Monday, June 29, 2009

What can this man teach us about TENNIS?


Chuck "The Iceman"
Liddell
Ultimate Fighting
Championship Fighter

No, I don't believe Chuck plays tennis, so what can we learn from him to improve?

Back in February of 2008 he was on a radio program called WAIT,WAIT, DON'T TELL ME, a humorous news based program on NPR. I heard him that day being interviewed by Peter Sagal.


Among other things Peter asked him about was does it help to get "worked up" and angry about the person before you go into the ring with him? Chuck said actually no. Paraphrasing here, Chuck says "I'm not an emotional fighter. Emotion CLOUDS YOUR JUDGEMENT, implying it gets harder to problem solve and execute if you get too emotional (and less rational) when you are in battle. http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=19108930 That conversation is at about the 2:10 mark.
You hear that tennis fans? Settle down a bit and think while you are out there. Losing ones cool may have (or may not have) helped some pretty famous tennis players, like McEnroe and Connors in the 70's, and more recently Nadal, Hewitt and The Poster Boy for Tennis TESTOSTERONE-- Gael Monfils. Every time Monfils jumps around the court shouting in glee after winning a big point, I can't help but think all that adrenaline is going to tire him out later in the match, when it wears off. Coupled with that are the emotions that accompany these large outbursts. They have to affect your judgement. Might doesn't always make right in tennis or otherwise you would have people looking like Chuck Liddell winning Wimbledon every year.

Andre Agassi also was interviewed late in his career and he talked about tennis is problem solving. Isn't that the truth. Let's say you are down 2-6, and have a breakpoint at 3-3. Your last 2 break chances you hit both service returns long trying to break serve with a return winner. I don't know, I'm no Einstein but I think instead of again overhitting the return, you might want to try something safer. However, so many people never seem to make any adjustments, or pay attention to learn from their mistakes. Remember that old definition of insanity: Doing the same thing again and again but expecting different results.
I also wrote another post related to this about your tennis hard drive-- see here http://paul-ihearttennis.blogspot.com/2009/02/is-your-tennis-hard-drive-faulty.html if you are interested in this important but often neglected part of the our game, the mental side of tennis.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Viva Roger!!

You gotta be happy for the guy... he's got the monkey off his back. Is his victory diminished because he did't beat Nadal in the final? Nah, not unless you such a Nadal fan that you are considering naming your firstborn Rafa.

Federer overcame many serious contenders and deficits. He was behind in sets won against 3 different opponents, and went 5 sets twice.

As good as he was he has to rethink the backhand slice service return. Many, many of these balls are just making it 2-3 feet beyond his opponents service box and that is a short ball. It's hard to break serve when you are continually getting winners hit off of your returns or making forced errors over your opponents 2nd shots.

Yet, the men's game generally comes down to a few break chances that decides the match. In the case of the Fed's semi-final against Del Potro, in the first 4 sets the person that won the set was the one that was the first to break the opponents serve. In the 5th set, the pattern only differed slightly - they went break-break-break, with Roger getting broken on his serve in the middle of those three games.

You are only as good as your weakest shot-- whether it be your 2nd serve, your backhand return, your overhead, volley, etc. And under pressure, the weakest shot breaks down even further.

A few years ago I rallied with a boy who was going to be on the tennis team the next year. In the 10 minutes of rallying, he ran around his backhand and hit maybe 8-10 inside-out forehands cross court. He loved it so much he probably would have married it. Sure, practice your favorite strokes, but it's MORE important to practice your weakest ones. That's where improvement occurs, for you, me, Roger and anybody else that plays this great game.
Socrates once said, the unexamined life is not worth living. I say the unexamined tennis game is not worth playing. We can all improve leading to more enjoyment but the first step is identifying an area (or two) to start that improvement.