advantage, Nadal was left with a 50/50 chance of winning the point. For every other player on tour, the 50/50 chance of winning the point is only sustainable if your serve is earning you free points elsewhere. But Nadal has long since abandoned the technique that allowed him to essentially serve his way to the US Open title in 2010, a first for him. The result; having to earn each point (as he normally does so well), but now within 3-4 shots, became a bridge too far.
Also, Nadal's return positioning was unchanged throughout the duration of that match - no adjustments were made throughout the match, and as a result his profligate returning cost him any chance of breaking Dustin Brown's serve when a break was so desperately needed to give him any chance of winning the match. As I have said in a previous post, it is not the serve that is the critical success factor on grass, it is the return, and because Brown was able to put pressure on Nadal's serve with his returns, in a way that Nadal was not able to with his returns, the match was a fairly straightforward obliteration of the great champion.
And that's the part that becomes so disconcerting. Despite legitimate caveats to the contrary, this is the fourth year running that he has lost early to a player he had no business losing to, and a such it felt oddly very routine. And if you didn't know any better, you'd think that both he and his opponent had reached the conclusion early on in the match, that it wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary for him to lose, yet again, the way he has lost so frequently at this venue. Although Dustin Brown's level was due for a drop, and despite his affable nature, he played the role of villain again, as did a long line of players had in the years preceding this result.
And as such, it has to be asked as far as Wimbledon is concerned: is this exactly where Rafa Nadal is supposed to be?
The outlier in this 4-year nightmare, was actually the first in 2012, when he lost to an unknown and unremarkable Belgian Steve Darcis. A player with almost no record of success to speak of (other than his generous ranking of 100+), and absolutely no grass court record, didn't win the match so much by his prowess, as his persistence. Rafa didn't appear to be at his best from the first ball tossed to the last, and afterwards the oddity of his opponents qualities along with the ever present undertone of some mysterious injury to which the result was supposedly indebted, most of us chalked this up to the exquisite unpredictability of sports.
But 2013 began an unnerving trend, that has persisted to this year, and without evidence to the contrary, one must finally now begin to wonder if this is the new norm. Lukas Rosol readily filled the role of villain in 2013. He supposedly distracted Rafa with an elaborate return routine, rivaled only in complexity by Rafa's well known intricate serve routine - an irony not lost on those who are fed up with both types of indulgences. He didn't back down emotionally, nor did he play the supplicant, deigning to insist on the right of way at the change over, to which Rafa responded with an Irina Spirlea-styled shoulder to the chest. These little trinkets did nothing to endear himself to the legion of Rafanatics who viewed those indignities as a lack of respect owed to the object of their collective affection.
But what really got their goat, what really stuck in their craw, what really pissed them the hell off that day, was that Lukas Rosol played his socks off - way above his pay grade. Not for three flash-in-the-pan sets, which could be dismissed as a moment of perfect lunacy major upsets are typically perceived to be, but for five blood thirsty, sledgehammer wielding, ball busting sets. He never backed down, he never blinked, and he never took his foot off the pedal - for those trespasses he was despised. But at the end of the match, even having added to the litany of complaints against him by, at once, dismissively and exuberantly chucking his racket through the net and onto the other side of the court in celebration, nobody who'd actually watched the match could contend that he hadn't merited the result. There were no strange bounces, sleeping line judges or shouts from the peanut gallery that could be cited as explanation.
The brave bull had simply been slaughtered.
Revenge was sweet in 2014 when, despite further acts of benign petulance like knocking over Nadal's carefully stationed water bottles at the changeover, the result we'd all expected the year before came to fruition, and Nadal was through to face another who would gape to have his taste of glory. But nobody bothered to tell Nick Kyrgios that his role as understudy was non-negotiable, and so he didn't negotiate. He took what was rightfully his by playing the exact brand of ball-bashing, first strike heaving, savage attack tennis that had unnerved the great champion the year before, but that he had appeared to have rectified a round earlier.
The bigger the moment, the bigger Kyrgios hit the ball. The more Nadal dug in, the deeper into a technical hole he seemed to fall, where nothing he did reduced his deficit, and nothing he thought of made a difference. Everything Rosol had done, Kyrgios did better, and while it appeared Rosol had reached the zenith of his career, and thus the result could again be dismissed as an outlier in the sample, the same could not be said of the young Australian buck. Here, the rumblings of something afoot became more than the low guttural murmur of Rafanatic hearts fluttering at the unbearable scene playing itself all over again. But as Kyrgios continued to amass results against top players the rest of the year and earlier this year, some may have taken solace in the growing perception that Kyrgios is the second coming of an Australian messiah.
But how in the world can we explain Dustin Brown?
Yes, he had beaten Rafa the year before at Halle, but he was coming off of a three day separation from his 9th title at Roland Garros against the one man that most believed could and would usurp him on that throne. So one could be forgiven for chalking that result up to the cup having runneth over. Yes, grass is by far, the best surface in an otherwise abjectly indistinct career of a journeyman whose talent has frequently appeared to be inversely proportional to his understanding of the game and/or his technique. But nobody expected lightning to strike twice - not now when Nadal had a relative vacation as compared to years past, giving him plenty of time to recover, including a win in Stuttgart along the way for his first second title of the year and his first on grass for 5 years.
So how did he do it? And what does this say about Nadal?
First how he did it: technically Nadal is by far a more consistent player, with better margins for error, far superior fitness and infinitely greater stamina of concentration. As such, the only way for Brown to overcome this, was to eliminate those advantages from the equation, and intentionally disrupt all of conditions which would normally be in his favor.
He served almost as hard on the second serve as the first, giving Nadal few legitimate looks at the serve in which he could impose his superior return game. He blasted flat hard shots off both wings to the corners, preventing Nadal from taking control of the point or playing points at his preferred cadence. He took away his movement, athleticism and concentration, by restricting points to less than 4 shots - win lose or draw - and as such was as likely to impose his will on the great champion, as the great champion could do the same to him. If the flat hard shot didn't elicit a winner, a drop shot would follow, disrupting Nadal's comfort level in the point, as well as his preferred court positioning. And rather than hitting volleys through the court, giving Nadal a chance to keep the point alive for one more shot, he decided to kill the ball and the point with angled and drop volleys.
The tactical approach was perfectly planned, and shockingly well executed, and as such it's hard to find fault in Nadal's game, but there was of course a great deal to find fault with, as is always the case on the losing end.
First, Nadal's serve earned him few free points, which is not a problem when you are a player who is better at earning points than anyone else in the world - perhaps in the history of the game. But because Brown had on his mind to take away that distinct advantage, Nadal was left with a 50/50 chance of winning the point. For every other player on tour, the 50/50 chance of winning the point is only sustainable if your serve is earning you free points elsewhere. But Nadal has long since abandoned the technique that allowed him to essentially serve his way to the US Open title in 2010, a first for him. The result; having to earn each point (as he normally does so well), but now within 3-4 shots, became a bridge too far.
Also, Nadal's return positioning was unchanged throughout the duration of that match - no adjustments were made throughout the match, and as a result his profligate returning cost him any chance of breaking Dustin Brown's serve when a break was so desperately needed to give him any chance of winning the match. As I have said in a previous post, it is not the serve that is the critical success factor on grass, it is the return, and because Brown was able to put pressure on Nadal's serve with his returns, in a way that Nadal was not able to with his returns, the match was a fairly straightforward obliteration of the great champion.
And that's the part that becomes so disconcerting. Despite legitimate caveats to the contrary, this is the fourth year running that he has lost early to a player he had no business losing to, and a such it felt oddly very routine. And if you didn't know any better, you'd think that both he and his opponent had reached the conclusion early on in the match, that it wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary for him to lose, yet again, the way he has lost so frequently at this venue. Although Dustin Brown's level was due for a drop, and despite his affable nature, he played the role of villain again, as did a long line of players had in the years preceding this result.
And as such, it has to be asked as far as Wimbledon is concerned: is this exactly where Rafa Nadal is supposed to be?
Monday, June 29, 2015
THE KEY TO WIMBLEDON? NEWSFLASH: IT'S NOT THE SERVE
Is there a key success factor on grass, and if so, what is it? I say everyone's serve is better on grass, so that's not the key success factor - that's a myth.
It's the return.
Recently Rafael Nadal opined that "If your serve is good, you can win on grass even without playing your best." The missing context is that he was clearly explaining how he had won his first tournament on grass without much preparation and without much of a good run of form to speak of leading into the tournament. But not surprisingly it kicked off an extended debate in the blogosphere about the validity of results on grass, because of the influence of the serve.
I think what Nadal implied (without really meaning to) is that you can lose a match - any match - on grass to a player who serves exceptionally well on the day, and he's right. That's one of the reasons why Wimbledon is so hard to win: because you can so easily lose any single match if you have a bad day and your opponent (no matter who he is) serves his socks off. But unlike what was immediately interpreted as a dig at grass court tennis (something that Nadal, who has always professed his love of Wimbledon and grass court tennis, would never do), you really can't win Wimbledon with just a big serve.
That is just a myth.
The universe of players who have won Wimbledon is much smaller than other majors, and it does not necessarily reflect players with the biggest serve. Serving well (and not necessarily big) like Federer and Sampras helps a great deal, but you have to serve well, not just big. In fact, I think the reason why Federer and Sampras have won so many Wimbledons, and why the universe of champions at Wimbledon is smaller than the other majors, is precisely because the serve is not the deciding factor in whether you can win it. Take the following statistics:
# of different FO champions in the open era = 26
# of different Wimbledon champions in the open era = 20
# of different FO champions in the last 20 years = 12
# of different Wimbledon champions in the last 20 years = 8
I don't mean to denigrate Roland Garros, but just as the universe of players who have won 250's is greater than those who have won 500's which is greater than those who have won 1000's which is greater than those who have won majors, the derived conclusion is that the harder it is to win the tournament, the smaller the universe of players who actually do it. So, by this logic, that the universe of players who have won the FO is greater than the universe of players who have won Wimbledon would suggest that Wimbledon is harder to win. If you doubt this conclusion, you must accept the opposite: that the 250's are the hardest to win, and that just doesn't fly.
The reason the 500s are harder than 250s is that the field is typically stronger, because there are more points at stake, and they are more coveted. That is precisely the point of the comparison, and transitively the comparison carries through to each level of more and more coveted titles, including comparing the majors. Again, no denigration of the the tournaments that lose out in the comparison, but merely a logical conclusion from the evidence of the universe of players who've won the title.
Now, because Federer and Sampras have such great serves, the assumption is that the better your serve, the more likely you are to win Wimbledon. As such, when sizing up a player's chances, or predicting the result of a particular match, the serves are frequently compared to determine who has the advantage. But I am of the opinion that comparing serves is actually off the mark. You are mixing and matching two things - one doesn't compare serves - that is irrelevant because only one player at a time serves. One compares the serve of one to the return of the other. A player with a big serve can escape losses to other players with big serves if they return well. It is rare that players with really big serves return well, and also why players with just big serves (and little else to their game) rarely win Wimbledon.
Goran Ivanisevic is a perfect example - that man had the biggest and best serve in the history of tennis, but he won Wimbledon exactly once almost by accident. In his best chance (on paper anyway), in 1992 he lost to Andre Agassi, a player with a relatively weak serve but a relatively oustanding return (who happened to beat Boris Becker and John McEnroe along the way - not exactly slouches in the serve department). Ivanisevic's other Wimbledon final losses were to another player with a great serve - Pete Sampras. So what distinguished the two?
The return - Sampras' was a better (as well as the rest of his game - but I digress).
So a big serve gets you a chance to win a match or two here or there - but if you want to win Wimbledon, you need more than a big serve. You need the whole package including a good serve. But only the best of the best have the whole package, and as such, relatively few players have won Wimbledon as compared to say, the French Open, where a lot of players that did not have the full package, have won relatively more titles than have done so at a Wimbledon.
The logic and the stats on the universe of players who have won Wimbledon versus Roland Garros is very underrated, but it is not a matter of opinion. As for the effect of the serve on grass, it is inversely overrated - Nadal has 2 Wimbledons, Djokovic 2, Murray 1, even Federer at 7 titles...not one of them could be said to have one of the biggest serves on tour, earning a lot of "cheap" points. Roddick had a huge serve, but consistently lost to players who returned better than him (after all, so few serve better than him they must have had better returns). Ivanisevic had the biggest serve ever and he won once, each time he lost to a player, not with a better serve, but a better return.
To win at Wimbledon you need a good serve among many things, but it is not the deciding factor - the return is. Of course, even a good return (alone) isn't enough - you need the full package. You have to be able to attack and defend, you need decent volleys, but most importantly you need a good serve, because everybody gets a little help on the serve on grass. That the serve is the deciding factor to winning Wimbledon is a myth of grass court tennis that has persisted for years since the late 40's when serve and volley tennis became a full time tactical approach. There have been a lot of players with great serves who have not won Wimbledon, but almost none with bad returns, and certainly no multiple champions with a poor return of serve.
An example of this is Ivan Lendl - his biggest problem on grass wasn't his serve (which was excellent) it was his return, which he was never able to master on grass, despite years of trying. Lendl just wasn't that talented, and as a result he needed time and a certain bounce to return well, which he would get on clay or hard courts, and won many majors on those surfaces - what foiled him on grass was the return. Lendl's talent limited his return against the best players with the best serves - this is not an on/off proposition as in "either you're talented enough or not" - it does depend on the guy across the net. He had as good a serve as the players he lost to, with perhaps the exception of Becker, but he lost to a lot more players than Becker, his problem against those players he lost to was that he couldn't make any headway in his returns. His own serve was excellent. Just because your return isn't good enough against Edberg, Becker and Pat Cash, doesn't mean it won't be good enough against Jeff Tarango or Brad Gilbert.
Go down the list of players with the biggest serves on tour over the last 40 years and remove those players with good returns (Colin Dibley, Ivan Ljubicic, Steven Denton, Mark Phillipousis, Kevin Curren, Bobo Zivojinovic, Greg Rusedski, Ivo Karlovic, Roscoe Tanner, Andy Roddick) and you'll have a very long list of players with big serves who have never won Wimbledon. Now, do the reverse - list the players with the best returns in the game, remove those with great serves and you'll still have a list of players who have won Wimbledon (Agassi, Borg, Connors, Nadal, Murray, Djokovic, etc.). That's just good analysis that dispels the myth that the deciding factor in winning Wimbledon is the serve. Remember that on grass everybody's serve is a little more effective because of the surface, therefore getting an edge over the field would necessarily come from being able to neutralize that phenomenon, not from benefitting from it, which everyone does and which does not give you an edge.
Whether the return is harder to master or acquire is not relevant - it is whether having an outstanding return or an outstanding serve is the deciding factor in whether you will win Wimbledon. Nadal, Murray, Djokovic, even Federer to some extent, rarely lead the ATP in aces, 1st percentage won or even service games won - and if they do, it isn't because they get a lot of free points on the serves like the Karlovic's, Isners, Lopez's, Tsonga's, Almagro's and Raonics of the world. They may use their serve better than this lot, but that's because they're better tennis players that are able to do more with less (on the serve). What they all do better than that lot is return of serve, and they've all won Wimbledon in the last 10 years - 3 of them more than once.
Counter-intuitive, I know, but true.
In fact, I'll go you one better - I don't even think it's even critical to have a great serve, to win Wimbledon, because there a lot of players who had just good serves and still won - therefore the serve cannot be the deciding factor in whether you will win Wimbledon. What Nadal referred to with the big serves is really a reference to the risk a great player runs of being dumped out of the tournament by a guy serving his socks off for one day, but without much of an overall game. That kind of player can be a spoiler, and there are a lot of spoilers at Wimbledon, and from that I conclude (along with the universe of players argument) that that's one big reason why Wimbledon is harder to win than the other majors. Particularly on grass, where everyone's serve is helped by the surface, there is a greater risk that a spoiler that can serve you off the court in one match.
That doesn't happen as often on other surfaces because the serve doesn't have as big effect - and that is the reason why at Wimbledon a great return is more important than a great serve. Because if you can't efficiently take advantage of the few opportunities you get to break serve (attack second serves, attack poorly placed first serves, or just get your racquet on the ball a lot), you will eventually run into someone who serves you off the court. The truly great players (among other things) have great returns, so they survive the serving mine field that is grass court tennis better than the other (numerous) players with great serves, but a minimal/weak return game - hence the cream really rises to the top at Wimbledon.
Sampras rarely served above 125mph, even at his best - there were always players on tour with bigger serves, but none with better serves - he used his to great effect. And it helps to use a great serve to great effect if you have the game to back it up, which Rusedski, Roddick, Ljubicic, Phillipousis, Ivanisevic and oh so many other big serving contemporaries did not have - and a big part of that overall game to back up whatever serve you may possess (good to great) is the return of serve. Federer also rarely serves big (130+), but his placement is outstanding, and nobody uses the serve to set up their game better than Federer - of course it helps that his game is outstanding, but the point is that it's not all down to the serve.
Riddle me this - why is it that Federer was so frequently able to out ace Roddick at Wimbledon when they played? Because his return was better, not because his serve was. And if I'm not mistaken, McEnroe never hit a serve over 120mph in his career, not so of the Roscoe Tanners and Kevin Curren's of his era - their serves were huge even by modern standards. But his overall game (including the return) was superior to both of those players, and as such he had more success at Wimbledon.
In fact, two of the biggest modern servers gave us an example in 2010 that put this distinction in relief: that absurd farce of a match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut where the 5th set had 138 games in it, where it took Isner 69 games to break Mahut's serves.
Does anyone think that any of the players who've won Wimbledon in the last 10 years would take 69 games to break anyone's serve, let alone Nicolas Mahut's? Neither Isner nor Mahut have much of a return game to speak of, and not coincidentally neither has ever done anything significant at Wimbledon other than that match. They may win matches and/or smaller tournaments with depleted fields, but when the best of the best are all there, they just can't serve their way to glory - eventually their inability to return well catches up to them. That's not the case with the best players in the world. That's why only the best players in history win Wimbledon. And that's why Wimbledon is the hardest tournament to win.
And what of poor old Andy Roddick - the argument is that had it not been for Federer, he would have won 4 Wimbledons, right? I'm not so sure about that - after all, he lost to a lot more players at Wimbledon than just Roger Federer, and that Federer is a better player is a general statement which provides no insight - the better player doesn't always win (if that were the case, the trophy could be handed out at the draw). On grass, Federer bested Roddick as frequently as he did because he neutralized his serve with a great return of serve, which Roddick could never do. That was the deciding factor between them, not either of their serves which were both outstanding.
That's not to say that Federer's serve isn't really good - just not the equal of Roddick's - better game, obviously (especially the return) - but not the serve. But let's set that debatable example aside...can the serve possibly explain his losses to Murray (2006), Gasquet (2007), Randy Lu (2010), Tipsarevic (2008), Lopez (2011), Ferrer (2012)? Maybe Ivanisevic (2001), but that entire tournament was the outlier - he also lost to Rusedski in 2002, but in both matches to equally dominant serving players, the telling factor was the return - Rusedski broke Roddick 3 times 2002 and Ivanisevic twice in 2001...but he never broke either of them. And equally telling of Rusedski - he lost in the very next round....to Xavier Malisse. Now I can tell you that there were about 25 things Malisse did better than Rusedski, but the serve wasn't one of them - and if there were every a place where Rusedski should have put his serve to use against Malisse (if it were key) it would have been at Wimbledon. But surprise, surprise, Malisse broke Rusedski 3 times to 2.
To be honest, I watched Roddick play tennis for 10 years, and I can't ever remember him serving poorly - he may have, but it would have been exceedingly rare. It was the one part of his game that never broke down. But I have seen a lot of guys get a beat on his serve in one game and the rest of his game fell apart. He himself rarely broke serve on grass, precisely because it is so hard to do.
I should also point out something that is a logical extension of the "it's the return, stupid" argument: the better players have better returns of serve precisely because it requires more talent to consistently respond well to the easiest shot in the game to produce - i.e. the serve. For a good return you need particularly good hand-eye coordination, anticipation, consistent strike zone, balance, quickness, footwork, etc.). So a relative donkey, like Lukas Rosol can beat a great player from his serve, here and there, but win the tournament, no chance - not without a great return. There are a lot more players out there with great serves than players with great returns of serve - and it's no coincidence that they tend to do most of the winning. That's because it's harder to do than serve well, and as such it is a more telling factor in who wins the tournament - particularly on grass where the serve is helped so much by the surface, and everyone looks like a world beater with their serve - by the same token, only the best of the best appear to have even decent returns on grass.
My point here is that I'm trying to dispel the myth that the serve is the key/critical/deciding success factor on grass - it's not at all, it's the return. Some would limit their agreement if (and only if ) the serves are equal, but the serves are rarely equal and frequently the player with the better serve loses to the player with the better return. Therefore, it's pretty clear that the return is the key success factor and not the serve - of course your return has to be pretty good to beat a player with a great serve, especially on grass...but that's more to my point of why so few players have what it takes to win Wimbledon.
We've all fallen prey to the blurring of the lines defining the quality of the serve - if there is such a thing as a good serve, there must logically be great serves and below average serves - let's not lump everyone into sufficient/good/great serving category, cite Wimbledon champions (none of whom have a poor serve) and then claim that the key factor is something that they share in common with 90% of professional tennis players.
A key success factor is something that distinguishes players who've had success from those who have not. To point to the serve, which a large portion of players who have not won Wimbledon, and likely will never win, isn't informative. The return, however, is very probative. I happen to think that while the serve is the easiest stroke in tennis, because it's ball in hand, the return might be the hardest (because you must use a broad range of skills to respond to the easiest stroke in the game to hit at you), and by this logic, I am of the belief that the return, particularly at Wimbledon, where even the worst serves in tennis get a lot of help, is the most important stroke to winning the tournament.
It's the return.
Recently Rafael Nadal opined that "If your serve is good, you can win on grass even without playing your best." The missing context is that he was clearly explaining how he had won his first tournament on grass without much preparation and without much of a good run of form to speak of leading into the tournament. But not surprisingly it kicked off an extended debate in the blogosphere about the validity of results on grass, because of the influence of the serve.
I think what Nadal implied (without really meaning to) is that you can lose a match - any match - on grass to a player who serves exceptionally well on the day, and he's right. That's one of the reasons why Wimbledon is so hard to win: because you can so easily lose any single match if you have a bad day and your opponent (no matter who he is) serves his socks off. But unlike what was immediately interpreted as a dig at grass court tennis (something that Nadal, who has always professed his love of Wimbledon and grass court tennis, would never do), you really can't win Wimbledon with just a big serve.
That is just a myth.
The universe of players who have won Wimbledon is much smaller than other majors, and it does not necessarily reflect players with the biggest serve. Serving well (and not necessarily big) like Federer and Sampras helps a great deal, but you have to serve well, not just big. In fact, I think the reason why Federer and Sampras have won so many Wimbledons, and why the universe of champions at Wimbledon is smaller than the other majors, is precisely because the serve is not the deciding factor in whether you can win it. Take the following statistics:
# of different FO champions in the open era = 26
# of different Wimbledon champions in the open era = 20
# of different FO champions in the last 20 years = 12
# of different Wimbledon champions in the last 20 years = 8
I don't mean to denigrate Roland Garros, but just as the universe of players who have won 250's is greater than those who have won 500's which is greater than those who have won 1000's which is greater than those who have won majors, the derived conclusion is that the harder it is to win the tournament, the smaller the universe of players who actually do it. So, by this logic, that the universe of players who have won the FO is greater than the universe of players who have won Wimbledon would suggest that Wimbledon is harder to win. If you doubt this conclusion, you must accept the opposite: that the 250's are the hardest to win, and that just doesn't fly.
The reason the 500s are harder than 250s is that the field is typically stronger, because there are more points at stake, and they are more coveted. That is precisely the point of the comparison, and transitively the comparison carries through to each level of more and more coveted titles, including comparing the majors. Again, no denigration of the the tournaments that lose out in the comparison, but merely a logical conclusion from the evidence of the universe of players who've won the title.
Now, because Federer and Sampras have such great serves, the assumption is that the better your serve, the more likely you are to win Wimbledon. As such, when sizing up a player's chances, or predicting the result of a particular match, the serves are frequently compared to determine who has the advantage. But I am of the opinion that comparing serves is actually off the mark. You are mixing and matching two things - one doesn't compare serves - that is irrelevant because only one player at a time serves. One compares the serve of one to the return of the other. A player with a big serve can escape losses to other players with big serves if they return well. It is rare that players with really big serves return well, and also why players with just big serves (and little else to their game) rarely win Wimbledon.
Goran Ivanisevic is a perfect example - that man had the biggest and best serve in the history of tennis, but he won Wimbledon exactly once almost by accident. In his best chance (on paper anyway), in 1992 he lost to Andre Agassi, a player with a relatively weak serve but a relatively oustanding return (who happened to beat Boris Becker and John McEnroe along the way - not exactly slouches in the serve department). Ivanisevic's other Wimbledon final losses were to another player with a great serve - Pete Sampras. So what distinguished the two?
The return - Sampras' was a better (as well as the rest of his game - but I digress).
So a big serve gets you a chance to win a match or two here or there - but if you want to win Wimbledon, you need more than a big serve. You need the whole package including a good serve. But only the best of the best have the whole package, and as such, relatively few players have won Wimbledon as compared to say, the French Open, where a lot of players that did not have the full package, have won relatively more titles than have done so at a Wimbledon.
The logic and the stats on the universe of players who have won Wimbledon versus Roland Garros is very underrated, but it is not a matter of opinion. As for the effect of the serve on grass, it is inversely overrated - Nadal has 2 Wimbledons, Djokovic 2, Murray 1, even Federer at 7 titles...not one of them could be said to have one of the biggest serves on tour, earning a lot of "cheap" points. Roddick had a huge serve, but consistently lost to players who returned better than him (after all, so few serve better than him they must have had better returns). Ivanisevic had the biggest serve ever and he won once, each time he lost to a player, not with a better serve, but a better return.
To win at Wimbledon you need a good serve among many things, but it is not the deciding factor - the return is. Of course, even a good return (alone) isn't enough - you need the full package. You have to be able to attack and defend, you need decent volleys, but most importantly you need a good serve, because everybody gets a little help on the serve on grass. That the serve is the deciding factor to winning Wimbledon is a myth of grass court tennis that has persisted for years since the late 40's when serve and volley tennis became a full time tactical approach. There have been a lot of players with great serves who have not won Wimbledon, but almost none with bad returns, and certainly no multiple champions with a poor return of serve.
An example of this is Ivan Lendl - his biggest problem on grass wasn't his serve (which was excellent) it was his return, which he was never able to master on grass, despite years of trying. Lendl just wasn't that talented, and as a result he needed time and a certain bounce to return well, which he would get on clay or hard courts, and won many majors on those surfaces - what foiled him on grass was the return. Lendl's talent limited his return against the best players with the best serves - this is not an on/off proposition as in "either you're talented enough or not" - it does depend on the guy across the net. He had as good a serve as the players he lost to, with perhaps the exception of Becker, but he lost to a lot more players than Becker, his problem against those players he lost to was that he couldn't make any headway in his returns. His own serve was excellent. Just because your return isn't good enough against Edberg, Becker and Pat Cash, doesn't mean it won't be good enough against Jeff Tarango or Brad Gilbert.
Go down the list of players with the biggest serves on tour over the last 40 years and remove those players with good returns (Colin Dibley, Ivan Ljubicic, Steven Denton, Mark Phillipousis, Kevin Curren, Bobo Zivojinovic, Greg Rusedski, Ivo Karlovic, Roscoe Tanner, Andy Roddick) and you'll have a very long list of players with big serves who have never won Wimbledon. Now, do the reverse - list the players with the best returns in the game, remove those with great serves and you'll still have a list of players who have won Wimbledon (Agassi, Borg, Connors, Nadal, Murray, Djokovic, etc.). That's just good analysis that dispels the myth that the deciding factor in winning Wimbledon is the serve. Remember that on grass everybody's serve is a little more effective because of the surface, therefore getting an edge over the field would necessarily come from being able to neutralize that phenomenon, not from benefitting from it, which everyone does and which does not give you an edge.
Whether the return is harder to master or acquire is not relevant - it is whether having an outstanding return or an outstanding serve is the deciding factor in whether you will win Wimbledon. Nadal, Murray, Djokovic, even Federer to some extent, rarely lead the ATP in aces, 1st percentage won or even service games won - and if they do, it isn't because they get a lot of free points on the serves like the Karlovic's, Isners, Lopez's, Tsonga's, Almagro's and Raonics of the world. They may use their serve better than this lot, but that's because they're better tennis players that are able to do more with less (on the serve). What they all do better than that lot is return of serve, and they've all won Wimbledon in the last 10 years - 3 of them more than once.
Counter-intuitive, I know, but true.
In fact, I'll go you one better - I don't even think it's even critical to have a great serve, to win Wimbledon, because there a lot of players who had just good serves and still won - therefore the serve cannot be the deciding factor in whether you will win Wimbledon. What Nadal referred to with the big serves is really a reference to the risk a great player runs of being dumped out of the tournament by a guy serving his socks off for one day, but without much of an overall game. That kind of player can be a spoiler, and there are a lot of spoilers at Wimbledon, and from that I conclude (along with the universe of players argument) that that's one big reason why Wimbledon is harder to win than the other majors. Particularly on grass, where everyone's serve is helped by the surface, there is a greater risk that a spoiler that can serve you off the court in one match.
That doesn't happen as often on other surfaces because the serve doesn't have as big effect - and that is the reason why at Wimbledon a great return is more important than a great serve. Because if you can't efficiently take advantage of the few opportunities you get to break serve (attack second serves, attack poorly placed first serves, or just get your racquet on the ball a lot), you will eventually run into someone who serves you off the court. The truly great players (among other things) have great returns, so they survive the serving mine field that is grass court tennis better than the other (numerous) players with great serves, but a minimal/weak return game - hence the cream really rises to the top at Wimbledon.
Sampras rarely served above 125mph, even at his best - there were always players on tour with bigger serves, but none with better serves - he used his to great effect. And it helps to use a great serve to great effect if you have the game to back it up, which Rusedski, Roddick, Ljubicic, Phillipousis, Ivanisevic and oh so many other big serving contemporaries did not have - and a big part of that overall game to back up whatever serve you may possess (good to great) is the return of serve. Federer also rarely serves big (130+), but his placement is outstanding, and nobody uses the serve to set up their game better than Federer - of course it helps that his game is outstanding, but the point is that it's not all down to the serve.
Riddle me this - why is it that Federer was so frequently able to out ace Roddick at Wimbledon when they played? Because his return was better, not because his serve was. And if I'm not mistaken, McEnroe never hit a serve over 120mph in his career, not so of the Roscoe Tanners and Kevin Curren's of his era - their serves were huge even by modern standards. But his overall game (including the return) was superior to both of those players, and as such he had more success at Wimbledon.
In fact, two of the biggest modern servers gave us an example in 2010 that put this distinction in relief: that absurd farce of a match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut where the 5th set had 138 games in it, where it took Isner 69 games to break Mahut's serves.
Does anyone think that any of the players who've won Wimbledon in the last 10 years would take 69 games to break anyone's serve, let alone Nicolas Mahut's? Neither Isner nor Mahut have much of a return game to speak of, and not coincidentally neither has ever done anything significant at Wimbledon other than that match. They may win matches and/or smaller tournaments with depleted fields, but when the best of the best are all there, they just can't serve their way to glory - eventually their inability to return well catches up to them. That's not the case with the best players in the world. That's why only the best players in history win Wimbledon. And that's why Wimbledon is the hardest tournament to win.
And what of poor old Andy Roddick - the argument is that had it not been for Federer, he would have won 4 Wimbledons, right? I'm not so sure about that - after all, he lost to a lot more players at Wimbledon than just Roger Federer, and that Federer is a better player is a general statement which provides no insight - the better player doesn't always win (if that were the case, the trophy could be handed out at the draw). On grass, Federer bested Roddick as frequently as he did because he neutralized his serve with a great return of serve, which Roddick could never do. That was the deciding factor between them, not either of their serves which were both outstanding.
That's not to say that Federer's serve isn't really good - just not the equal of Roddick's - better game, obviously (especially the return) - but not the serve. But let's set that debatable example aside...can the serve possibly explain his losses to Murray (2006), Gasquet (2007), Randy Lu (2010), Tipsarevic (2008), Lopez (2011), Ferrer (2012)? Maybe Ivanisevic (2001), but that entire tournament was the outlier - he also lost to Rusedski in 2002, but in both matches to equally dominant serving players, the telling factor was the return - Rusedski broke Roddick 3 times 2002 and Ivanisevic twice in 2001...but he never broke either of them. And equally telling of Rusedski - he lost in the very next round....to Xavier Malisse. Now I can tell you that there were about 25 things Malisse did better than Rusedski, but the serve wasn't one of them - and if there were every a place where Rusedski should have put his serve to use against Malisse (if it were key) it would have been at Wimbledon. But surprise, surprise, Malisse broke Rusedski 3 times to 2.
To be honest, I watched Roddick play tennis for 10 years, and I can't ever remember him serving poorly - he may have, but it would have been exceedingly rare. It was the one part of his game that never broke down. But I have seen a lot of guys get a beat on his serve in one game and the rest of his game fell apart. He himself rarely broke serve on grass, precisely because it is so hard to do.
I should also point out something that is a logical extension of the "it's the return, stupid" argument: the better players have better returns of serve precisely because it requires more talent to consistently respond well to the easiest shot in the game to produce - i.e. the serve. For a good return you need particularly good hand-eye coordination, anticipation, consistent strike zone, balance, quickness, footwork, etc.). So a relative donkey, like Lukas Rosol can beat a great player from his serve, here and there, but win the tournament, no chance - not without a great return. There are a lot more players out there with great serves than players with great returns of serve - and it's no coincidence that they tend to do most of the winning. That's because it's harder to do than serve well, and as such it is a more telling factor in who wins the tournament - particularly on grass where the serve is helped so much by the surface, and everyone looks like a world beater with their serve - by the same token, only the best of the best appear to have even decent returns on grass.
My point here is that I'm trying to dispel the myth that the serve is the key/critical/deciding success factor on grass - it's not at all, it's the return. Some would limit their agreement if (and only if ) the serves are equal, but the serves are rarely equal and frequently the player with the better serve loses to the player with the better return. Therefore, it's pretty clear that the return is the key success factor and not the serve - of course your return has to be pretty good to beat a player with a great serve, especially on grass...but that's more to my point of why so few players have what it takes to win Wimbledon.
We've all fallen prey to the blurring of the lines defining the quality of the serve - if there is such a thing as a good serve, there must logically be great serves and below average serves - let's not lump everyone into sufficient/good/great serving category, cite Wimbledon champions (none of whom have a poor serve) and then claim that the key factor is something that they share in common with 90% of professional tennis players.
A key success factor is something that distinguishes players who've had success from those who have not. To point to the serve, which a large portion of players who have not won Wimbledon, and likely will never win, isn't informative. The return, however, is very probative. I happen to think that while the serve is the easiest stroke in tennis, because it's ball in hand, the return might be the hardest (because you must use a broad range of skills to respond to the easiest stroke in the game to hit at you), and by this logic, I am of the belief that the return, particularly at Wimbledon, where even the worst serves in tennis get a lot of help, is the most important stroke to winning the tournament.
Sunday, June 14, 2015
RAFA NADAL or CARLITO MORENO
It's been a rough treble of weeks for Rafa Nadal - actually, it's been a rough treble of months. First, he lost 6 times on clay in one season for the first time in 10 years, and he also dropped to his lowest ranking in 10 years. Aside from one shining moment in Buenos Aires, his season has, to say the least, been less than spectacular. He lost twice in a row to Fabio Fognini, once to Andy Murray, and for the third time this year, at Roland Garros, to Djokovic, who then proceeded to do him the indignity of losing the final to some Swiss guy. To be fair, he hasn't been himself this year, and one has impression that, as unthinkable as this was for a decade, this year the Djoker wasn't the only one who would have taken care of the King of Clay in Paris.
But something else is happening to him...something off the court. Quietly, but persistently, there seems to be a distinct questioning of something that heretofore was entirely off-limits: Rafa's sportsmanship. For a guy who always rubs out the mark, and always speaks glowingly of any player (that smiles at him in the locker room) there seems to have been this year, more than a few rumblings about some things which up to now the tennis world has simply accepted as the fleas that come with the dog. So lately, I'm not sure if Rafa Nadal would be better referred to as Carlito Moreno...or Charlie Brown in Spanish.
In his match with Jack Sock in the 4th round, a new statistic was revealed that I'd never seen before: they indicated he had gone over the time limit on 100% of his serves, as opposed to 2/3rds of the time for the American. There has also been a lot of concern about his very public request not to have Carlos Bernardes umpire any more of his matches - a request that reared it's ugly head (for no apparent reason) at Roland Garros this year, despite having been made in Brazil over 2 and 1/2 months earlier. It's hard to imagine that his dwindling fortunes this year did not contribute to a new found interest in things that would certainly have been swept under the rug in years past.
Now, I have always felt that Nadal does indeed gain a competitive advantage by taking so much time in between points, and this is no innocuous infringement, despite the humor of all the idiosyncrasies he he manages to cram into 30 seconds. After all, it must be very difficult to physically recover entirely after the long drawn out points he frequently plays, which is a key to his success over aggressive ball-striking opponents in particular. And I have always found it to be incredibly self-serving of him to react angrily to umpires correctly applying the rules and giving him time violation warnings.
In Madrid last year, he complained that it wasn't good for the show if they properly applied the rules - implying that his brand of tennis is more entertaining and as a result an exception should be made when he's played a particularly entertaining point. But this does nothing to assuage the concern for how frequently he goes over the limit after serving an ace, a service winner, or hitting an effective 1-2 combination. As such, I think it's perfectly appropriate for him to be cited more frequently for these clear violations. But this year, something ugly has happened, which I also think is incredibly inappropriate.
In Brazil, after accidentally putting his shorts on backwards, he served (and won) the first game of the set, then quickly ran to the sidelines to change his shorts back round the right way. It was a moment of levity, or so we thought, until Carlos Bernardes noticed that his opponent was ready to serve, and Nadal, having chosen the short changeover after the first game to correct his livery, wound up interrupting the server's pace, which is against the laws of the game, and he was promptly (and correctly) cited for a time violation. Nadal, incensed, complained intensely to no avail, and then publicly requested that Bernardes not do any more of his matches. It is at this point that I must draw the line, and say that Nadal has let himself and the game down with this request.
I understand that some players just don't get along with some umpires - it happens, and is perfectly normal - but the minute you start allowing players to determine which umpire will and won't do their matches, that for me is beyond the pale. Nadal shouldn't be picking and choosing umpires - I disagree with that entirely. That's not fair to the other players or the umpire. Also, he should have to publicly articulate his problem with an umpire so that it can be determined whether his problem is a reasonable one. A reasonable problem is that the umpire frequently makes overrules that are overturned by hawkeye. An unreasonable problem he might have, is simply that the umpire applies the rules properly. Bernardes isn't doing these matches because he's a chump, and as far as I can tell, Nadal's only problem is that Bernardes doesn't bow to the pressure to accommodate all his idiosyncracies - that is Nadal's problem, not the umpire's.
Some have argued that this sort of request shouldn't be made public - I disagree entirely with this as well. The last place these things should be addressed is behind closed doors, because that compromises the integrity of the officiating. What else is being said behind closed doors that may favor one player (who takes forever between points and gets illegal coaching and take dubious injury time-outs and argues when he is wrong on the application of the rules)? Is there to be a separate set of rules just for him that we don't know about? I think that's not on.
There will always be a problem when a player takes himself to be more important than the laws of the game he plays - when that happens, it becomes a competition tilted in his favor, which is particularly tragic when if he just shaped up and played within the rules, he might still be be just as successful. But when Nadal chooses to make a different set of rules for himself (and anyone who agrees with him) that's not fair to the game or his opponents, nor ultimately the viewers.
A player making the request, like Nadal did, is much less common, but is usually honored just like if the umpire had made the request. So much of being an effective chair umpire depends on having the confidence and respect of the players, and if a recent incident is in the back of a player’s mind, it can cause there to be a lack of confidence in the official before the match even starts. Our goal as officials is to give players a fair match without unnecessarily becoming part of the match, and you never want something from a past match to affect a future one—from either the player's or official's side. There are many qualified officials at all of these tournaments, so keeping one player away from a specific official, doesn't burden the officiating assignments too much and generally makes for a smoother match for all involved."
But something else is happening to him...something off the court. Quietly, but persistently, there seems to be a distinct questioning of something that heretofore was entirely off-limits: Rafa's sportsmanship. For a guy who always rubs out the mark, and always speaks glowingly of any player (that smiles at him in the locker room) there seems to have been this year, more than a few rumblings about some things which up to now the tennis world has simply accepted as the fleas that come with the dog. So lately, I'm not sure if Rafa Nadal would be better referred to as Carlito Moreno...or Charlie Brown in Spanish.
In his match with Jack Sock in the 4th round, a new statistic was revealed that I'd never seen before: they indicated he had gone over the time limit on 100% of his serves, as opposed to 2/3rds of the time for the American. There has also been a lot of concern about his very public request not to have Carlos Bernardes umpire any more of his matches - a request that reared it's ugly head (for no apparent reason) at Roland Garros this year, despite having been made in Brazil over 2 and 1/2 months earlier. It's hard to imagine that his dwindling fortunes this year did not contribute to a new found interest in things that would certainly have been swept under the rug in years past.
Now, I have always felt that Nadal does indeed gain a competitive advantage by taking so much time in between points, and this is no innocuous infringement, despite the humor of all the idiosyncrasies he he manages to cram into 30 seconds. After all, it must be very difficult to physically recover entirely after the long drawn out points he frequently plays, which is a key to his success over aggressive ball-striking opponents in particular. And I have always found it to be incredibly self-serving of him to react angrily to umpires correctly applying the rules and giving him time violation warnings.
In Madrid last year, he complained that it wasn't good for the show if they properly applied the rules - implying that his brand of tennis is more entertaining and as a result an exception should be made when he's played a particularly entertaining point. But this does nothing to assuage the concern for how frequently he goes over the limit after serving an ace, a service winner, or hitting an effective 1-2 combination. As such, I think it's perfectly appropriate for him to be cited more frequently for these clear violations. But this year, something ugly has happened, which I also think is incredibly inappropriate.
In Brazil, after accidentally putting his shorts on backwards, he served (and won) the first game of the set, then quickly ran to the sidelines to change his shorts back round the right way. It was a moment of levity, or so we thought, until Carlos Bernardes noticed that his opponent was ready to serve, and Nadal, having chosen the short changeover after the first game to correct his livery, wound up interrupting the server's pace, which is against the laws of the game, and he was promptly (and correctly) cited for a time violation. Nadal, incensed, complained intensely to no avail, and then publicly requested that Bernardes not do any more of his matches. It is at this point that I must draw the line, and say that Nadal has let himself and the game down with this request.
I understand that some players just don't get along with some umpires - it happens, and is perfectly normal - but the minute you start allowing players to determine which umpire will and won't do their matches, that for me is beyond the pale. Nadal shouldn't be picking and choosing umpires - I disagree with that entirely. That's not fair to the other players or the umpire. Also, he should have to publicly articulate his problem with an umpire so that it can be determined whether his problem is a reasonable one. A reasonable problem is that the umpire frequently makes overrules that are overturned by hawkeye. An unreasonable problem he might have, is simply that the umpire applies the rules properly. Bernardes isn't doing these matches because he's a chump, and as far as I can tell, Nadal's only problem is that Bernardes doesn't bow to the pressure to accommodate all his idiosyncracies - that is Nadal's problem, not the umpire's.
Some have argued that this sort of request shouldn't be made public - I disagree entirely with this as well. The last place these things should be addressed is behind closed doors, because that compromises the integrity of the officiating. What else is being said behind closed doors that may favor one player (who takes forever between points and gets illegal coaching and take dubious injury time-outs and argues when he is wrong on the application of the rules)? Is there to be a separate set of rules just for him that we don't know about? I think that's not on.
There will always be a problem when a player takes himself to be more important than the laws of the game he plays - when that happens, it becomes a competition tilted in his favor, which is particularly tragic when if he just shaped up and played within the rules, he might still be be just as successful. But when Nadal chooses to make a different set of rules for himself (and anyone who agrees with him) that's not fair to the game or his opponents, nor ultimately the viewers.
Now, in response to this controversy, Jon Wertheim posted the following letter from an anonymous umpire, who attempted to play down the ghastliness of all of this:
"I found it interesting that it has gotten so much attention as this situation is relatively common through all levels of tennis. All chair umpires, from college through the futures, challengers and ATP/WTA have a “no list” of players whose matches they don’t want to officiate, generally due to an issue that arose in a recent match. Most of the time umpires will only put a player on the list for a few weeks to give tensions time to defuse—in rare circumstances, perhaps after repeated issues, it might be permanent. This happens all the time, and most of the time the player doesn’t even know about it.
A player making the request, like Nadal did, is much less common, but is usually honored just like if the umpire had made the request. So much of being an effective chair umpire depends on having the confidence and respect of the players, and if a recent incident is in the back of a player’s mind, it can cause there to be a lack of confidence in the official before the match even starts. Our goal as officials is to give players a fair match without unnecessarily becoming part of the match, and you never want something from a past match to affect a future one—from either the player's or official's side. There are many qualified officials at all of these tournaments, so keeping one player away from a specific official, doesn't burden the officiating assignments too much and generally makes for a smoother match for all involved."
That's an email from an (anonymous) umpire expressing an opinion that because this goes on all the time from umpires, it should elicit no concern when a player does the same. My opinion is that this is illogical, and that he has compared two unlike things - if an umpire doesn't want to do a match, he loses the match. If a player doesn't want an umpire to do his match he too should lose the match. That is logically consistent. If an umpire said "find me another player" we would say that is ridiculous, and we should say the same about a player saying, "find me another umpire".
I also find it disconcerting that if this kind of illogical and unjust request is accepted behind closed doors, it begs the question, what else is accepted behind closed doors? More importantly, if Nadal or any other player who wants to exclude certain officials from their matches, is truly justified, they should make the request publicly. In this I applaud Nadal's openness, just not his specific request, which is, in my opinion, completely unjust.
You can't have your cake and eat it too - you can't publicly make an (unjust) request and then not expect to be publicly called to task for it. By the same token, you can't admit that private agreements are made to affect the assignment of officials based on anything other than their quality as an official, and then insist on your indignation when the logical question of "what else is decided (in private) that is not based on merit, but rather on convenience, that we don't know about" is asked. I mean, you can, but it'd be ridiculous to do so.
As a paying fan, I would like to be in a position to determine for myself whether this constitutes a reason to doubt the integrity of the officiating. If Bernardes applies the rules properly (as far as I or anyone else watching tennis can tell - and this would include his colleagues and the tournament referees who assign umpires) then what gives Nadal the right to exclude him from his matches? And if the only reason is because he does his job properly, that's a damning commentary on Nadal, not Bernardes.
I also find it disconcerting that if this kind of illogical and unjust request is accepted behind closed doors, it begs the question, what else is accepted behind closed doors? More importantly, if Nadal or any other player who wants to exclude certain officials from their matches, is truly justified, they should make the request publicly. In this I applaud Nadal's openness, just not his specific request, which is, in my opinion, completely unjust.
You can't have your cake and eat it too - you can't publicly make an (unjust) request and then not expect to be publicly called to task for it. By the same token, you can't admit that private agreements are made to affect the assignment of officials based on anything other than their quality as an official, and then insist on your indignation when the logical question of "what else is decided (in private) that is not based on merit, but rather on convenience, that we don't know about" is asked. I mean, you can, but it'd be ridiculous to do so.
As a paying fan, I would like to be in a position to determine for myself whether this constitutes a reason to doubt the integrity of the officiating. If Bernardes applies the rules properly (as far as I or anyone else watching tennis can tell - and this would include his colleagues and the tournament referees who assign umpires) then what gives Nadal the right to exclude him from his matches? And if the only reason is because he does his job properly, that's a damning commentary on Nadal, not Bernardes.
In Brazil Nadal made it clear that he feels Bernardes puts more pressure on him than any other umpire. But Bernardes has not been cited for any faulty judgment or application of the rules. It could be argued (which I believe is the case) that Bernardes applies the rules more stringently to Nadal than other umpires do, but should he be excluded for applying the rules - is this what passes for a good reason to exclude the umpire? Finally, what is entirely absent is the any citation of a rule that any player can refuse any umpire. That it happens (and I'm sure it does) is neither proof that it is legal or fair.
I have enormous respect for Rafael Nadal and what he's done in the game of tennis, but it has to be said that what he has achieved, he has achieved with some under the radar, but persistent, cheating. It's always been perceived as an innocuous kind of cheating, but the more you look at what he's done in the past, not only is the criticism of him to be expected, so too, in my opinion, should the slight diminution in respect for him that has resulted from all of this. After all, he has received illegal coaching all his career, and neither he nor his Uncle even try to hide or deny it. That is, in my opinion, not on. He has frequently taken inexplicable injury time-outs in the past, when things weren't going his way, and last year that caught up to him in Australian Open final. And finally, he persistently and knowingly has taken well more than the allotted time limit between points (which is cheating) and has argued vociferously against it, to the extent that he has now banned an umpire for simply applying this rule.
He'll probably get out of this rut one way or another, because he's too great a player to be on the outside looking in for too long...but at least the "real" Charlie Brown's disrespect was entirely undeserved.
I am no longer convinced that this is the case with Carlito Moreno.
Monday, June 8, 2015
STAN WAWRINKA HAS LIBERATED US
There's something liberating about the destruction of myths in tennis - the blogosphere is replete with them, and to a person who plays as often as I do, it can be disheartening to read what others just take as the gospel, even if it makes absolutely no sense at all. That's why I felt a sense of liberation from Stan Wawrinka's victory over Novak Djokovic in the French Open final yesterday. Not that I was imprisoned by being his fan - I'm not - nor that I relished in the interruption of what everyone seemed to agree was Novak's procession to the only major he's never won.
The John McEnroe's of the world so personally identify with the pressures of being #1, that he frequently seems to forget that there are two players involved in a match with the top dog. To hear him commentate, the match (and his attention) are entirely dependent on the guy who's supposed to win. And I just can't get over the obvious prepared side-bars (and often incoherent ramblings) of Mary Carillo who has replaced Dick Enberg as the greatest producer of broadcast cheese in the tennis world. She's never short of a story of some grandmother or teacher in 3rd grade or friend who spent time in a Turkish prison - there's always some damn thing. So it's all the more disappointing that a former player, who did actually win a mixed doubles major (with John McEnroe, no less) provides so little in the way of technical or tactical analysis.
But they are the purveyors of tennis mythology - it is their inane and endlessly narcissistic pseudo-analysis that drones on and on about any number of mythological hurdles to navigate, that convinces the tennis world that that the myths are fact. The more they say it, the more it's repeated, and the more it's taken as truth. They begin to suffocate us with their dogma, leaving no room for the possibility that something unexpected could happen...until, of course, it happens.
That's why Stan's victory at Roland Garros should liberate us all - particularly those who play tennis, but as well those who watch it. Too often we've heard these myths, and if you listen to them often enough, it's hard to come to any conclusion other than the game of tennis (and all of it's many myths) decides for you what can and cannot be done, rather you determining for yourself, your own destiny.
So here, for the record, and for which we should all be very grateful, are some of the myths from which Stan has liberated us all:
The Insurmountable Head to Head Match Up
It is the most common statistic shown in tennis - the head to head matchup. It appears to give you some insight into the match that's about to occur, and is as often cited as a hurdle that has to be overcome as anything technical. But there's something very wrong with using the head-to-head match up as a harbinger: first, the matches often go back many more years than is relevant to the match at hand. For two players like say, Federer and Haas, that history could go back 14 years. To me, that's as insightful as looking at results in the juniors. If you think about it, the head-to-head match up is only as informative as the overall games of the players involved have not evolved...and how exactly are you going to measure that? Well, that requires technical analysis, and there's just no time for that on television, so it's much easier to cite the head-to-head record - because nothing else says so little, while appearing to say so much. After all, a player could (theoretically) change his game in a month in such a way that the previous ten years of results are completely irrelevant.
Even so, the head-to-head record begins to take on such an undeserved importance that people no longer view it as a historical coincidence or happenstance, but rather as a hurdle that must be overcome in order to win the upcoming match. But the truth is that what happened 10 years ago has no more impact on the next match than what happened 10 minutes ago - the past is not prologue unless the conditions characterizing the past are the same. And that being the case, the only thing you have to do to nullify years of futility in a head-to-head match up is...change. Something, anything, sometimes it almost doesn't matter what, but change - and not something mental, because in the best case scenario, a mental change elicits a technical change, and as such, mental changes are really reaching around your ass to scratch your elbow. You're much better off making technical changes, and the mental changes (by now irrelevant) will follow.
The One-Handed Backhand Disadvantage
This is the myth that the one-handed backhand is dead as a viable technique in modern tennis - the game has changed so much that no player with a one-handed backhanded could possibly ever beat [enter player here] or win [enter tournament here], under any circumstances. Once again, leave it to John McEnroe, a player with a one-handed backhand, to self-inflicted this wound to his own legacy, who proclaimed confidently this year at the Italian Open (that's what I'm calling it, I don't care what it's actually called) that, "No player with a one-handed backhand will ever beat Rafael Nadal on clay". And the tennis gods promptly melted the wax in his wings when Stan the Man canned Rafa in Rome in straight sets. I guess McEnroe forgot that Nico Almagro, during one of the least productive seasons of his career, did the same in Barcelona the year before. So how did he come to this conclusion in the first place?
Well, there is an underlying myth out there concerning the technical omnipotence of professional tennis players - the line goes like this: these guys are the best players in the world, and as such, they must have every shot in the book at their disposal, therefore, if they can't find a solution to a problem, the problem must be mental, not technical, because they're technically omnipotent. If you read carefully, and know anything about logic, you can see that you simply cannot use the same point in your premise as your conclusion - that's circular, and proves nothing. But that's precisely what this theory does. And worse than that, despite evidence to the contrary, that these players are not technically omnipotent, because some players are so technically superior to others - they use that in defense of the circular logic by the following: Roger Federer is the most talented and complete player in tennis, so if he can't do something technical, nobody can - so if he can't beat Nadal on clay because of his one-handed backhand, nobody on earth could possibly have a better one that could.
Bloody dead wrong.
The truth is that Roger may indeed be more talented and resourceful than Stan, but Stan hits the ball harder than Roger - a lot harder - and that gives him opportunities against players that Roger does not have. In fact, one could argue that Roger's game, which has evolved to compel him to stay on top of the baseline, puts him at a disadvantage because it is more difficult to hit with pace, which is the only way to consistently pressure Djokovic and Nadal, who defend exceptionally well. Because Stan can hit so hard, he doesn't have to stand on top of the baseline to take his opponent's time away - he can do it from 6 feet further back. And six feet further behind the baseline means Stan can more frequently hit the backhand in optimal comfort zone, making him even more likely to push his opponent back on clay, in a way that Roger cannot.
Of course the difference yesterday was not Stan's backhand (which has always been a fantastic shot) but his forehand, which suddenly is as powerful as any shot in tennis, but that's not to ignore the obvious - Stan's backhand is better than Roger's therefore Roger is not technically omnipotent, and most importantly Roger's technical limitations do not apply to everyone on earth who plays a similar game.
Myth blown.
The Tennis Career Archetype
If you don't win a major by your 23rd birthday, you never will. That's the theory because all the major champions in the open era, won their first before their 23rd birthday. So, try as they may, the Tomas Berdych's and David Ferrer's and Feliciano Lopez's of the world should really just retire, because their window has come and gone.
But hang on a minute - wasn't Stan 28 when he won the Oz Open last year and almost 30 when he won Roland Garros just now? Are there other major champions that old? Of course Federer and Nadal come to mind, and even Agassi and Sampras won majors long after their "best" years had gone by, but they had already won one, so they already had the "belief" right? Well, let's put aside the stupidity of the "belief" argument for a second, and examine whether other first time major winners have been this old...ever?
Jan Kodes and Ivan Lendl were both 24 when they won their first majors. Marin Cilic was 25...hmm those are well within the margin of credulity, since the vast majority of other major champions have done it long before then, like all the 80's major champions. But what about Cilic's coach, Goran Ivanisevic? Well, he was 30 when he won Wimbledon - but I think everyone in tennis viewed that as a fluke, ironically since he should have won it 2-3 other times he found himself in the final. But how about Andy Murray? He was 25 when he won the US Open, and 26 when he finally won Wimbledon. No, this is looking more like the exception.
But here Stan Wawrinka - who in terms of professional tennis, may as well be a septuagenarian, winning, not one, but two majors since his 28th birthday. How has he bucked the trend? Well basically he did it the old fashioned way - he lost weight, changed racquets and improved his forehand. It doesn't sound like much, but that was enough for him, which tells you how close he was all along. Of course the results weren't there, they suggested nothing of the kind from him, and if you look at his 2011 victory in the Australian Open of Andy Roddick, that looked like an upset, when now, in retrospect, looks like the right result. But clearly he was better than we thought back then...
...and so are a lot of guys floating around right now.
Somewhere out there is a guy who is about to turn 30 with all the tools in his kit to force his way into the conversation. But if your myopia is restricted to the players that should win (as is always the case with say...John McEnroe, who couldn't resist alluding to Federer during his interview with Wawrinka) you will miss those who gape to be their heirs. So who are the diamonds in the rough? Well that's for another post.
The point of this post is to say that there are a lot of myths about professional tennis that make us think we know what to expect, and seeps its way into every aspect of our experience with tennis, including the matches that we play. But nothing could be more damaging to the game of an aspiring professional, or an aspiring weekend hacker (like me), than to insist on remaining chained to these pillars of absolute nothingness and meaninglessness that masquerades as tennis dogma that is in fact about as insightful and informative as the Iliad.
Let us all take a moment and thank Stan Wawrinka for liberating us from the shackles of our misguided, unproven and utterly useless tennis dogma.
The John McEnroe's of the world so personally identify with the pressures of being #1, that he frequently seems to forget that there are two players involved in a match with the top dog. To hear him commentate, the match (and his attention) are entirely dependent on the guy who's supposed to win. And I just can't get over the obvious prepared side-bars (and often incoherent ramblings) of Mary Carillo who has replaced Dick Enberg as the greatest producer of broadcast cheese in the tennis world. She's never short of a story of some grandmother or teacher in 3rd grade or friend who spent time in a Turkish prison - there's always some damn thing. So it's all the more disappointing that a former player, who did actually win a mixed doubles major (with John McEnroe, no less) provides so little in the way of technical or tactical analysis.
But they are the purveyors of tennis mythology - it is their inane and endlessly narcissistic pseudo-analysis that drones on and on about any number of mythological hurdles to navigate, that convinces the tennis world that that the myths are fact. The more they say it, the more it's repeated, and the more it's taken as truth. They begin to suffocate us with their dogma, leaving no room for the possibility that something unexpected could happen...until, of course, it happens.
That's why Stan's victory at Roland Garros should liberate us all - particularly those who play tennis, but as well those who watch it. Too often we've heard these myths, and if you listen to them often enough, it's hard to come to any conclusion other than the game of tennis (and all of it's many myths) decides for you what can and cannot be done, rather you determining for yourself, your own destiny.
So here, for the record, and for which we should all be very grateful, are some of the myths from which Stan has liberated us all:
The Insurmountable Head to Head Match Up
It is the most common statistic shown in tennis - the head to head matchup. It appears to give you some insight into the match that's about to occur, and is as often cited as a hurdle that has to be overcome as anything technical. But there's something very wrong with using the head-to-head match up as a harbinger: first, the matches often go back many more years than is relevant to the match at hand. For two players like say, Federer and Haas, that history could go back 14 years. To me, that's as insightful as looking at results in the juniors. If you think about it, the head-to-head match up is only as informative as the overall games of the players involved have not evolved...and how exactly are you going to measure that? Well, that requires technical analysis, and there's just no time for that on television, so it's much easier to cite the head-to-head record - because nothing else says so little, while appearing to say so much. After all, a player could (theoretically) change his game in a month in such a way that the previous ten years of results are completely irrelevant.
Even so, the head-to-head record begins to take on such an undeserved importance that people no longer view it as a historical coincidence or happenstance, but rather as a hurdle that must be overcome in order to win the upcoming match. But the truth is that what happened 10 years ago has no more impact on the next match than what happened 10 minutes ago - the past is not prologue unless the conditions characterizing the past are the same. And that being the case, the only thing you have to do to nullify years of futility in a head-to-head match up is...change. Something, anything, sometimes it almost doesn't matter what, but change - and not something mental, because in the best case scenario, a mental change elicits a technical change, and as such, mental changes are really reaching around your ass to scratch your elbow. You're much better off making technical changes, and the mental changes (by now irrelevant) will follow.
The One-Handed Backhand Disadvantage
This is the myth that the one-handed backhand is dead as a viable technique in modern tennis - the game has changed so much that no player with a one-handed backhanded could possibly ever beat [enter player here] or win [enter tournament here], under any circumstances. Once again, leave it to John McEnroe, a player with a one-handed backhand, to self-inflicted this wound to his own legacy, who proclaimed confidently this year at the Italian Open (that's what I'm calling it, I don't care what it's actually called) that, "No player with a one-handed backhand will ever beat Rafael Nadal on clay". And the tennis gods promptly melted the wax in his wings when Stan the Man canned Rafa in Rome in straight sets. I guess McEnroe forgot that Nico Almagro, during one of the least productive seasons of his career, did the same in Barcelona the year before. So how did he come to this conclusion in the first place?
Well, there is an underlying myth out there concerning the technical omnipotence of professional tennis players - the line goes like this: these guys are the best players in the world, and as such, they must have every shot in the book at their disposal, therefore, if they can't find a solution to a problem, the problem must be mental, not technical, because they're technically omnipotent. If you read carefully, and know anything about logic, you can see that you simply cannot use the same point in your premise as your conclusion - that's circular, and proves nothing. But that's precisely what this theory does. And worse than that, despite evidence to the contrary, that these players are not technically omnipotent, because some players are so technically superior to others - they use that in defense of the circular logic by the following: Roger Federer is the most talented and complete player in tennis, so if he can't do something technical, nobody can - so if he can't beat Nadal on clay because of his one-handed backhand, nobody on earth could possibly have a better one that could.
Bloody dead wrong.
The truth is that Roger may indeed be more talented and resourceful than Stan, but Stan hits the ball harder than Roger - a lot harder - and that gives him opportunities against players that Roger does not have. In fact, one could argue that Roger's game, which has evolved to compel him to stay on top of the baseline, puts him at a disadvantage because it is more difficult to hit with pace, which is the only way to consistently pressure Djokovic and Nadal, who defend exceptionally well. Because Stan can hit so hard, he doesn't have to stand on top of the baseline to take his opponent's time away - he can do it from 6 feet further back. And six feet further behind the baseline means Stan can more frequently hit the backhand in optimal comfort zone, making him even more likely to push his opponent back on clay, in a way that Roger cannot.
Of course the difference yesterday was not Stan's backhand (which has always been a fantastic shot) but his forehand, which suddenly is as powerful as any shot in tennis, but that's not to ignore the obvious - Stan's backhand is better than Roger's therefore Roger is not technically omnipotent, and most importantly Roger's technical limitations do not apply to everyone on earth who plays a similar game.
Myth blown.
The Tennis Career Archetype
If you don't win a major by your 23rd birthday, you never will. That's the theory because all the major champions in the open era, won their first before their 23rd birthday. So, try as they may, the Tomas Berdych's and David Ferrer's and Feliciano Lopez's of the world should really just retire, because their window has come and gone.
But hang on a minute - wasn't Stan 28 when he won the Oz Open last year and almost 30 when he won Roland Garros just now? Are there other major champions that old? Of course Federer and Nadal come to mind, and even Agassi and Sampras won majors long after their "best" years had gone by, but they had already won one, so they already had the "belief" right? Well, let's put aside the stupidity of the "belief" argument for a second, and examine whether other first time major winners have been this old...ever?
Jan Kodes and Ivan Lendl were both 24 when they won their first majors. Marin Cilic was 25...hmm those are well within the margin of credulity, since the vast majority of other major champions have done it long before then, like all the 80's major champions. But what about Cilic's coach, Goran Ivanisevic? Well, he was 30 when he won Wimbledon - but I think everyone in tennis viewed that as a fluke, ironically since he should have won it 2-3 other times he found himself in the final. But how about Andy Murray? He was 25 when he won the US Open, and 26 when he finally won Wimbledon. No, this is looking more like the exception.
But here Stan Wawrinka - who in terms of professional tennis, may as well be a septuagenarian, winning, not one, but two majors since his 28th birthday. How has he bucked the trend? Well basically he did it the old fashioned way - he lost weight, changed racquets and improved his forehand. It doesn't sound like much, but that was enough for him, which tells you how close he was all along. Of course the results weren't there, they suggested nothing of the kind from him, and if you look at his 2011 victory in the Australian Open of Andy Roddick, that looked like an upset, when now, in retrospect, looks like the right result. But clearly he was better than we thought back then...
...and so are a lot of guys floating around right now.
Somewhere out there is a guy who is about to turn 30 with all the tools in his kit to force his way into the conversation. But if your myopia is restricted to the players that should win (as is always the case with say...John McEnroe, who couldn't resist alluding to Federer during his interview with Wawrinka) you will miss those who gape to be their heirs. So who are the diamonds in the rough? Well that's for another post.
The point of this post is to say that there are a lot of myths about professional tennis that make us think we know what to expect, and seeps its way into every aspect of our experience with tennis, including the matches that we play. But nothing could be more damaging to the game of an aspiring professional, or an aspiring weekend hacker (like me), than to insist on remaining chained to these pillars of absolute nothingness and meaninglessness that masquerades as tennis dogma that is in fact about as insightful and informative as the Iliad.
Let us all take a moment and thank Stan Wawrinka for liberating us from the shackles of our misguided, unproven and utterly useless tennis dogma.
Friday, April 10, 2015
ADRIAN WHO?
Mannarino. That's right - even though I'm a grown-ass man, and I just can't bring myself to worship anyone (that ship sailed about 20 years ago), if I did have a favorite player on the ATP tour, it would be none other than Adrian Mannarino.
Now if you don't follow tennis (even if you do), you'll probably have to google him - and when you do you'll discover that there's almost nothing distinctive about his bio. He appears to be, for all intents and purposes, a player who's only distinction from the monotony of baseline hugging, two-handed backhand hitting, 1980s-born supplicants to the four corners of the tennis kingdom known as "the big four", is an endearingly strange haircut. And when you look up his highlights on youtube, you would be hard pressed to put your finger on exactly what it is that he does that has brought him to the hallowed ground of the seeded players locker room (as he most certainly will obtain by the time Wimbledon rolls around). He's not that tall, rail thin, walks like he's wearing thin socks on a very cold basement floor, and appears to have developed only one-half of the stroke production required to hit a decent groundstroke.
But I urge you to take a look at this guy again, and ask yourself this: if you can start your forehand from your hip and still finish across the shoulder and hit winners...why the hell is everyone else's strokes so much more elaborate? Why introduce all the risk associated with a big wind-up, and leaping into the stroke, and groaning like the pard, when any one of those extraneous elements, if mistimed or malformed, puts your strokes at the risk of missing the mark and being more bark than bite?
Put it another way, given that he doesn't seem to do anything that isn't absolutely necessary when hitting a ball, what does this guy know that everyone else slept through the day they taught groundstrokes in Groundstrokes_101?
You see, there are people out there who watch tennis and just don't get it - they don't understand how important it is to have good technique. Some of them play, but play so poorly that they wouldn't know good technique if drilled them right between the eyes on a good poach in a doubles match. Some of them play with so much talent, that they can't comprehend how anyone would find it difficult to do what they do, so they assume there must be something else to this racket (pun intended). Some don't play, have never played, and don't understand how the game is played, and desperately want success in the game to be attributed to something they can plainly see (like speed, strength, stamina and athleticism) or something they can't see and therefore can attribute almost anything to it (the mental game, confidence, belief - just take your pick of any metaphysical machination espoused today).
But watching Adrian Mannarino play, and more importantly play successfully, against some of the best players in the world, some of the biggest, strongest, fastest, hardest hitting jocks the game has to offer, forces even the most keen observer of our beautiful game to wonder: how the hell does he do it? I mean the guy is maybe a buck-45 if he's wearing his shoes and a track suit, and most of the time it does look like he's more massaging the ball left and right than hitting it. But every once in a while, when he has to inject pace into his shots, he can and does, and when he does so, the stroke's production is almost indistinct from his neutral strokes, and the results are all the more effective because of the element of surprise.
The reason is that he is the most technically efficient player in the world. Nobody on the planet plays at that level with so little outward effort, and the reason for that is because there isn't a single wasted movement in his stroke production, nor is there a stone left un-turned in the eternal pursuit of easy power. His serve for example is a marvel of modern physics. Taking two steps into the delivery, he's already moving 10 miles per hour when he hits it, so everything else he generates in the way of pace is on top of that base. And because he's 6 inches off the ground when he hits it, it is essentially as if he is six inches taller than he actually is, when the ball makes contact with his strings; this explains why he's able to generate so much pace, spin and angle from his narrow and sinewy frame. Furthermore, because his point of contact is in front and to the left, he puts more side-winding action on that stroke than 99 out 100 opponents he'll face, and more importantly more action than 99 out of 100 opponents his opponents will face. They've never seen anything like it because there is nothing like it. It's totally unexpected, and there's so much movement on the ball by the time they see it, it's already somewhere else.
Add to that the fact that's it's left-handed, and it's really not fair - and that's just the serve.
Both the forehand and backhand have almost no backswing, which is almost the opposite of what most teaching professionals will tell you about how to hit a tennis ball. In fact, I'm guessing that the first thing you heard, the first time you were taught to hit a tennis ball was, "Get your racquet back". And here, a frizzy haired nymph from France is taking that most basic element of every ground stroke in professional tennis and throwing it out the window.
Now what happens when you eliminate the back swing? First and foremost the stroke doesn't take as long to produce, so you don't show your hand to your opponent until the very last minute of where you're going to hit the ball. Furthermore, because there are fewer moving parts, presumably there are fewer things to screw up, and like the rotary engine of ground strokes, Mannarino's rarely go terribly awry. Additionally, it's very hard to take time away from him, so no matter how hard you hit it, in all likelihood he's going to have a shot at getting it back. And certainly you can't rush him anywhere within 12 feet of either side of the center of the court, which means, while his error rate is low, yours will increase just by virtue of where you have to put it to disrupt him.
But the most valuable distinction of Adrian Mannarino's strokes is that because they are technically efficient, his footwork has to be right, and because of that, there's almost no shot in the game that he can't hit. You have to get to the point of contact with your full stroke production at the ready on any shot you hit - that's why footwork is the holy grail of tennis. With the exception of Serena Williams, if you look down the line at every great player in the history of the game, the only thing that every single one of them have in common is good footwork. Flat shots cross court or up the line, neutral or aggressive loopers, short slice, deep slice, short angle - the game is really an open book for him because for him to play at all, everything aside from hitting the ball has to be just right...and as a result, it usually is and he is free to do almost anything he wants with the ball.
And it is that broad technical omnipotence that makes him such a pleasure to watch.
Don't be mistaken, I'm not saying Adrian Mannarino is the best player in the world, or that he's going to win a major. This is sports, an athletic endeavor, and at the end of the day, all things equal, the jock wins most of the time - particularly in the modern game, where the technical side of the game is so monolithic, and the physical attributes rise to the level of decisive in most match ups. But there is something irritating about commentators and pundits who over emphasize the physical: it's almost as if they'd prefer to eschew the technical for other more palatable attributes that certainly factor into the result, but aren't necessarily the deciding factor. You've got to get to the ball, and if you hit it hard enough that the other guy can't, then you'll probably win the point...and if you do that enough, the match.
But the beauty of Adrian Mannarino's game is how it pierces the premise that precedes every conversation about the athletic and mental aspects of the game - that all things are equal. Mannarino proves they couldn't possibly be, because while other players have more elaborate strokes, are bigger and stronger and faster, and appear to more emotional and committed, all this little Frenchman does is hit the ball just hard enough, with just enough spin, to get it where it needs to go...and from that he is as technical and competitive as someone with all his physical attributes has to be, and could hope to be.
We should all be so technical.
Now if you don't follow tennis (even if you do), you'll probably have to google him - and when you do you'll discover that there's almost nothing distinctive about his bio. He appears to be, for all intents and purposes, a player who's only distinction from the monotony of baseline hugging, two-handed backhand hitting, 1980s-born supplicants to the four corners of the tennis kingdom known as "the big four", is an endearingly strange haircut. And when you look up his highlights on youtube, you would be hard pressed to put your finger on exactly what it is that he does that has brought him to the hallowed ground of the seeded players locker room (as he most certainly will obtain by the time Wimbledon rolls around). He's not that tall, rail thin, walks like he's wearing thin socks on a very cold basement floor, and appears to have developed only one-half of the stroke production required to hit a decent groundstroke.
But I urge you to take a look at this guy again, and ask yourself this: if you can start your forehand from your hip and still finish across the shoulder and hit winners...why the hell is everyone else's strokes so much more elaborate? Why introduce all the risk associated with a big wind-up, and leaping into the stroke, and groaning like the pard, when any one of those extraneous elements, if mistimed or malformed, puts your strokes at the risk of missing the mark and being more bark than bite?
Put it another way, given that he doesn't seem to do anything that isn't absolutely necessary when hitting a ball, what does this guy know that everyone else slept through the day they taught groundstrokes in Groundstrokes_101?
You see, there are people out there who watch tennis and just don't get it - they don't understand how important it is to have good technique. Some of them play, but play so poorly that they wouldn't know good technique if drilled them right between the eyes on a good poach in a doubles match. Some of them play with so much talent, that they can't comprehend how anyone would find it difficult to do what they do, so they assume there must be something else to this racket (pun intended). Some don't play, have never played, and don't understand how the game is played, and desperately want success in the game to be attributed to something they can plainly see (like speed, strength, stamina and athleticism) or something they can't see and therefore can attribute almost anything to it (the mental game, confidence, belief - just take your pick of any metaphysical machination espoused today).
But watching Adrian Mannarino play, and more importantly play successfully, against some of the best players in the world, some of the biggest, strongest, fastest, hardest hitting jocks the game has to offer, forces even the most keen observer of our beautiful game to wonder: how the hell does he do it? I mean the guy is maybe a buck-45 if he's wearing his shoes and a track suit, and most of the time it does look like he's more massaging the ball left and right than hitting it. But every once in a while, when he has to inject pace into his shots, he can and does, and when he does so, the stroke's production is almost indistinct from his neutral strokes, and the results are all the more effective because of the element of surprise.
The reason is that he is the most technically efficient player in the world. Nobody on the planet plays at that level with so little outward effort, and the reason for that is because there isn't a single wasted movement in his stroke production, nor is there a stone left un-turned in the eternal pursuit of easy power. His serve for example is a marvel of modern physics. Taking two steps into the delivery, he's already moving 10 miles per hour when he hits it, so everything else he generates in the way of pace is on top of that base. And because he's 6 inches off the ground when he hits it, it is essentially as if he is six inches taller than he actually is, when the ball makes contact with his strings; this explains why he's able to generate so much pace, spin and angle from his narrow and sinewy frame. Furthermore, because his point of contact is in front and to the left, he puts more side-winding action on that stroke than 99 out 100 opponents he'll face, and more importantly more action than 99 out of 100 opponents his opponents will face. They've never seen anything like it because there is nothing like it. It's totally unexpected, and there's so much movement on the ball by the time they see it, it's already somewhere else.
Add to that the fact that's it's left-handed, and it's really not fair - and that's just the serve.
Both the forehand and backhand have almost no backswing, which is almost the opposite of what most teaching professionals will tell you about how to hit a tennis ball. In fact, I'm guessing that the first thing you heard, the first time you were taught to hit a tennis ball was, "Get your racquet back". And here, a frizzy haired nymph from France is taking that most basic element of every ground stroke in professional tennis and throwing it out the window.
Now what happens when you eliminate the back swing? First and foremost the stroke doesn't take as long to produce, so you don't show your hand to your opponent until the very last minute of where you're going to hit the ball. Furthermore, because there are fewer moving parts, presumably there are fewer things to screw up, and like the rotary engine of ground strokes, Mannarino's rarely go terribly awry. Additionally, it's very hard to take time away from him, so no matter how hard you hit it, in all likelihood he's going to have a shot at getting it back. And certainly you can't rush him anywhere within 12 feet of either side of the center of the court, which means, while his error rate is low, yours will increase just by virtue of where you have to put it to disrupt him.
But the most valuable distinction of Adrian Mannarino's strokes is that because they are technically efficient, his footwork has to be right, and because of that, there's almost no shot in the game that he can't hit. You have to get to the point of contact with your full stroke production at the ready on any shot you hit - that's why footwork is the holy grail of tennis. With the exception of Serena Williams, if you look down the line at every great player in the history of the game, the only thing that every single one of them have in common is good footwork. Flat shots cross court or up the line, neutral or aggressive loopers, short slice, deep slice, short angle - the game is really an open book for him because for him to play at all, everything aside from hitting the ball has to be just right...and as a result, it usually is and he is free to do almost anything he wants with the ball.
And it is that broad technical omnipotence that makes him such a pleasure to watch.
Don't be mistaken, I'm not saying Adrian Mannarino is the best player in the world, or that he's going to win a major. This is sports, an athletic endeavor, and at the end of the day, all things equal, the jock wins most of the time - particularly in the modern game, where the technical side of the game is so monolithic, and the physical attributes rise to the level of decisive in most match ups. But there is something irritating about commentators and pundits who over emphasize the physical: it's almost as if they'd prefer to eschew the technical for other more palatable attributes that certainly factor into the result, but aren't necessarily the deciding factor. You've got to get to the ball, and if you hit it hard enough that the other guy can't, then you'll probably win the point...and if you do that enough, the match.
But the beauty of Adrian Mannarino's game is how it pierces the premise that precedes every conversation about the athletic and mental aspects of the game - that all things are equal. Mannarino proves they couldn't possibly be, because while other players have more elaborate strokes, are bigger and stronger and faster, and appear to more emotional and committed, all this little Frenchman does is hit the ball just hard enough, with just enough spin, to get it where it needs to go...and from that he is as technical and competitive as someone with all his physical attributes has to be, and could hope to be.
We should all be so technical.
Thursday, August 7, 2014
YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER, ANA
By all accounts, Ana Ivanovic is having something of a revival this year - she won Aukland, defeating Venus Williams (for just the second time in her career) in the final. She made the quarterfinal in Melbourne, losing to Genie Bouchard in a tough 3-set match. After some mixed results in the premier spring hard court events of Indian Wells and Miami, she won Monterrey with a semi-final victory over Caroline Wozniacki. She followed this up with arguably her best performance of the year at Stuttgart, despite losing the final.
It was the first time in 5 years that she made consecutive finals - not too shabby. Along the way, she defeated Julia Goerges (meh...) Svetlana Kuznetsova (2-time major winner and winner at the Citi Open last week) and her personal nemesis Jelena Jankovic, who always puts up a good fight - particularly against her. In the end, she succumbed to the best clay-courter on the WTA tour, Maria Sharapova (7 of her last 8 titles have been on clay, BTW) in the final. She capped off the highlights of this season so far with an impressive victory at the Aegon classic at Birmingham, where she never lost more than 5 games in a match and won the only grass court title of her career.
But a strange thing happened after that - she lost a match in the 3rd round at Wimbledon over Sabine Liscki after winning the first set on Saturday, and appearing to have the match in hand before the match was suspended due to poor light. Because Wimbledon doesn't play the middle Sunday, the match didn't resume until Monday, but she was still up a break in the second at 5-2, when the match was suspended again due to rain. This proved to be a tipping point, because upon resumption she proceed to lose 7 of the next 9 games, and the match, showing once again that in tennis it is just as easy to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Following that capitulation, in the context of the previous 7 months that saw her most successful season since 2008, she took the curious decision of splitting with the coach whose tenure coincided with those results, Serbian Nemanja Kontic. In and of itself, that is not unusual - players split with coaches for a variety of reasons and often do it when they appear to be really well and/or making great progress. At the end of the day, the player is the employer and they have the prerogative to make changes whenever they like.
What's strange is the reasons she gave for the change:
"You want someone who's going to be there to support you no matter what...to make you motivated, to make you hungry for success. I really wanted to get higher in the rankings...I definitely look for someone in that manner rather than someone who's going to be technical."
That's my emphasis precisely because I can't believe what I'm reading.
First, she emphasizes that she really wanted to move up in the rankings, and ironically, that is precisely what she did in 2014. In fact, she not only moved into the top 10 for the first time since 2008, but she also won 3 titles (where she had no titles the previous two years). You could hardly blame Kontic for scratching his head on this one, if winning titles and moving up in the rankings was truly the objective - in that case he did his job quite well.
She then goes out of her way to imply that Kontic wasn't giving her "unconditional love" so to speak, didn't motivate her, or keep her hungry for success. Now this is pretty damning for any coach hoping to get a job with the multitude of female professionals who seek a coach that will provide these exact same things for them. In that regard, Miss Ivanovic did him no favors here - in fact, if I didn't know any better, that really comes across as the last throes of a woman scorned.
But I digress.
The real question is, why in the world does she need someone else to motivate her? Isn't that something that is really her responsibility to herself? If she isn't self-motivated, isn't that problem hers and hers alone? Maybe she should look at the reasons she isn't motivated - too much money, too many matches, too many people around her putting pressure on her to earn their living? None of those have to do with the coach, because at the end of the day she is the final arbiter of her career decisions, including all of the above.
But the most incredible sentence is the last - that she's less interested in the technical than the motivational and psychological - I just can't believe or understand that. I mean, after all, this is a sport - a physical activity. Striking a tennis ball is not like moving pieces on a chess board - it does matter how you do what you do, so it behooves anyone who wants to do what they do better, to find someone who can help with that pesky "doing" bit..i.e. the technical. Furthermore, even if you work off the assumption that the body follows the mind (despite ample evidence to the contrary) the body still has to follow - in other words, even a mental edge has to translate into a technical edge, so why not cut out the middle man and work on the technical?
The mental game is by far the most overrated aspect of tennis - for a variety of reasons people attribute way too much importance to it, and because this attribution is so pervasive, a lot of people who should know better lap it up like a stray cat over a saucer of milk.
But Ana Ivanovic, you really should know better.
It was the first time in 5 years that she made consecutive finals - not too shabby. Along the way, she defeated Julia Goerges (meh...) Svetlana Kuznetsova (2-time major winner and winner at the Citi Open last week) and her personal nemesis Jelena Jankovic, who always puts up a good fight - particularly against her. In the end, she succumbed to the best clay-courter on the WTA tour, Maria Sharapova (7 of her last 8 titles have been on clay, BTW) in the final. She capped off the highlights of this season so far with an impressive victory at the Aegon classic at Birmingham, where she never lost more than 5 games in a match and won the only grass court title of her career.
But a strange thing happened after that - she lost a match in the 3rd round at Wimbledon over Sabine Liscki after winning the first set on Saturday, and appearing to have the match in hand before the match was suspended due to poor light. Because Wimbledon doesn't play the middle Sunday, the match didn't resume until Monday, but she was still up a break in the second at 5-2, when the match was suspended again due to rain. This proved to be a tipping point, because upon resumption she proceed to lose 7 of the next 9 games, and the match, showing once again that in tennis it is just as easy to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Following that capitulation, in the context of the previous 7 months that saw her most successful season since 2008, she took the curious decision of splitting with the coach whose tenure coincided with those results, Serbian Nemanja Kontic. In and of itself, that is not unusual - players split with coaches for a variety of reasons and often do it when they appear to be really well and/or making great progress. At the end of the day, the player is the employer and they have the prerogative to make changes whenever they like.
What's strange is the reasons she gave for the change:
"You want someone who's going to be there to support you no matter what...to make you motivated, to make you hungry for success. I really wanted to get higher in the rankings...I definitely look for someone in that manner rather than someone who's going to be technical."
That's my emphasis precisely because I can't believe what I'm reading.
First, she emphasizes that she really wanted to move up in the rankings, and ironically, that is precisely what she did in 2014. In fact, she not only moved into the top 10 for the first time since 2008, but she also won 3 titles (where she had no titles the previous two years). You could hardly blame Kontic for scratching his head on this one, if winning titles and moving up in the rankings was truly the objective - in that case he did his job quite well.
She then goes out of her way to imply that Kontic wasn't giving her "unconditional love" so to speak, didn't motivate her, or keep her hungry for success. Now this is pretty damning for any coach hoping to get a job with the multitude of female professionals who seek a coach that will provide these exact same things for them. In that regard, Miss Ivanovic did him no favors here - in fact, if I didn't know any better, that really comes across as the last throes of a woman scorned.
But I digress.
The real question is, why in the world does she need someone else to motivate her? Isn't that something that is really her responsibility to herself? If she isn't self-motivated, isn't that problem hers and hers alone? Maybe she should look at the reasons she isn't motivated - too much money, too many matches, too many people around her putting pressure on her to earn their living? None of those have to do with the coach, because at the end of the day she is the final arbiter of her career decisions, including all of the above.
But the most incredible sentence is the last - that she's less interested in the technical than the motivational and psychological - I just can't believe or understand that. I mean, after all, this is a sport - a physical activity. Striking a tennis ball is not like moving pieces on a chess board - it does matter how you do what you do, so it behooves anyone who wants to do what they do better, to find someone who can help with that pesky "doing" bit..i.e. the technical. Furthermore, even if you work off the assumption that the body follows the mind (despite ample evidence to the contrary) the body still has to follow - in other words, even a mental edge has to translate into a technical edge, so why not cut out the middle man and work on the technical?
The mental game is by far the most overrated aspect of tennis - for a variety of reasons people attribute way too much importance to it, and because this attribution is so pervasive, a lot of people who should know better lap it up like a stray cat over a saucer of milk.
But Ana Ivanovic, you really should know better.
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