Alex Michelsen...The Future of American Tennis?

[don_budge]

Worldwide Match of the Day...Alex Michelsen vs. Maximillian Cressy

In watching the development of young players it is interesting to see how they react to new and novel situations. In order to study the mindset you observe them under different situations. As Alex said...he was just trying to figure it out. Alex is coming off of a huge week in his fledgling tennis career and the downside to this is an immediate letdown due to fatigue and expectations. A tough combination. Tough is a key word in the development of a tennis player. They have to be tougher than nails. Approximately one week ago he beat this very same player in Rhode Island. The match was very tough...particularly so for an 18 year old up and comer against a man who had previously won the tournament. Alex prevailed over Cressy by a score of 6-7, 6-4, 7-5.

It seems to me that posters on this forum are obsessed with things like stroke technique and statistics and when push comes to shove it is all decided on things like attitude, toughness, psychology and tactics. The difference between analyzing match play and the other inconsequential details are...different. So this match is peculiarly interesting given the logistics and circumstances. Over course the obvious technical difference of the players is important as it will dictate to how the match is played tactically. Even psychologically. At any rate...Michelsen vs. Cressy. Case in point.

Lots of tennis being played worldwide. Most of it dull and unimaginative. This match is a little different that the rest. For the moment. Alex is a strong gripped forehand, two-handed backhand and pin-point serving player which hardly separates him from the herd. So in the end...he most likely will become just another character on the tour. He has however shown for the moment at least there is something different about him. His age. Lack of experience. He is novel.

On the other hand...take a look at this match from Maximillian's side of the net. The young upstart takes a match on a court where he won the title the year before. The kid takes him down in the first round no less. Talk about adding insult to injury. The kid (Alex Michelsen) played his heart out all week and made it to the finals where he lost...so he went the distance. Meanwhile Old Max had the week to stew about and come to find out that he plays the kid again. In the first round again...no less. He must be chomping at the bits to give the young whipper snapper his comeuppance. He'd like to give the kid a good shellacking and send him home crying for his mommy. There are two sides to this fascinating match up. Alex must be rather tired from his big week. Max has to be pretty fired up for a little good old revenge. You have to get in the head of the player...as a coach.

[don_budge]

On the other hand...take a look at this match from Maximillian's side of the net. The young upstart takes a match on a court where he won the title the year before. The kid takes him down in the first round no less. Talk about adding insult to injury. The kid (Alex Michelsen) played his heart out all week and made it to the finals where he lost...so he went the distance. Meanwhile Old Max had the week to stew about and come to find out that he plays the kid again. In the first round again...no less. He must be chomping at the bits to give the young whipper snapper his comeuppance. He'd like to give the kid a good shellacking and send him home crying for his mommy. There are two sides to this fascinating match up. Alex must be rather tired from his big week. Max has to be pretty fired up for a little good old revenge. You have to get in the head of the player...as a coach.

Ha...the other side of the coin! Old Max rolls young Alex.

[don_budge]

The Continuing Saga of Chrisopher Eubanks...

Eubanks set to play his first real ATP tennis match since his remarkable Wimbledon run where he had a couple of wins that technically were above his paygrade. I'm talking about the wins over Norrie and Tsitsipas. The other two wins were against lower ranking players. The loss to Medvedev was credible as well. But back to reality and he has had a life changing event and he has also put that proverbial target on his back and he is in the crosshairs. Now the expectations do funny things to you. He is now a celebrity and the celebrities are flocking to his side in order to increase their celebrity. He is a hot commodity. But along with the heat come expectations. Those pesky little expectations. They do funny things to up and comers. The up and comer starts to take notice of his own celebrity and maybe feels just a tad entitled. Then a little complacent. A recipe for trouble.

The opponent tonight Brandon Nakashima is sort of on a par with young Eubanks. He peaked at number 43 in the rankings back in April and then he found the goings to be a bit tougher. Eating up the food chain gets to be harder and harder the higher up you go. Nakashima is one of those players that don't have the big canon or the big bazooka in his arsenal. He does have a steady approach to the game and is a rather consistent performer. He's still eating and learning. He isn't going to be intimidated by Eubanks and depending upon the court surface we'll see how much it effects the thunder serve. Christopher should be ready for a real fight and hopefully he can put his recent success away and concentrate on the game at hand. The psychology of the up and comer is always interesting. More often that not the success seems to go to the head of the player and then it gets into his head. Now we get to see what the new kid on the block is made of. A test of his metal.

Michelsen learned a big lesson the other night. One cannot rest on their laurels. Also one cannot play their best tennis against a revenge seeking opponent when they are dog tired from the effort from the week before. Yesterdays victories count for zero today. That goes double for Eubanks. Wimbledon gets status points and enlarges the target...between the shoulder blades.

[don_budge]

The Continuing Saga of Chrisopher Eubanks...

Eubanks set to play his first real ATP tennis match since his remarkable Wimbledon run where he had a couple of wins that technically were above his paygrade. I'm talking about the wins over Norrie and Tsitsipas. The other two wins were against lower ranking players. The loss to Medvedev was credible as well. But back to reality and he has had a life changing event and he has also put that proverbial target on his back and he is in the crosshairs. Now the expectations do funny things to you. He is now a celebrity and the celebrities are flocking to his side in order to increase their celebrity. He is a hot commodity. But along with the heat come expectations. Those pesky little expectations. They do funny things to up and comers. The up and comer starts to take notice of his own celebrity and maybe feels just a tad entitled. Then a little complacent. A recipe for trouble.

The opponent tonight Brandon Nakashima is sort of on a par with young Eubanks. He peaked at number 43 in the rankings back in April and then he found the goings to be a bit tougher. Eating up the food chain gets to be harder and harder the higher up you go. Nakashima is one of those players that don't have the big canon or the big bazooka in his arsenal. He does have a steady approach to the game and is a rather consistent performer. He's still eating and learning. He isn't going to be intimidated by Eubanks and depending upon the court surface we'll see how much it effects the thunder serve. Christopher should be ready for a real fight and hopefully he can put his recent success away and concentrate on the game at hand. The psychology of the up and comer is always interesting. More often that not the success seems to go to the head of the player and then it gets into his head. Now we get to see what the new kid on the block is made of. A test of his metal.

Michelsen learned a big lesson the other night. One cannot rest on their laurels. Also one cannot play their best tennis against a revenge seeking opponent when they are dog tired from the effort from the week before. Yesterdays victories count for zero today. That goes double for Eubanks. Wimbledon gets status points and enlarges the target...between the shoulder blades.

Christopher Eubanks continues to show the ability to come from behind. He lost the first set in a tie-break to Nakashima and came back to win 6-7, 6-4, 7-5. Next up a transplanted "no country" in Australia Aleksandar Vukic. "No country" is the childish way of saying RUSSIA. My guess is the actual name of the country is offensive to some tender individuals. The ATP website shows that Eubanks/Vukic head to head is 1-0 to Vukic. In reality though, the two have played six times with Vukic coming out on top four times. One could say that Vukic is somewhat of a nemesis to Eubanks. The two have quite a history. Should be an interesting seventh meeting. What is most interesting is the mindset of Christopher and how he deals with his recent success/celebrity.

Back to Alex Michelsen...as it turns out he had very good reason to not be quite himself against "Mad Max" Cressy the other day. I was looking at Alex's recent activity and he has been really pushing it to the metal the last couple of months. It appeared to me that he had somewhat run out of fuel against Mannarino and it became very obvious he had nothing left in the tank in his showing with Cressy. He'd been in Europe playing for three weeks where he had a victory over Aleksandar Vukic of all people. He had won a Challenger tournament in Chicago the week before Rhode Island where he had a win over Kei Nishikori. No surprise he didn't make a good showing with Cressy or Mannarino for that matter. But he continues to show up. Trying to figure it out.

Let's see what Christopher Eubanks has learned in the last few weeks. He has been pushing it as well. He won the week before Wimbledon before his deep run there. He had a week off after Wimbledon and is making good on his hard work. A couple of interesting young players...Michelsen and Eubanks.

[don_budge]

Speaking of the Future of American Tennis...Christopher Eubanks

It was a very interesting match. I have watched most all of Eubanks matches, particularly since his hot run in Mallorca, and this was to me the first opponent he has faced where I felt the proceedings were not really all on Chris' racquet. Vukic was just so comfortable and unbothered by Eubank's pace, and he also returned very well. I still look for Chris to make noise during this upcoming hard court season. He has obviously had a meteoric rise this year, and I see more upside for him. I did really want to see him in the Final vs Taylor and Morgan.

This is an interesting player for certain. The expectations are coming his way...just listen to your own remarks. You not only expect him to do well...you HOPE he will. You should know better than most that you cannot bet with your heart. I think that I played it smart when I mused whether young Michelsen might be the future of American tennis and left Eubanks on another platform. I was surprised the Christopher was 27 years old. He's as old as Kyrgios.

A couple of interesting variables going forwards. Obviously the black community at large will jump on his bandwagon. Already the celebs are flocking to his beck and call. If he goes that route it will be over as quickly as it started. Hopefully he has better judgement than all that but that remains to be seen. This extracurricular stuff can be very tempting and along with the money and notoriety comes the temptations. Late nights out instead of early to bed and early to rise. Just saying.

But on a note going forwards and being the performance analyst that I am...I would say that his coaching braintrust should take note of his success on grass and what made him successful. As I mentioned in a previous post I believe that he is more susceptible to injury because of his size. If I am the brain trust here I am getting and directing this fellow to the net. Also on the agenda is developing a serve and volley service motion. He still looks a bit raw up at the net but I think that I saw some improvement in his net play...even in this losing effort against Vukic. If he could hone that approach and finishing volleying skills it would be to his advantage. He might be more of a factor on hard courts than his performance indicates so far. I detect a lot of potential yet in the serve and with the developing backhand slice this could be utilized in approach tactics nicely.

He could be a work in progress but his age is of some concern against the question about how much change is he going to be open to. So he's an interesting one and one that is going to be fun watching. I'm afraid though that we may just have seen the zenith here in his Wimbledon run. Although there is always next year for that as well. Too bad three of the majors are not played on green grass. He would make quite the wild card on the lawn.

[stroke]

Speaking of the Future of American Tennis...Christopher Eubanks



This is an interesting player for certain. The expectations are coming his way...just listen to your own remarks. You not only expect him to do well...you HOPE he will. You should know better than most that you cannot bet with your heart. I think that I played it smart when I mused whether young Michelsen might be the future of American tennis and left Eubanks on another platform. I was surprised the Christopher was 27 years old. He's as old as Kyrgios.

A couple of interesting variables going forwards. Obviously the black community at large will jump on his bandwagon. Already the celebs are flocking to his beck and call. If he goes that route it will be over as quickly as it started. Hopefully he has better judgement than all that but that remains to be seen. This extracurricular stuff can be very tempting and along with the money and notoriety comes the temptations. Late nights out instead of early to bed and early to rise. Just saying.

But on a note going forwards and being the performance analyst that I am...I would say that his coaching braintrust should take note of his success on grass and what made him successful. As I mentioned in a previous post I believe that he is more susceptible to injury because of his size. If I am the brain trust here I am getting and directing this fellow to the net. Also on the agenda is developing a serve and volley service motion. He still looks a bit raw up at the net but I think that I saw some improvement in his net play...even in this losing effort against Vukic. If he could hone that approach and finishing volleying skills it would be to his advantage. He might be more of a factor on hard courts than his performance indicates so far. I detect a lot of potential yet in the serve and with the developing backhand slice this could be utilized in approach tactics nicely.

He could be a work in progress but his age is of some concern against the question about how much change is he going to be open to. So he's an interesting one and one that is going to be fun watching. I'm afraid though that we may just have seen the zenith here in his Wimbledon run. Although there is always next year for that as well. Too bad three of the majors are not played on green grass. He would make quite the wild card on the lawn.

To me, his biggest weakness may be he seems to have no lock down mode. Dynamic firepower, the Tennis Channel Announcers pined stats showed he was hitting the biggest ball out there lately off both sides. Throw in a top 5 serve(to me), that is a lot of firepower. But he has no grind it out mode, which is just fine. That is what most all others are doing. He is a different type of player.