chris lewit visits spain

[chrislewit]

Spanish Academies

Chris,
You have been to Spain: Any tennis camp there you could recommend? I have a nephew who is very keen on playing, and definitely has talent. He just wants to build up a good solid game, and play local Swiss tournaments. He is already 28 years old, but very athletic. Know of any good place to go train to get the fundamentals of Spanish tennis?
Thanks

Hi Phil

Lots of good choices but I can only vouch for places I have studied at or visited.

Every academy in Spain has a slightly different vibe and philosophy. For me, I like Sanchez-Casal's system but sometimes they can get crowded and too commercial, especially in summer

Bruguera Top Team is a very solid and well respected Spanish Academy. Both these are in Barcelona

In Valencia, TennisVal run by Jose Altur and Pancho Alvarino is a well respected academy.

Another very good academy in Valencia is Juan Carlos Ferrero Equelite

Some may not accept a 28 year old. You will have to check

There are more academies but these are some of the more well known, solid ones

Good luck

[chrislewit]

Great discussion. Thanks for your answer Chris. And, if I understood correctly, the modern player may use the forehand like a baseball player uses pitches -sometimes the flatter fastball and sometimes the heavy Spanish topspin( maybe from a defensive position or against someone who has particular trouble with high balls)

I'm going to have a look at the fed approach to the short ball and compare it to
Sampras.

By the way, I just bought your book and I'm really looking forward to it.

Glenn

yes exactly. Please send me email feedback if you have questions from the book

Best
chris

[chrislewit]

Answers to your questions

Chris, I thought this was a great article. The background of the way you developed your philosophy working with Gilad and Pato (in a linked article) added a lot of texture to the understanding of where you were coming from. I've got to go over it a couple of more times to really digest it all and see where it fits with what I am doing and where it doesn't. Then I may have more questions, but in the meantime I have a couple of questions for you.

I'm a little of an "old schooler" and I've insisted my students learn to hit through the ball before they start to work on the wiper. Some of them seem to arrive there despite my trying to discourage them from that path until I think they are ready, but once they make that transition it is difficult to hold them back. And recently, I have been using the wiper as cure for not staying on the ball enough because the nature of the stroke allows the player to keep the racket face parallel to the net for a longer period of time. It seems like I get a lot of players who were taught the Oscar Wegner MTM finish to the opposite ear with the back of the hand, but can't hit through the ball to save their lives. They really seem to benefit from trying to finish at the opposite hip in an exaggerated wiper followthrough. (To a certain degree, what I just said is in direct contradiction to what I am about to say.)

The sense I get from these comments as well as the article (and it may be hard for me to separate the two [and that's not fair to you, but that's the message that is stuck in my mind]) is that you can start the player on the wiper forehand as soon as he/she can hit it as long as you get them to hit the flat ball as well as the heavy topspin.

I don't see a that much difficulty getting kids to hit flat balls with the wiper and it lends itself best to the topspin forehand; the problem I see is that kids who adopt the wiper too soon don't hit through the ball with their core. Whether it's a roller or a relatively level drive (for my money, still with a good deal of topsin), I want the racket to go through the hitting zone the way Nalbandian demonstrates on the first page of Jeff Counts site (http://www.hi-techtennis.com/). From 9 o'clock to 12 o'clock as the racket face maintains the position relatively parallel to the net (or perpendicular to the intended path of the outgoing shot), you can clearly see the racket moves forward 8" to 12". Unfortunately, most of the wipers I see the kids using only move forward half that distance, at best. But when my students have a good sense of "hitting through the ball" with their core, it is relatively easy for me to get them to transfer to a heavier ball with the wiper. Likewise, if they have learned a conservative grip closer to the Eastern forehand, it is relatively easy to get them to hit a heavy ball with wiper-like stroke on short balls and they have little difficulty making the transition to a volley grip. But if they are hitting that heavy wiper stroke from the start, it is relatively tough to get them to change their habit and hit through the ball with their core. I can get them to do it for me in a lesson and even get them to like it, but when the pressure comes, they tend to revert to the old stroke without going through with enough pace. In addition, if they have a strong semi-Western grip or worse, yes, they can hit the short ball just fine, but they are in trouble as they have to transition to a volley grip and finish the point.

Do you see this kind of problem at all?

*********
*********

One of the other things I really like about your article is the footwork your young students demonstrate in the clips in the article. I like it, but…I also have a problem with it.

I used to ask students to tell me what Agassi did better than anyone else. Few, if any, would come up with what I think is the right answer. Andre's footwork was better than anyone else's. (They used to say most tennis players were pigeon-toed, because to hit the old style stroke stepping into every ball you had to have very quick footwork. We all got a little bit pigeon-toed, most not as bad as Andre and very, very few as bad as Segura, but Sherlock Holmes might have used this characteristic to identify a tennis player just from his walk.) Andre's feet were so quick to set up and that is what enabled him to take those balls early and still hit them with tremendous pace. He had those quick little steps that put him in such good position to apply a big hit to even the most aggressive shots that were hit at him. Your students demonstrate that quick footwork really well. Rafa also has phenomenal footwork. Most people don't realize how completely set he is for almost every ball he hits, especially those backhands that take him from defense to offense. And Andre certainly used the skip step to great effect, but he also almost always used a CROSSOVER STEP to recover when he was pulled wide; just one, but it was almost always there. I think this is a big shortcoming in the Spanish footwork "skip step only" philosophy. It is simply less efficient. Furthermore, as great as the specificity, control and discipline of the Spanish skip step only footwork may be, the efficiency of the giant step approach to footwork of Roger Federer simply is better. In the zone a step either side of your ready position or when you have time to set up and prepare for a wider ball, the Spanish "reception" of the ball is great; in fact, probably superior. But when the game is going full speed the way it does now more and more of the time, the ease and efficiency of the big steps far outstrips the little dance that is so appealing in the clips in your article. Simply get the plant foot and the racket behind the ball, and hit the damn thing. There simply isn't time to step into a lot of those balls, much less to do that beautiful 1-2-3 your students are demonstrating on those clips. Rafa seems to be able to pull it off most of the time, but even someone as quick as Ferrer doesn't seem to have time to pull that off (I haven't carefully examined the video; that's just my impression.)

So, Chris, how do you feel about this? Do you like the side skip even on balls in the corner?

And David Bailey, are you out there? We'd be very curious where you come down on the reality of the use of that split step for the whole recovery!

And again, thanks for a great article. Keep up the good work!
don

Hello Don

1. I don't worry about the grip change coming forward to the net. Personally I have never had a problem with my kids changing the grip for the first volley after an approach. I think there is sufficient time.
That's my opinion

2. For me, when working with a young kid, one of the main areas is the extension. The finish is not as important to me. If a kid is extending through contact really well, he can wiper all he wants, even if he is an 8 year old beginner. Likewise, if a player has very poor extension and a sharp wiper ( a common problem), I'm going to rebuild that stroke piece by piece and mayb even tell him to follow through over the shoulder for some time.

That extension in the traditional way has got to be there whether a kid wipers early or not.

3. As for the cha, cha, cha steps, yes you are right that there is not much time for it in modern men's game in particular, but you can still see it from time to time and especially on the run. I have heard the argument you presented before, and it is a fair argument.

I continue to teach the "little adjustment steps" mainly to develop foot coordination and foot dexterity in young kids under 12. After that, I do not focus on those little steps very much, for the reasons you outlined

4. As for using skip (or rhythm) steps, as I have written in previous articles, I believe they are a valuable part of the footwork repetoire, especially for clay, but I teach sprint steps for attack and recovery when the ball is more than 2 strides away.

hope that helps
chris

[zakito]

Hi Chris, in your very interesting article( as the others you wrote before), you say that staying down with the legs during the shot for you it's a mith. So I wanted to ask you what you think about things like AP belt,that is sponsored from a coach from Bollettieri academy,that makes you keep the athletic foundation.

[tennis_chiro]

Thanks

Hello Don

1. I don't worry about the grip change coming forward to the net. Personally I have never had a problem with my kids changing the grip for the first volley after an approach. I think there is sufficient time.
That's my opinion

2. For me, when working with a young kid, one of the main areas is the extension. The finish is not as important to me. If a kid is extending through contact really well, he can wiper all he wants, even if he is an 8 year old beginner. Likewise, if a player has very poor extension and a sharp wiper ( a common problem), I'm going to rebuild that stroke piece by piece and mayb even tell him to follow through over the shoulder for some time.

That extension in the traditional way has got to be there whether a kid wipers early or not.

3. As for the cha, cha, cha steps, yes you are right that there is not much time for it in modern men's game in particular, but you can still see it from time to time and especially on the run. I have heard the argument you presented before, and it is a fair argument.

I continue to teach the "little adjustment steps" mainly to develop foot coordination and foot dexterity in young kids under 12. After that, I do not focus on those little steps very much, for the reasons you outlined

4. As for using skip (or rhythm) steps, as I have written in previous articles, I believe they are a valuable part of the footwork repetoire, especially for clay, but I teach sprint steps for attack and recovery when the ball is more than 2 strides away.

hope that helps
chris

Thanks for the response.

I agree completely about extension. I go even a little further and use the "point to the opposite fence/see under the racket with the wrist still laid back" as a developmental tool and a drill to emphasize hitting through even before or as they are going to a follow through over the shoulder.

In some ways, it is a lot easier to get the feel of extension through to the student when we are drilling with foam balls or even QuickStart balls because of the increased "dwell time" on the strings. But I see very little Quickstart tennis here in SoCal and it is very hard to keep the kids in that mode.

Do you use the Quickstart system much with your younger students?

don