Ryan Sweeting...Brian don't look

[tennis_chiro]

The rest of the story

PS for GMann:
In 1986, I had two men in the round of 16 at the US Open. I coached Marcel Freeman for the first time in 1970 and straightened out a few minor things for him in a few lessons he took in a group lesson program I ran at Stadium Tennis Center. His dad was his real coach. But he came to me in 1986 and asked me to help him. He had been College Player of the Year a couple of years before and was working his way into the top 100. He had to meet me at the gym or on the track at Beverly Hills High at 5 in the morning before I went to my classes at chiropractic school. He certainly had other coaches, but I was one of them that summer when he reached the 16s at the Open. Marcel reached his top ranking (in the 40's) while I was coaching him. I should have gone on tour with Marcel, but I wanted to do chiropractic school. In retrospect, …oh well…

I met Paul Annacone when I went to the Hamptons in 1974 to run a TennisAmerica Adult Camp there for the summer. Paul's dad was the manager. Two years later, I was the head pro at that club and we worked all summer on "little Paul's serve". He was probably under 5' at the time. I distinctly remember making him serve over a Don Budge Gold Medal rebound net(7') to learn to hit up and extend (still a good drill). Paul developed his serve and volley style practicing a drill I used with one of my other friends in the Hamptons, Paul Masters, as he was growing up. In the early 80's when he came home from wherever he was playing (still in college), I always worked with him in the summers. I was still "a good hit" at that point, especially in the Hamptons. Paul's brother, Steve, was his traveling coach in 1986, but in the two or three weeks before the Open that year, Paul put in about 10 sessions with me on the courts. In addition, he carried Pancho Segura to the finals of the 2nd Huggy Bears. Then a couple of days later he beat the #1seed, Johnny Mac, in the first round and went to the 16s. I actually had two players in the 16s. But, of course, I didn't even have a coach's pass! Paul made it to 12 in the world in singles while I was working with him. Boy, did I miss that boat!

don

[bottle]

Wow.

[don_budge]

There are lessons...and then there are lessons.

Wow.

GMann...I think that you have some very valid points and the way I read you is that when you say “most” players that reach the top 100, you mean that these players relative to their high rankings have a sort of freakish talent for timing the hit of the tennis ball, freakish hand to eye coordination...freakish capacity for playing the game and so forth, and that is why they make it to the top of the heap. It’s not because of the great coaching that they have received or from their studying ad nauseum “the pseudo science of hitting a tennis ball”. It’s God given...fate in a sense. Certainly a good, competent coach can enhance the process...but even then the coach must know when to get out of the way of the student. Astute observations...about our meritocracy, GMann.

Stotty...GMann did not say “all” players and his comments were not so absolute as you may of thought...he was talking about a scenario that is very common in player development...and relative to the individual I believe. You are absolutely right about “somewhere along the line good teaching has played it’s part”. Actually Stotty...you are a great role model as a coach, I feel...because you are willing to reach out to others to help you in trying to understand your students and what is best for them. The ultimate strength of a good coach or teacher is the absence of ego...and you impress me in this regard.

Don...No wonder I read everything you write with great interest.
Give me three hours with this Sweeting fella and his serve will “roller coaster” to the Promised Land. He has the talent and the experience...all he needs is to be convinced that this minor change to his swing is easy to accomplish and that it is only a natural function of the life of a tennis player to change and adapt...I don’t think it’s so difficult as you suggest. Plant or animal? What’s it going to be today? Approach du jour. It’s not so complicated. Keep it simple. I am a bit surprised that you feel that this swing alteration is going to be so time intensive...although you may be right.

One week of lecture, training, practice...pack your bags, back to the tour, it’s hammer time. It can only get better and better.

It is the aspect of change that is daunting to most people and it can be intimidating for them...and this is where it is sometimes good to have a background as a “therapist” and to be a quick change artist yourself as well. The change he needs to make in his serve is relatively minor...he only needs to complete his backswing. Do you actually believe that it is so difficult to learn new approaches to things at the ripe old age of 24? This is where older guys can help younger guys...with the value of their experience, in changing.

Methinks the fun has just begun. It’s fun to change...it’s an adventure. Sort of like traveling...to new frontiers. It’s easy...and as simple as that. Even I could teach Sweeting to do that...and I believe that I could of taught Söderling to do the same thing, although he has bigger problems with his motion. All I would have to do is convince Ryan that it is an easy thing, and that would be my first endeavor with him...if he were my student. I look at it like these guys were born to serve with perfect motions...but Stotty’s right in this regard, someone obviously must show them the way. llll...they did neglect his serve didn't they? And GMann’s right here too...it’s tough to get through to these guys, afterall most coaches are not so open as Stotty is to outside influence. They don’t want anyone to steal their thunder.

It’s not the service motion that would be so difficult for Sweeting to learn...it is the aspect about how to change, which may require a change in attitude. But maybe not, I don’t know the young man. But if so, then the first lesson would be a lesson in life. The lesson would be about how to change the things in life that you need to change. A big lesson...and a valuable one. It never ends...until your dead. Then who knows? Sweeting doesn't need a coach with a Phd...he needs a coach who is a shaman.

These are the most important lessons that a coach can teach his student. Perhaps he could be taught to be a chameleon under the right tutelage. The long winded explanations about technique are either a dime a dozen or a hundred bucks an hour. What does it matter? That’s only money. These lessons can be bought...the lessons about life are...priceless.

[tennis_chiro]

Tougher than quitting smoking

GMann...I think that you have some very valid points and the way I read you is that when you say “most” players that reach the top 100, you mean that these players relative to their high rankings have a sort of freakish talent for timing the hit of the tennis ball, freakish hand to eye coordination...freakish capacity for playing the game and so forth, and that is why they make it to the top of the heap. It’s not because of the great coaching that they have received or from their studying ad nauseum “the pseudo science of hitting a tennis ball”. It’s God given...fate in a sense. Certainly a good, competent coach can enhance the process...but even then the coach must know when to get out of the way of the student. Astute observations...about our meritocracy, GMann.

Stotty...GMann did not say “all” players and his comments were not so absolute as you may of thought...he was talking about a scenario that is very common in player development...and relative to the individual I believe. You are absolutely right about “somewhere along the line good teaching has played it’s part”. Actually Stotty...you are a great role model as a coach, I feel...because you are willing to reach out to others to help you in trying to understand your students and what is best for them. The ultimate strength of a good coach or teacher is the absence of ego...and you impress me in this regard.

Don...No wonder I read everything you write with great interest.
Give me three hours with this Sweeting fella and his serve will “roller coaster” to the Promised Land. He has the talent and the experience...all he needs is to be convinced that this minor change to his swing is easy to accomplish and that it is only a natural function of the life of a tennis player to change and adapt...I don’t think it’s so difficult as you suggest. Plant or animal? What’s it going to be today? Approach du jour. It’s not so complicated. Keep it simple. I am a bit surprised that you feel that this swing alteration is going to be so time intensive...although you may be right.

One week of lecture, training, practice...pack your bags, back to the tour, it’s hammer time. It can only get better and better.

It is the aspect of change that is daunting to most people and it can be intimidating for them...and this is where it is sometimes good to have a background as a “therapist” and to be a quick change artist yourself as well. The change he needs to make in his serve is relatively minor...he only needs to complete his backswing. Do you actually believe that it is so difficult to learn new approaches to things at the ripe old age of 24? This is where older guys can help younger guys...with the value of their experience, in changing.

Methinks the fun has just begun. It’s fun to change...it’s an adventure. Sort of like traveling...to new frontiers. It’s easy...and as simple as that. Even I could teach Sweeting to do that...and I believe that I could of taught Söderling to do the same thing, although he has bigger problems with his motion. All I would have to do is convince Ryan that it is an easy thing, and that would be my first endeavor with him...if he were my student. I look at it like these guys were born to serve with perfect motions...but Stotty’s right in this regard, someone obviously must show them the way. llll...they did neglect his serve didn't they? And GMann’s right here too...it’s tough to get through to these guys, afterall most coaches are not so open as Stotty is to outside influence. They don’t want anyone to steal their thunder.

It’s not the service motion that would be so difficult for Sweeting to learn...it is the aspect about how to change, which may require a change in attitude. But maybe not, I don’t know the young man. But if so, then the first lesson would be a lesson in life. The lesson would be about how to change the things in life that you need to change. A big lesson...and a valuable one. It never ends...until your dead. Then who knows? Sweeting doesn't need a coach with a Phd...he needs a coach who is a shaman.

These are the most important lessons that a coach can teach his student. Perhaps he could be taught to be a chameleon under the right tutelage. The long winded explanations about technique are either a dime a dozen or a hundred bucks an hour. What does it matter? That’s only money. These lessons can be bought...the lessons about life are...priceless.

A few times players have come to me and said they wanted to "change their serve". I'm talking about competitive college players about 21. I told them they could do it, but, for starters, they would have to hit at least 10,000 practice serves withing a couple of months, constantly reinforcing the new motion with my drills; just hitting serves is not enough. Just once have I had a player actually do the work in a few weeks that I had told him to do. I could hardly believe it. But he was a smart guy. He is now an orthopaedic surgeon here in LA. He was able to improve his serve effectiveness and actually compete better at #2 for his nationally ranked Div III college team within about 3 months. This last year I had another college player competing at a little lower level. He just wanted to make the team. He did part of the work. But realistically, he only hit about 3000 to 4000 serves over his Xmas break. By the end of May, he was doing much better, but he was still really struggling with it. He is improving, but not having completed the foundational work without the stress of competition, it was very tough for him through the season these last 6 months. I'm not seeing him now (home for summer), but I hope we will continue in the fall and he is continuing to work on his game.

But for a player like Ryan Sweeting who has hit 100's of thousands of serves with his current motion and in the kind of pressure he faces on the pro tour… Sure, you can get him to hit an entirely different serve in a few hours (perhaps it will take a little longer than that), but to get him to stick to a new motion under match pressure; that's as tough as quitting smoking. With my regular players trying to do this, I tell them 10,000 serves in a reasonably short time to have a useable service; about 6 months to actually have a better serve than they have now for competition purposes; about a year to really learn what they can do with it; and two years of hard work and pressure hardening to really "own" it!

You have to remember, to the casual observer or even relatively engaged observer, the serve is one of Ryan's strengths. Look at his statistics in his second round match with Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon:

http://www.wimbledon.com/en_GB/scores/stats/day10/1201ms.html

more specifically, check out his serve statistics:
http://www.wimbledon.com/en_GB/score...0/1201dss.html.

129mph first serves and second serves over 100 mph sounds pretty good. But add 8 to 10 mph to those speeds and increase his first serve percentage and he is suddenly trying to break into the top 20 instead of the top 50. Remember that he is 6'5" tall and very athletic. Take for example this 6'4" player's serve statistics:
http://www.wimbledon.com/en_GB/score...2/1305dss.html.

I haven't watched him that much, but my recollection is that Ryan is very athletic and a pretty good mover. Obviously he has great snap to serve 129 with that motion. But the 10 mph that he is leaving on the table and the 10% higher serve percentage that should go with his height would put him in another league.

But I really doubt it is going to happen. And there are a lot of guys in the top 20 who would love to be able to serve as big as Ryan. But they have other weapons not readily available to Mr. Sweeting. That's the sad and sometimes frustrating part of it; looking at what these players are leaving on the table.

It's what RFK said:
"Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not."

http://philosophersnotes.com/quotes/by_teacher/Robert%20F.%20Kennedy

don

[tennis_chiro]

Hate to see this thread die

I was really hoping there would be more response to this thread. I really didn't mean to shout anyone down. There must be more people out there who share some of this frustration with the USTA. Or just who have an opinion about how players are developed.

don

[tennis_chiro]

Sweeting match today

Sweeting won 39 of the 60 of 101 first serves he got in today; not great, but not too bad. What should have been really good was he won 18 of the 29 points on which he got his second serve into the box; the problem was he was unable to get 12 out of 41 second serves in. He lost that match by one break. he broke on 5 of 11 chances. Devarman got one more chance and broke on 6 of 12. I didn't see the match but the fact that he can break that often says a lot about how well he can move despite being such a big man. Even if 7 of those 12 doubles came in the second set which he won, 12 double faults is just too many free points to give your opponent. 6 would be way too many, but if he had gotten in 6 more second serves he probably would have won at least 3 more points. How might the score have read if the total points were 102 to 100 favor of Sweeting instead of 103 to 99 in favor of Devvarman. On top of that, imagine if he got 70% of his first serves in. And those serves were at least 5 to 10 mph faster.

If Sweeting is to make it to the next level, he needs to improve his serve!

Did anyone see the match (on LS Hunter or wherever)?

don

[stotty]

I was reading tennis_chiro's article on Sweeting over at 10sballs.com. His serve really is a weakness it seems. When I saw Sweeting play Nadal at Wimbledon earlier this season I found his serve very odd for a good player. But also his attitude was odd. He rolled over against Nadal...gave up without a fight. Unlike watching on TV you can sense these things when you watch a match live. The Centre Court (for me at least, I'm a Brit!) is the biggest tennis stage in the world yet Sweeting hardly put up any visible fight.

I put his lack of fight down to nerves and being overwhelmed by the stage he was playing on and by his brutal opponent. Turns out he can roll over lack even on a lesser stage, too, it seems.

It's still a mystery to me how that serve passed through coaches...unnoticed...unchecked ...all throughout Sweeting's formative years. I mean, at that level how can that happen?...how?...how?....can someone over there tell how such a thing can happen? I don't think it could happen over here in the UK (and I'm a critic of our system). It would have been picked up for sure by the time he was 13 or 14 at the latest over he in the UK. Plenty of coaches would have had the skills to put it right, too.

[tennis_chiro]

Links for 10sballs articles and Sweeting youtube videos

Here's the link for the 10sballs.com articles I have put up there:

http://www.10sballs.com/author/don/

The first one, "The Rest of the Story …" is the one that covers Ryan Sweeting's match with Kunitsyn.


And here are the links to the youtube videos I put up of Sweeting's serve. Not as clear as I would like, but you can clearly see how little he is getting his elbow bent and how much additional power he is forfeiting. It also shows he gets on the "line" pretty well if only for a brief period of time, and that he gets a lot out of excellent internal shoulder rotation. His serve would be considered great in most circles, but in the league he is trying to play in, he's not getting what he needs to get out of it. At 6' 5", with that body and all the fast twitch muscle fibers he seems to have, he should be averaging 135 instead of 115 mph and getting in a lot higher percentage than he is getting in now. If he did that and developed a little better footwork and preparation for his shots (I think that is still possible to significantly improve), I think he would be a threat on any fast court and a fixture in the top 20.

Ryan Serving and hitting a couple of groundstrokes at 420 fps:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C37k2ol9csk

Ryan Serving and hitting a forehand and then a forehand volley:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_V-s8kgf0E

During the Tuesday matches, I was sitting 20 feet away from Ryan in the grandstand watching Kosakowski play Smyzcek whom I gathered was one of Ryan's friends. I had already captured some slow motion video of his serve in practice over the weekend and I was very tempted to go over and strike up a conversation and show it to him. You can see the video pretty well on the 3" screen of the Casio camera. In addition, you can zoom in on replay. Sweeting had been practicing under the watchful eye of David Nainkin whom I've known since he worked with one of my friends, Christo van Rensburg, when David was trying to make it on the ATP Tour. I didn't get a chance to talk to David or ask him if he followed Tennisplayer.net, much less had seen the thread. Sweeting had won his first round match in LA and his mind and confidence were probably in a pretty decent place. I just didn't feel it was right for me to go up to him and say, "Here Ryan. I have some great slow motion video that shows just how bad your serve is." I'm sure they must have been trying to get him to change for a long time, but they won't be able to do that without a Herculean effort and a commitment that includes taking him away from match play for a few weeks and really hitting literally hundreds of serves a day. He doesn't have to hit them full speed, but he has to use a full motion and he does have to hit some of them full speed; and more and more of them as he gets closer to going back to matchplay. I don't see him doing that and I wouldn't want to take away what little confidence Ryan has in his serve as it is. So I kept my mouth shut. I would like to have had the chance to talk to David and let him handle it with Ryan however he saw fit. It just didn't happen. I'm curious to see how he does with Monfils today. He's up against him in about 15 minutes as I write this.

But I'd still like to see some other comments on those detailed posts that I wrote earlier in this thread about how to achieve significant change in Sweeting's serve. Agree, disagree, something. Now I've posted some pretty clear video that shows part of what may be missing from his serve. Maybe you have found that my points just don't matter. Speak up. Inquiring minds (and some weak ones like mine) want to know!

don

[don_budge]

But I'd still like to see some other comments on those detailed posts that I wrote earlier in this thread about how to achieve significant change in Sweeting's serve. Agree, disagree, something. Now I've posted some pretty clear video that shows part of what may be missing from his serve. Maybe you have found that my points just don't matter. Speak up. Inquiring minds (and some weak ones like mine) want to know!

don

I read everything you wrote on your blogging mission. Great job...tennis_chiro! Your insights were a fine blend, like a Columbian roast of coffee, between your technical and tactical knowledge of the game of tennis, as well as your local and personal knowledge with the players, and your familiarity with the general landscape of the tournament as a whole. I was entertained!

But, by now you are wondering what the "other don" is leading up to...heh, heh.

Don...you should of gotten through to Sweeting. Bypass the coach. If he does have a clue by now about his boy he is not going to listen to you. Of course not. And he doesn't want his charge to think that he is incompetent...surely he does not want his charge to think that you are "the man".

You absolutely know what is right for Sweeting. You have seen it a million times. You are too nice of a guy (just kidding)...I would of loved to have seen you take this thread to Ryan Sweeting to ponder. I can imagine his curiosity once he had gotten wind of the discussion. What's more...I would love for you and I to have a couple of sessions with him, combine our experience, to experiment with some teaching and straighten this guy out. We could start a business...after we build a couple of serving machines! Between the two of us we have a view from the right and a view from the left. It is conceivable that we could come up with a third view...perhaps along the shape of a bottle.

Really good job...Don. I particularly enjoyed reading your "personal" stuff. I get a kick out of how differently you and I have traveled to reach some of the same conclusions.

[tennis_chiro]

Sometimes you have to break the egg if you want to...

I read everything you wrote on your blogging mission. Great job...tennis_chiro! Your insights were a fine blend, like a Columbian roast of coffee, between your technical and tactical knowledge of the game of tennis, as well as your local and personal knowledge with the players, and your familiarity with the general landscape of the tournament as a whole. I was entertained!

But, by now you are wondering what the "other don" is leading up to...heh, heh.

Don...you should of gotten through to Sweeting. Bypass the coach. If he does have a clue by now about his boy he is not going to listen to you. Of course not. And he doesn't want his charge to think that he is incompetent...surely he does not want his charge to think that you are "the man".

You absolutely know what is right for Sweeting. You have seen it a million times. You are too nice of a guy (just kidding)...I would of loved to have seen you take this thread to Ryan Sweeting to ponder. I can imagine his curiosity once he had gotten wind of the discussion. What's more...I would love for you and I to have a couple of sessions with him, combine our experience, to experiment with some teaching and straighten this guy out. We could start a business...after we build a couple of serving machines! Between the two of us we have a view from the right and a view from the left. It is conceivable that we could come up with a third view...perhaps along the shape of a bottle.

Really good job...Don. I particularly enjoyed reading your "personal" stuff. I get a kick out of how differently you and I have traveled to reach some of the same conclusions.

Thanks for the feedback, Steve. I was perhaps a little too reluctant to ruffle any feathers. I was hoping for another chance with a better introduction and I just didn't get it. Tremendous amount of physical talent there, if it could be set free. Of course, that requires a free mind and that is even rarer than physical talent. I was pretty sure anything I said would be dismissed out of hand if I couldn't get some kind of an introduction.

As for the blogging on the tournament, I was trying to draw people who don't know or understand the world of the pro player into that world a little bit; I used what I knew: my experience. I was afraid it came off a little bit too much about me, but I thought, in the end, I did come up with something that was really different from what I usually read in accounts about tournaments. I was hoping there might be a market for that kind of reporting, but I haven't heard anything to indicate to me that I was right about that. But I'm glad someone enjoyed it!

don

[don_budge]

Blending method...

As for the blogging on the tournament, I was trying to draw people who don't know or understand the world of the pro player into that world a little bit; I used what I knew: my experience. I was afraid it came off a little bit too much about me, but I thought, in the end, I did come up with something that was really different from what I usually read in accounts about tournaments. I was hoping there might be a market for that kind of reporting, but I haven't heard anything to indicate to me that I was right about that. But I'm glad someone enjoyed it!

don

Mission accomplished! That is exactly what you did. It wasn't too much about you...like I said it was a nice blend, and a very effective method. Another thing now that you mention it...it was an original approach. Refreshing. Dare to be different. I know what you mean about not rocking the boat...but my thought is...what the hell!

[tennis_chiro]

What about Sweeting's serve?

Mission accomplished! That is exactly what you did. It wasn't too much about you...like I said it was a nice blend, and a very effective method. Another thing now that you mention it...it was an original approach. Refreshing. Dare to be different. I know what you mean about not rocking the boat...but my thought is...what the hell!

Thanks, D_B. Appreciate it. But I also was really curious how anyone else with a little knowledge would actually go about trying to change Sweeting's serve. What are the actual drills you would put him through? How long do you think it would really take? I said he would have to hit tens of thousands of balls to even have a chance to change his habits and then thousands in competition to actually really own a new motion. What do you think? Even if it may be a bit of an academic exercise.

don

[stotty]

Making it right

He could simply start from behind the head in the throwing action for a few months, so that his arm gets used to and familiar with the correct "loaded" position. From here he could try to incorporate it into a normal classic swing when the time was right.

Didn't Agassi experiment with serving from the throwing position for a while?

A more radical solution would be a complete alteration:

He could abbreviate the swing like Rafter. Or have a separated swing like Victor Pecci used to have (his arms kind of worked separately, didn't they?...racket arm leading off first...before the tossing arm?).

Given the choice, I'd opt for the radical solution

[tennis_chiro]

Not quite

He could simply start from behind the head in the throwing action for a few months, so that his arm gets used to and familiar with the correct "loaded" position. From here he could try to incorporate it into a normal classic swing when the time was right.

Didn't Agassi experiment with serving from the throwing position for a while?

A more radical solution would be a complete alteration:

He could abbreviate the swing like Rafter. Or have a separated swing like Victor Pecci used to have (his arms kind of worked separately, didn't they?...racket arm leading off first...before the tossing arm?).

Given the choice, I'd opt for the radical solution

Stotty,

I really like Pat Rafter as a human being as well as a tennis player. He is a very good man. I got to play against him in the Huggy Bears in 1994 and saved him from a hurricane the following year; he was the last successful practitioner of serve and volley tennis. He reached the semis of the French going to the net, not to mention finals at Wimbledon and winning two USOpens. But if I am going to have someone model an abbreviated backswing, I would have to use Phil's favorite server, Gonzales.

However, before we ever got to that, I would have Mr. Sweeting hitting a lot of overheads from the "trophy" position (the correct overhead preparation) and probably with a weighted racket (abundant lead tape around the head, maybe 4 to 6 oz.) so he could feel the "pro drop" and be forced to use the triceps a little more to accelerate out of there. We would also be doing a lot of the drills in post #29 of "Racquet snaps the wrist on the serve…" (http://www.tennisplayer.net/bulletin...?t=1878&page=3)

Once he recognized the feel of the deep "pro drop", we would get rid of the extra weight, but we would still be hitting a lot of overheads from the service line until he could feel like he could whack the ball to smithereens! This is a feeling that I think he would like, no…make that love!

That would actually be the easy part. I don't think that would take more than a few hours. But then would come the hard part, because as soon as he goes into any kind of a service toss, his body will revert to the old motion. THAT IS WHY I THINK YOU ARE DEAD RIGHT to want to start with something radical. Small changes will be wiped out by the old habit.

So I would try my "hiccup" motion where he would swing the racket back to the "trophy position" as he raised the left arm in a tossing motion and made his normal weight rock (front to back to front as he tosses the ball) but holding on to the ball, and then reversing the weight transfer back to the beginning as he maintained the racket in that position and dropped the left hand back to the beginning tossing position (retracing his path) and then starting over again with the left hand and the full weight transfer/rock while the racket arm waits for the left arm to release the ball (the holding onto the ball gives the sort of double-take/hiccup feel to the motion). Remember that he actually has nice rhythm to his motion. I would try to maintain that, but separate the backswing and the toss because he clearly cannot do the two simultaneously and correctly. I would try to get him to change the direction of his weight transfer on the toss, but that is not a deal breaker; it would probably change naturally from the feeling he would develop from hitting overheads from the "trophy position" with a heavy-headed racket (the extra weight forces efficiency of movement). If he tries to toss the ball and take the backswing simultaneously, the engram in his brain will overide the change he is trying to make and he will go right back to the old backswing.

I would probably have him serve with the hiccup for a couple of months. Eventually, he would just let go of the ball the first time the left hand goes up and eliminate the "hiccup" part of the motion, but that would take a while. He would be practicing thousands of those along with thousands of the "hiccups" before I would suggest he try the new motion in competition. He could even use the "hiccup" in competition. It's legal; it would probably piss the hell out of people. But it is legal as long as you don't let go of the ball. It's certainly less of an imposition on the opponent than Nole's bounces. Now if he started mixing up the two serves in one match, …I'm not sure if that would be legal…but it would be interesting to watch. The poor guy returning would have a helluva time timing his split step. It might be legal, but it would not be good sportsmanship!

I would also have him do a lot of my "Toss and Catch" drill, tossing and catching and feeling the rhythm holding everything he is doing together in a repeatable fashion. I would prefer a good 4 to 6 weeks out of competition, but in less than a couple of months to learn a new motion, he would probably have to use some kind of intermediate step to have a motion he could use in competition. At the same time, I think he would end up with a more effective, if somewhat mentally taxing, service in less than two months.

Building a sound complete motion would take at least six months of working on it at least an hour a day, six days a week after that initial two months just to learn the new motion. The rewards are so huge if he were to be successful in this quest, I think it would be well worth the gamble. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter what I think.

Ryan didn't get into Montreal and he is only the 12th seed in the qualis in Cincy at the moment. His ranking began to drop this week from 65 to 70 as his points from last year's good showing at Washington came off. The cutoff for Cincy was 42. He may yet get a wild card, but if he wants to earn his way into the top tier of tournaments, he has to get his ranking up in the top 40 to 45. That's the land of 1000 total ranking points. He has only 63 points to defend in two California challengers in October for the rest of the year so he should be able to improve his ranking. But he has 34 tournaments and 18 "0" pointers on his record in the last 12 months (Three of his 18 countable tournaments, including the USOpen, are "0's"). 250 of his 698 points came at his Houston victory in April. By the end of the year, he could pick up 300 points and move into the top 50, but he'll only have about 10 good chances including the US Open and he'll have to beat some good players. If he doesn't make some major changes, I don't see it happening. Those kind of major changes just don't happen out on tour. It's kind of a shame. I see him replacing all the rest of the points he has to defend by April, but when that 250 comes off for Houston, he will suddenly drop back out of the top 100 and back into the qualis most of the time.

don

[stotty]

For once I find myself disagreeing with you, don...but just over one issue.

With a drastic case like Sweeting, I would never use Gonzales as an example. Gonzales has a perfect motion, something that Sweeting is unlikely to achieve. I would use Gonzales as an example for talented juniors but not for someone as flawed as Sweeting, where the damage is irrepairable. Sweeting needs radical surgery, and radical surgery never looks pretty. In his case, better to give an example of a player who has been thru the same and come out the other side with a decent, reliable serve. There are plenty of hideous looking serves out there on the tour, no doubt the result of where coaches have battled and chiselled away to produce more effective serves at the expense of flow and beauty...Sweeting may well be encouraged to attempt something along those lines. Better to give an example like Rafter or a two-part server because at least that will be achievable.

Below is a lovely clip of Victor Pecci playing Borg. Unlike many clips from that era the picture is reasonably clear. Take a look at Pecci's serve. It looks like the racket arm is moving off slightly earlier than the throwing arm, yet it still comes together for a decent flowing serve. If you go to 1hr 21 mins you get a clear look. I am not suggesting Sweeting do the same...it's just an interesting serve and an interesting clip. I wonder how Borg would fair these days against the giants of today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diNZgd8m0tM