Ask the Pro: Dubs 101

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Here’s a quick guide to the art of doubles play:

  1. Manage the ‘real estate’ by understanding the 80% Rule.  80% of shots are in a 2-metre circle around the centre serve box!  Given a choice to defend always move to protect the centre of the court.  You might not make the shot even so you’ll have a play most times!
  2. Doubles is a Team Sport because one player gets to stand in a winning position without hitting a ball! The server’s, and the receiver’s job is to get the ball to their partner at the net. So much easier to win points at the net!
  3. Be a  ‘Threat” by your court presence.  Impose yourself when you’re at the net to intimidate the opposition.  For example Thomas  (“blitzkrieg” big guy dominating the net) or Netto (fast guy moving around on the net) can cause opponents to make more errors!
  4. 80% First Serves.  Take a little off your first serve to start the point. Statswise, you’re more likely to win the point, you have more time to reach your volley position AND your partner has a greater chance of hitting a winning volley — a threefer! Besides your opposition is much more apprehensive about returning the first serve.

Great to see a slow and steady improvement in our players in our Ladies Clinics practicing these tips.

Cheers,
The Tennis Whisperer

 

Finding a way to win! Inside The Joker’s Head @AO

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Djokovic won his 17th Grand Slam at the Australian Open. And while I’m not a fan, there are some key lessons for us tragics!

Conventional wisdom tells us that on big points, we should play to our strengths. Djokovic admitted that when the big points came in the AO final, he did the opposite. Both times this baseliner rushed the net, and both times he came up trumps with the backhand volley he needed. [Coach Goran believes stats can sometimes be overrated particularly on big points and has caused Federer to lose two Slams.]

What does that tell us? That Djokovic has a strategic sixth sense? That fortune favors the brave? I would say it shows that in tennis, execution is underrated. By making those crucial volleys, Djokovic turned a tactic that was at best counterintuitive, and at worst reckless, into a winning one. And he turned what easily could have been his third straight loss to Thiem into his 17th Grand Slam title.

Champions execute, and, yes, while it may not be as simple as it sounds, they do rise to the occasion. In his own complicated way, Djokovic proved it again last night.

Paraphrasing Tennis Magazine, here’s how the match unfolded…..

In the first set, he tried for an early knockout punch. He took the ball early, peppered Thiem’s backhand, and broke the Austrian in his first service game. Thiem got off the mat and broke back, but Djokovic won the set anyway with a brilliant stab return, and a Thiem double-fault, at 4-5.

At that point, you might have expected a player of Djokovic’s stature and experience to relax and run away with a straight-set victory. That’s essentially what he did against Roger Federer in the semis. Instead, he spent the next two sets running out of gas. Thiem was the guy who had worked harder and longer to get here, but it was Djokovic who was suddenly dazed, slump-shouldered, and staggering, and who needed a refrigerator’s worth of food and drinks to revive him.

“Turbulent, I would say,” is how Djokovic described his evening.

“It started off really well; I broke his serve right away. I felt the experience on my side playing many Australian Open finals. For him, it was his first.”

“After I lost the second set, I started to feel really bad on the court. My energy dropped significantly. To be honest, I still don’t understand the reason why that has happened, because I’ve been doing the things I’ve been doing before all may matches. I was hydrated well and everything. Apparently doctor said I wasn’t hydrated enough.”

Like Nadal in New York, though, Djokovic found a way to right himself just in time. The fluids kicked in during the fourth set, and his body language and stamina immediately improved. From that point on, Djokovic went back to doing what he does best: digging in and forcing his opponent to hit a perfect shot, and then another, and then another. Thiem, whether it was because he finally grew tired or finally tensed up, began to misfire on his biggest weapon, his forehand. He made Djokovic work to the bitter end, but he could never get his nose in front again.

“He was a better player,” Djokovic said of Thiem. “Probably one point and one shot separated us tonight. Could have gone a different way.”

Djokovic then alluded to the two most important moments in the match: The break points that he saved early in each of the last two sets, and that kept the momentum on his side of the net. Djokovic saved them both in the same, completely unexpected way: with a surprise run to the net.

“I served and volleyed when I was facing break point in the fourth and in the fifth,” Djokovic said. “It worked both of the times. It could also have been differently. Serve and volley is not something I’m accustomed to. I’m not really doing that that often.”

“I kind of recognized that as an important tactic in those circumstances, and I’m really happy it worked.”

Source: https://www.tennis.com/pro-game/2020/02/novak-djokovic-australian-open-turbulent-triumphant-17th-major-champion-rise/87312/

The Big Takeaway From Australia: Men’s and Women’s Tennis Are in Very Different Places

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While men’s singles is dominated by the Big Three of Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, it is anyone’s game on the women’s side.

Sofia Kenin won the Australian Open, becoming the eighth woman to win a Grand Slam championship for the first time in the last 12 tournament.

……..

Perhaps the heart — and a tremendous amount of practice and conditioning — helps explain why men in their 30s continue to dominate. Younger stars like Dominic Thiem have to know in their heads by now that they have the firepower and skills to rival the Big Three: Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer.

Thiem, 26, has beaten each of them on more than one surface and has beaten Nadal and Djokovic in best-of-five-set Grand Slam play. But he is now 0-3 in Grand Slam finals after his loss to Djokovic late Sunday night.

It was a five-setter that was more epic in length than mood, with Thiem failing to push Djokovic for long at the end of the fourth set or the fifth. The suspense never approached the high-anxiety levels of last year’s Wimbledon final, when Djokovic beat Federer in a tiebreaker after they won 12 games each in the fifth set, a first for a Wimbledon final. Sunday’s duel also fell short of the five-set United States Open final in September, when Daniil Medvedev, 23, rallied from two sets down to push Nadal remarkably close to his physical limits.

But the theme remained the same: the old guard holding off new blood, though now just barely.

“I think it’s only small details,” Thiem said. “It could have gone either way for Daniil in the U.S. Open and for me here.”

The blockade of Grand Slam ports is still real.

“It’s unique in sports history that the three best players by far are playing in the same era,” Thiem said. “That’s what makes it very, very difficult for players to break through.”

Read more —->

Could a Keto Diet Be Bad for Athletes’ Bones?

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Race walkers on a low-carbohydrate, high-fat ketogenic diet showed early signs indicative of bone loss.

A low-carbohydrate, high-fat ketogenic diet could alter bone health in athletes, according to a thought-provoking new study of elite race walkers and their skeletons. The study, one of the first to track athletes during several weeks of intense training, finds that those following a ketogenic diet developed early signs indicative of bone loss.

The study adds to the considerable existing evidence that how we eat can affect how exercise affects us. It also raises concerns about possible, long-term health impacts from popular diet plans, including a high-fat, ketogenic diet.

Anyone interested in health, wellness, weight loss, exercise, food or best seller lists is familiar, by now, with ketogenic diets. Known more familiarly as keto diets, they are extremely low-carbohydrate, high-fat regimens, with as much as 90 percent of daily calories coming from fats.

Ketogenic diets, if followed scrupulously, reshape how our bodies fuel themselves. Because carbohydrates can be rapidly metabolized, our bodies typically turn to them first for energy, whether the carbohydrates come from our diets or stored sources in our muscles and livers.

But if people follow a low-carbohydrate, ketogenic diet, they soon burn through their stored carbohydrates and their bodies start relying on fat for energy. The fat must be broken down first, however, and, as part of that process, the liver creates substances known as ketone bodies that can be converted into energy.

Ketogenic diets are popular now — as they have been off and on in the past — among people hoping to lose weight, control blood sugar or otherwise regulate their health. Some athletes also follow the diet, hoping that it will improve performance, since fat, as fuel, is ample, slow-burning and long-lasting.

By Gretchen Reynolds NYTimes Read more –>

TENNIS WHISPERER CLINICS

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MTC announces its Tennis Whisperer Ladies clinics.

For Term 1, we have two Ladies Clinics:

  1) Monday Ladies Clinic 9:00 – 10:30 am

  2) Wednesday Ladies Clinic 9:00 – 10:30 am

Numbers are limited and players must meet a minimum playing standard.   Other Whisperer clinics may be held upon request.

MTC charges $30 for our Tennis Whisperer clinics.

Click here to learn more about, and sign up for, our Tennis Whisperer program.

Sweet spot: how a racquet can make or break a player

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How do the stars set up their racquets to enhance their game? And how has the evolution of racquets changed tennis itself? 

By Anthony Colangelo

JANUARY 20, 2020

is perfect hair held by a perfect headband against a pressed polo shirt, Roger Federer walked on to centre court at the Queensland Tennis Centre for his first tournament of 2014 to an adoring crowd.

A real-life glimpse of Federer was enough to transfix even the most casual tennis fan but, on this occasion, if you were in the know, it was his equipment that would have held your attention as much as the tennis God himself.

Federer had broken with a decade of tradition and got himself a new racquet.

The whole of 2013 had been a career low for the Swiss champion. Usually No.1 or No.2 in the world, he’d ended the year ranked sixth. A premature exit from Wimbledon, in the second round, had marked the first time in 36 consecutive grand slams that he had not made a quarter-final. He’d lasted until just the fourth round in the US Open, a tournament he’d won five times before.

These results represented, in the minds of some, the start of a career plateau for the then-32-year-old, with back injuries among the factors blunting his dominance.

But Federer arrested the slide.

He hired a new coach – his childhood hero, six-time grand-slam winner Stefan Edberg. He set about mending his body. And, perhaps less obviously until he appeared on court in Brisbane, he changed his magic wand – the racquet he’d wielded through his rise to tennis legend.

For a certain weekend warrior type of tennis player, changing racquets might offer a seductive solution to a subpar game. After all, it’s easier to spend a few hundred dollars on new equipment than it might be to work on a weak backhand or sluggish legs.

And a change can’t do much harm, right?

At the elite level, there is nowhere to hide. Just as any adjustment in stroke will be identified and perfected so will every variable gram, inch or centimetre in a racquet be scrutinised. The racquet is the player’s key weapon and one with which he or she has a symbiotic relationship. If a change is to be made to this set-up, it will be for good reason. And even an improvement of 1 per cent is a good reason in international tennis.

For Federer, at that moment in Brisbane, the stakes could not have been higher.

More recently, in the lead-up to this year’s Australian Open, eagle-eyed fans might have noticed that Serena Williams has stepped out with a new racquet.

How do stars such as Federer, his on-court arch rival Rafael Nadal and Barty and Williams set up their racquets to boost their games? And how have changes in racquets over the years changed the game itself?

Click here to read more –>

How did Nadal solve DeMinaur’s ATP Cup challenge?

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Nadal found an extra gear to cruise to a comfortable 6-1 win in the deciding set.

And De Minaur had the chance to see first hand what it takes to make a top-10 player, with Nadal explaining how he had turned the match around.

“Well, you need to have the mind open and clear to find solutions, and I was not able to win many points on the return during all the second set,” Nadal said. “I needed to change something, and that’s what I did.

“I think I advanced my position around one metre, one metre and a half on the return, on the deuce especially, and I take the first point. And then game change, because then the pressure is on the other side of the court.

“So just tried to change a little bit the dynamic, tried to change a little bit the energy of the match in that moments and tried to make feel the opponent something different that is not going the same way that have been going for the last 30 minutes.

“So that’s what I tried. And today it worked.”

Source: SMH

The Quiet Brain of the Athlete

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The brains of fit, young athletes dial down extraneous noise and attend to important sounds better than those of other young people.

By Gretchen Reynolds

Top athletes’ brains are not as noisy as yours and mine, according to a fascinating new study of elite competitors and how they process sound. The study finds that the brains of fit, young athletes dial down extraneous noise and attend to important sounds better than those of other young people, suggesting that playing sports may change brains in ways that alter how well people sense and respond to the world around them.

For most of us with normal hearing, of course, listening to and processing sounds are such automatic mental activities that we take them for granted.

But “making sense of sound is actually one of the most complex jobs we ask of our brains,” says Nina Kraus, a professor and director of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., who oversaw the new study.

Sound processing also can be a reflection of broader brain health, she says, since it involves so many interconnected areas of the brain that must coordinate to decide whether any given sound is familiar, what it means, if the body should respond and how a particular sound fits into the broader orchestration of other noises that constantly bombard us.

And they have found interesting variations in proficiency. The brains of trained musicians, for instance, tend to show greater spikes in processing activity when they hear the “da” than do the brains of other people, indicating that learning and practicing musicianship also hones and refines the portions of the brain that process sound.

Some of the athletes’ acoustic agility most likely developed during years of attending to crucial sounds despite clatter, Dr. Kraus says. “You have to be able to hear the coach yelling something or what a teammate is saying,” she says. “Brains change in response to that kind of repeated experience,” and the sound-processing components within the brain strengthen.

But many of the athletes played sports that, typically, are not noisy, she points out. Cross-country running and golf, for instance, most likely demand less sound filtering during most practices and competitions than a sport like football or basketball. But the university’s runners and golfers had brains just as quiet as those of linemen.

For them, “fitness and regular movement of the body also change the brain,” Dr. Kraus says. And sports that seem quiet can still demand a focus on subtle sounds and signals, like the whoosh of a breeze through branches alerting golfers and runners to wind speed or a creak in a joint that could warn of early injury.

Over all, the results suggest that being active, whether as part of a team or on your own, may alter how well brains respond to and understand sounds.

This kind of study cannot tell us definitively, though, whether being an athlete changed the young people’s brains or whether they succeeded as athletes because they were better at sound processing from the start. Dr. Kraus hopes that her continuing research with the university’s sports teams will help to answer that question, as well as whether older people can reshape their sound processing by becoming active.

Read more 

AskThePro: What Constitutes a Good String Job?

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So what constitutes a GOOD STRING JOB asked several players this past week?

The tournament pros are absolutely fanatical about their choice of strings and the associated string tension — which they change to suit both surface and playing conditions — and often during a match.  I still carry two rackets in my bag each with a slightly different tension to accommodate the changing playing conditions at Manly Lawn.

Conversely, our average tennis player puts what I euphemistically call “two dollars worth of nylon” in a $200+ high performance frame — and expects to play consistently well and without injury, especially tennis elbow.

Most club players who play two or more times a week are well advised to get a GOOD STRING JOB every 8 to 10 weeks depending on the season.  Aggressive players who blast the ball with big western forehands (Andrew, Bosko, Harry & Co) need to update every 3 to 4 weeks or so.  Yep, strings go loose and dead — and performance suffers!

Trust me when I say, your game will improve at least a POINT A GAME with a good restring! You might even be encouraged to take a few lessons to help better manage the rest of your limitations.

First a little science education since modern strings come in different materials and thicknesses, each designed to suit different playing styles. In the table below, you’ll notice the differences in the main and cross strings and the dependence on whether you want control, power, comfort (did I mention managing tennis elbow?).

Thickness is pretty screwy since 18 gauge string is thinner than 16 gauge, go figure!

You can see from the graph above that the typical $2 nylon (16G) has high durability (to ensure rackets have a good shelf life) and low spin potential ( aka “feel/control”)! How did that new Wilson play Jordan with the $2 nylon??

Even at my tender age, I still use a hybrid combination of 18G multifilament Gamma Live Wire on the mains and Babolat Blast (Nadal’s string) on the crosses. Yep as I’ve aged and reverted to social player status, I’ve gone for more control and less power by reversing the mains and the crosses per the table. The 18G Live Wire is more lively (plays like gut) and gives me much more feel. The Blast allows me to give the ball a nudge and more topspin when I need to (sorry Richard).

And now the string tension.  Most players string the crosses the same as the mains and expect the tension to be even itself out throughout the racket during stringing. Well that’s the logic anyway. The GOAL was always to get an even string tension in the racket to increase the ‘sweet spot’. Yep, for most of my playing life I relied on that logic too. Of course my ball watching was so much better than, and I played with gut, so miss hits were infrequent. And yep it’s SOoooooo Wrong!

Several years ago I ran into a older, chain smoking racket stringer in California who set me straight — and he didn’t hold back!  Turns out that what most people miss is the impact of FRICTION on the Crosses when you’re feeding the string under and over through the Mains. Whatever tension you string the Mains at, you ADD 5lb to the Crosses to counter the friction. Here’s my current stringing pattern to illustrate this key point:

 

So Obi Wan (thanks Howard) how should I translate this to my game? Well most rackets come with a suggested stringing guide for tension. Start with the mid range for the racket for the Mains and then string the Crosses 5lb more.  Then adjust up and down as required until you’re comfortable with the tension. Aside, typically you can use a lower tension that the one you used previously; helps your feel and control.

Just ask Tommie for ‘Rob’s restring’ if you want to try this type of restring at the Manly Tennis Centre. You’ll find an immediate benefit of a bigger sweet spot — and most of your misshits will go over now as your control is significantly improved. Just ask Howard, Ken Grey or some of our other playmates what the effect has been on our games!

As for the choice of string, well that depends on your game. I’ve given you the guidelines in the table above which you can probably figure out yourself. Even so, probably better to go talk to Scottie, Tebbs or Howard when you want some pro advice about what strings may suit your individual playing style.

To repeat what my mate Howard the pro says, you’ve got to manage your limitations — and using better technology (whether frame and/or strings) is a great way to do this. Cunning and guile will only get you so far! Invest in the technology!

Make a regular investment in a GOOD STRING JOB using the latest materials technology; it’s absolutely worth it for your psyche alone!

Sincerely,
Rob
USPTA

Being Fit May Be as Good for You as Not Smoking

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A new study found a strong correlation between endurance and living a long life.

Being in shape may be as important to a long life as not smoking, according to an interesting new study of the links between fitness and mortality.

The study also explores whether there is any ceiling to the benefits of fitness — whether, in essence, you can exercise too much. The answer, it found, is a reassuring no.

At this point, we should not be surprised to hear that people who exercise and have high aerobic endurance tend to live longer than those who are sedentary and out of shape. A large body of past research has linked exercise with longevity and indicated that people who work out tend also to be people with lengthy, healthy lives.

But much of this research relied on asking people about their exercise routines, a practice that is known to elicit unreliable answers.

So for the new study, which was published this month in JAMA Network Open, a group of researchers and physicians at the Cleveland Clinic decided to look for more objective ways to measure the relationship between endurance and longevity.

Stop Chronic Injuries

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Tennis can be tough on your body!  Just ask Federer, Nadal and the typical club member at Manly Lawn.  It’s been cold, wet and windy in Sydney for Badge — the perfect recipe for injury!

At some point, particularly as we age, our injuries become chronic — and our recovery time between play becomes longer. The result: we play less and, even more, are less inclined to play!

For chronic injuries, the Guys from Trident may be able to help you like they did for me — and my bum shoulder. Their methodology — small, targeted interventions to keep you moving,  is similar to the Carrolls, the tennis trainers, who used to keep me on the courts in California.  US Nationals are typically five day events on brutal hard courts, so you needed all the help you could get to make it through to finals day — if you were good enough.

For the rest of us, here’s a link to a youtube series of dynamic warm-up and cool-down exercises that were created specifically for tennis players to stop injury or discomfort before it begins.  I have used a variation of Pete’s exercises for many years to continue to play competitively — here’s an example.

I can attest that these exercise, when done regularly, will help you feel more agile, relieve any joint or muscle tightness, and ensure that you are ready for most shots that comes your way — so you can play tennis for life!

Wishing you good health and tennis for life,
Rob
USPTA

The Psychology of Turning Points in Tennis

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Now that we are hot and heavy into Badge, thought the attached IT coaching article might be helpful in managing/understanding the competitive pressures!  Cheers, Rob

The psychological strategies used by players to deal with these turning points will determine how effective players are in using these situations to their advantage.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the concept of turning points and understand more clearly the strategies applied by elite players to deal with turning points during a tennis match. A series of semi-structured interviews was conducted with nine elite professional players from five different countries, followed by a thematic content analysis of the interviews.

The analysis revealed four key themes: positive turning points situations, negative turning points situations, strategies to capitalise on positive turning points and strategies to cope with negative turning points.

On a practical level, strategies are suggested that coaches and psychologists can use to help players managing turning points.

Here’s the link: ITF-PsychologyTurningPoints