Ryan Sweeting...Brian don't look

[stotty]

Brian Gordon would have a fit if he saw this. This clip captures Ryan Sweeting playing Rafa at Wimbledon on Wednesday.

There is no way this should be a good serve....talk about a dropped elbow and poor line up with his shoulders and elbow

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsT2mqnQrQ0

[EdWeiss]

They interviewed Ryan on the Tennis Channel a couple of days ago after he won his first round Wimbledon match. He acknowledged that his serve had become a "disaster" and that while it had improved somewhat very recently it had a long way to go! I thought he came across well in that interview.

[llll]

Brian Gordon would have a fit if he saw this. This clip captures Ryan Sweeting playing Rafa at Wimbledon on Wednesday.

There is no way this should be a good serve....talk about a drop elbow and poor line up with his shoulders and elbow

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsT2mqnQrQ0

unfortunately i cant stop frame youtube videos
what i would like to see inspite of his horendous trophy position
as an elite athlete stop frame his pro drop position up to the ball and lets see what that looks like

i think that that from pro drop to contact is really what separates the men from the club players

you see pros take different paths to trophy
BUT
from drop to contact i would say thay all look the same

icbw what do i know
im a club player

[gzhpcu]

No sooner said:



(fairly easy: download video from YouTube -> goes into Real Player, convert to wmv format, open with Windows Live Movie Maker and voila: frame by frame...)

[don_budge]

No big deal...

It's not such a big deal, Stotty. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out. The guy has a defective backswing. His setup is perfect, he initiates his backswing nicely and from the still shot that our resident...Mr. Come up with the Goods, has supplied us, his delivery of the racquet to the ball is rather conventional and actually pleasing to my eye.

Sweeting just has this unseemly hitch in his backswing and a rather unorthodox and strange way of setting the racquet up to deliver the head to the ball. bottle would say he's "quirky"...he doesn't like the word strange when it comes to player's artistic license in their swinging a tennis racquet. But, if one was to use his swing as a model for a rollercoaster ride it might be a bit frightening for the customers, the riders in the cars. His backswing sort of defies gravity. It's not the sort of thing that one envisions when designing a service motion or a rollercoaster track, for that matter.

But I think that the most interesting aspect or question related to your post is...why? Why does a player of this caliber have such a glaring defect in his serve when a good coach like Coach Don could set this guy straight in a matter of hours? I would like to see tennis_chiro make Sweeting the poster boy for the figure 8's concept. Sweeting would have such a "sweeeet" serve.

What does this say about this young man's teaching? Who taught him how to serve anyways?

[stotty]

It's not such a big deal, Stotty. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out. The guy has a defective backswing. His setup is perfect, he initiates his backswing nicely and from the still shot that our resident...Mr. Come up with the Goods, has supplied us, his delivery of the racquet to the ball is rather conventional and actually pleasing to my eye.

Sweeting just has this unseemly hitch in his backswing and a rather unorthodox and strange way of setting the racquet up to deliver the head to the ball. bottle would say he's "quirky"...he doesn't like the word strange when it comes to player's artistic license in their swinging a tennis racquet. But, if one was to use his swing as a model for a rollercoaster ride it might be a bit frightening for the customers, the riders in the cars. His backswing sort of defies gravity. It's not the sort of thing that one envisions when designing a service motion or a rollercoaster track, for that matter.

But I think that the most interesting aspect or question related to your post is...why? Why does a player of this caliber have such a glaring defect in his serve when a good coach like Coach Don could set this guy straight in a matter of hours? I would like to see tennis_chiro make Sweeting the poster boy for the figure 8's concept. Sweeting would have such a "sweeeet" serve.

What does this say about this young man's teaching? Who taught him how to serve anyways?

"Quirky" would be a good description....

Even Coach Don would struggle to sort out a serve like Sweeting's at this stage in the young man's career....must be hard to make fundamental changes once players are in their 20s.

It's a good question, though...Why? Seems unthinkable that he was allowed to continue with a serve like that thru his junior years.

[gzhpcu]

"Quirky" would be a good description....

Even Coach Don would struggle to sort out a serve like Sweeting's at this stage in the young man's career....must be hard to make fundamental changes once players are in their 20s.

And imagine if they are in their 60's....

[llll]

And imagine if they are in their 60's....

phil thats why for you you need to think of a "new "serve not a tweak of the old one
too much ingrained muscle memory
jmho

[don_budge]

See me change...Jim Morrison

phil thats why for you you need to think of a "new "serve not a tweak of the old one
too much ingrained muscle memory
jmho

Great idea...llll. Yesterday I wrote a post...I swear it was one of the best I ever wrote and when I hit submit reply it asked me to login again. Damn. I hate that when that happens. Lost in cyber space.

But anyways...Gentlemen. Stotty and Phil surely you have had experiences in life where you had no choice but to change something in your life. Whether it be changing girlfriends, changing jobs, changing residences or changing countries...sometimes the changes we go through can be quite traumatic. Change is fundamental to the human experience. In life, there is one guarantee...things are going to change.

For Ryan Sweeting it is just part of his occupation. It's part of his equation. He's a tennis player. He must adapt. It's a no brainer. With the proper motivation, the proper coach and the right information and a couple of bucks, he should be able to immediately do an about face and make the necessary changes in his service motion because it will enable him to serve better...which will enable him to become a better tennis player...which enables him to earn a better living, etc. Just complete the backswing without any extra rigamarole...no funny business, no monkey business. He's home free. In the words of Bobby Jones, the golfing legend..."it's really just a simple thing". This is just part of the experience of being a professional tennis player. He should live for moments like this, to improve his stature at what he does for a living. It's part of his deal.

For our resourceful, artistic and analytic participant on the forum, on the other hand, one might initially think that, yes...he is a bit older and afterall, you cannot teach an old dog new tricks. To which I say phooey. You see how conventional wisdom can leave us with our hands tied and our minds locked and trapped within our perceived limitations. As Larry has suggested...think of it as education, enlightenment, a chance to "step outside of yourself" and go ahead and make the change. We make the necessary changes when the impetus is trauma so why not make it when we decide to make it?

At the age of forty I decided that I was going to reinvent myself. I was going to change myself. I decided that I was going to learn to play golf. I quit tennis and never played again. I took my first lesson on my birthday. My physical skills had eroded and were not at the same level as when I was in my twenties. However, my mind and my experience were now in play. I made up my mind. I learned how to swing the golf club. I learned how to putt the golf ball. I learned how to chip and pitch. I learned how to make sand shots. At the age of 52 I won a tournament here in Sweden...it was a 35 and over elite series competition and I was the oldest participant. I shot 68 in the final round...with two "impossible sand saves" for par, five birdies and one bogey. OK...I was lucky, I admit it. But I cherish the memory of the look on all of my opponents faces that are frozen forever in time. They had been had by an "old" man. It took me twelve years to get there and believe me, I made many sacrifices along the way to get there. I followed through and ended up on the other side of the planet. Be careful. See me change? You want it, you take it, you pay the price. It's worth it.

We have the changes in us but sometimes we are stuck...within ourselves. Maybe we lack the courage or the imagination. You would be surprised what you have in you if you only looked. Larry could be right with regard to Phil and the rest of us for that matter. Think of it as learning something new. bottle has said it before...afterall isn't he Dr. Change? Like a chameleon. We need to get outside of ourselves...he said it, I swear he did. Going through all that business over there in the "New Years Serve". Reminds me a bit of old DQ himself...waving his little sword, his pen, at those big windmills in Washington. No fear in his eyes.

For Sweeting, it's a no brainer...but perhaps bottle is right yet again, the other day he suggested that tennis players are none too smart. He may be right. Afterall, don't tennis players believe that love means nothing?

[bottle]

I like this.

And yes, I do adore change. But not just for the sake of change. It's a kind of exploration, and although I do go around and around sometimes, it's always with a subtle difference, maybe the same experiment but with a grip change!

I really like what Kerry Mitchell says about learning a serve in ten months or re-tooling an old one in the same amount of time. Pointing out that league players immediately abandon their program in a second, if they're losing their serve, he recommends refraining from competition altogether while you concentrate single-mindedly on the changes and give them whatever time they require.

I don't completely agree, I think you can be happily schizoid, compete with whatever is your best game on the one hand, and then have a secret research lab on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Personally, I'd rather do this than
take Tai Chi or yoga classes. Everything ultimately competes with everything else. Who has time?

But I choose what I really like, which is experimentation. I happen to love tennis but I love experimentation in tennis even more. I did USTA last summer, this summer I won't. You may not think I'm a great player, but I did have the exact same experience in doubles that you described. Nobody would hit the ball to me. There are things you can do about this, but when you're 71 you're not going to poach as much as when you were 18 . So you don't get enough tennis.

Me, I want really good partners if I'm going to play doubles, then I'll get my share of the balls. The way I'll get the best partner is very clear. The net game has come along since I got serious at the age of 42. Forehand and backhand are vastly improved. Only the overhead has stayed the same. But serve needs to pick up, and will pick up if I give it the summer.

If I'm working on my serve, however, and someone wants to hit or play, of course I will. I've never said no to a request like that in my life. Happened
in Winston-Salem more than in Grosse Pointe and the most generous persons
about a little competition with a stranger were usually black.

Am I going on too long? Hope not. I do think of my quest as quixoticism but also scientific method. One discovery leads to the next-- that's what I like.
And the eighth would never have happened if there hadn't been a first.

Listen, I've lost stuff I wrote, too, and it's horrible. To get around it, I never
preview any post, and I always expect a time-out whether it happens or not.
I go ctrl + a, ctrl + c, and then re-open the forum and paste my contents in
with ctrl + v . I still can get distracted by someone else's voice in the house but most of the time, by now, this doesn't happen. I do lose stuff but almost
never. Just wanted to run this homeland security idea by you.

[gzhpcu]

bottle,
That happens now and then... when I have a really long post, I usually mark it and copy just to be sure... other times it might help to hit the back button on the browser, and if you are lucky it is still there, and can be copied..

[GMann]

But I think that the most interesting aspect or question related to your post is...why? Why does a player of this caliber have such a glaring defect in his serve when a good coach like Coach Don could set this guy straight in a matter of hours? I would like to see tennis_chiro make Sweeting the poster boy for the figure 8's concept. Sweeting would have such a "sweeeet" serve.

What does this say about this young man's teaching? Who taught him how to serve anyways?

Don: It has been my experience that this sort of thing can happen all the time. Most of the players who make it into the top 100 of the ATP are usually freak athletes with great natural talent and so that's why they make it. Often they choose a junior development coach who, so long as they are marginally competent, will not ruin the player who will get there anyway so long as nothing gets derailed. What then often happens is that this coach becomes famous and gets a lot of the credit for "developing" the player. Invariably, the next thing that happens is many parents go to this coach with their kid who has only average talent because they think that the coach can take their kid to the top. They are almost always going to be disappointed.

The same thing often happens with the so-called junior development coaches of the USTA and in other countries. The national junior development coach has access to only the best players/athletes in his/her particular country. Some will inevitably break through to the pros and that coach gets to argue that this is a confirmation that he must be a very good coach when he usually only got the job because he himself was once a great player, but not a coach.

A guy like Coach Don or many other great instructors will never get access to someone like Sweeting. I am willing to bet that the so called pro coaches will never let someone else give someone like Sweeting instruction and Sweeting himself will probably not even listen to Coach Don's free advice because he figures he must not be a great coach if he never made it on the tour himself or never "developed" a player who made it. The myths that many of these guys are good coaches just continues to perpetuate. Sadly, a meritocracy it isn't.

[stotty]

Most of the players who make it into the top 100 of the ATP are usually freak athletes with great natural talent and so that's why they make it.

Good coaching has to be a factor. I am from the UK and over here the country is littered with talented players who never made it. In Spain they have many more talented players breaking into the top 100 then we in the UK.

There were no (or very few) freak athletes from eastern europe 20 years ago, now all of a sudden they are everywhere. Where were the freak athletes twenty years ago? Better coaching must have played its part somewhere.

I used to think the same as you but when you look at the facts you have to come to the conclusion that great players are both "born and made". No player, not even the Federer's, McEnroe's or the Nastase's can pick up a racket and learn to do everything right on their own. Somewhere along the line good teaching has played its part.

[llll]

Somewhere along the line good teaching has played its part.

that may be true but not on his serve mechanics

[tennis_chiro]

Closer than you might have thought!

Don: It has been my experience that this sort of thing can happen all the time. Most of the players who make it into the top 100 of the ATP are usually freak athletes with great natural talent and so that's why they make it. Often they choose a junior development coach who, so long as they are marginally competent, will not ruin the player who will get there anyway so long as nothing gets derailed. What then often happens is that this coach becomes famous and gets a lot of the credit for "developing" the player. Invariably, the next thing that happens is many parents go to this coach with their kid who has only average talent because they think that the coach can take their kid to the top. They are almost always going to be disappointed.

The same thing often happens with the so-called junior development coaches of the USTA and in other countries. The national junior development coach has access to only the best players/athletes in his/her particular country. Some will inevitably break through to the pros and that coach gets to argue that this is a confirmation that he must be a very good coach when he usually only got the job because he himself was once a great player, but not a coach.

A guy like Coach Don or many other great instructors will never get access to someone like Sweeting. I am willing to bet that the so called pro coaches will never let someone else give someone like Sweeting instruction and Sweeting himself will probably not even listen to Coach Don's free advice because he figures he must not be a great coach if he never made it on the tour himself or never "developed" a player who made it. The myths that many of these guys are good coaches just continues to perpetuate. Sadly, a meritocracy it isn't.

I really appreciate the respect some of you seem to have for my occasional ramblings here. I just need to find a couple more paying customers who feel the same way; it would be especially nice if they had talent, commitment and resources as well. So thank you, but to the point…

My theory on why so many players come from other places than the USA that have far lower populations, tennis courts or available resources to support player development. If a kid in Croatia turns out to be the star in the town, somebody in that town will step up to help him go further. And there is someone who is intimately involved in the development of that player for a long time. To play today's tennis game takes a lot of training and stroke development, and at an early age. Learning to hit ground strokes the way Nadal, Federer and Djokovic (or anyone in the top 100 for that matter,although to a somewhat lesser degree) is a process no less challenging than the development of a concert pianist. It was less true when the serve was more dominant and it was possible to hide weaknesses with your strengths; not so anymore. These kids from places in eastern Europe are guided and nurtured and supported by some single hand that helps them on their journey.

Just look at the history of successful players. Yes, they are fabulously talented, but that is just a minimum requirement. Look at where our successful players have come from. The USTA has had an active program to develop players for decades now. How many has it produced? When a player is deemed successful here, they are often moved away from the coach that brought them along and into a USTA coaching program that has proven nothing if not that it is unable to produce players. In the successful tennis associations of Europe, when a player shows some promise of talent, the association moves forward to supply substantial financial assistance and opportunity for that player; they do not take that player away from their coach; instead they underwrite that players continued development with that coach. And look how many players they have produced vs how many have come out of full time enrollment at USTA residential programs like Boca Raton or even non-residential programs like Carson.

I had a 9 year old student I took from 19 to 1 in SoCal in less than 16 months. She started to spend a lot of time with the USTA program (It's hard to compete with free!). When the information she was getting from me started to conflict with her coach at USTA, I asked her parents to use the money they were spending with me to hire hitters to give better practice and eliminate the confusion. I knew the coach was a good coach. I didn't like everything he was doing, but I thought that was better than giving a mixed message to a 10 year old. So I lost her. Since that time she has been assigned to at least 6 different coaches at Carson. And she's been injured a lot. Of course, I wish now that I had not made that decision, but I had little choice. She is a one-of-a-kind talent and I fear it is being lost. Two coaches, maybe; six coaches in 2 1/2 years, no way! And some of them are very good coaches, but she is really not their concern; at least, not in the way that Uncle Tony brought along Rafa or Roger's Australian coach brought him along.

You can examine the developmental records of all the American players in the last 20 years that have made it into the top 50. I don't know of any who were developed when they were 12, 13, 14 or 15 in USTA programs. And now it is even tougher than when the great American players of the last 20 years made it to the bigtime. It takes more practice and more coaching and more resources. And the USA may be worse off because when a 14 year-old (or earlier) player shows themselves to have elite potential, they are swept into a system that has proved nothing if not that it is a sure ticket to failure.

I do not expect the USTA to give me money and say, go coach some players; but when I have a player who is having great success with me, they should underwrite that player's training; not take her away from me. On the other hand, they should give money to Robert Lansdorp and say to him, "Go pick the kids you think have a chance; we'll underwrite their training. Just make them players". He has the track record to justify that. But I don't think the USTA will ever do that. So Robert is essentially limited to players who can afford him (and they usually don't have the necessary drive) and players from foreign countries who are sponsored to come see him (Sharapova growing up).

BTW: Ryan Sweeting's motion is going to be very tough to change. But the serve is possible to change because the ball is in the player's hand. But he's not going to be able to integrate a real change until he hits about 50,000 good practice serves and probably at least 5,000 to 10,000 of those in game situations(about 6 months minimum). Then it will take him another 6 months in competition (while still practicing the serve a lot) to build confidence under stress. Another year after that (with continued practice) he could have a great serve, because he has to have pretty good snap to be able to generate anything with that backswing and pro drop, and he has a nice natural rhythm to his toss. At 6'5" he can get away with sacrificing a little serve power, but he needs all the power his frame could give him to reach his potential. Watch the slowmo carefully and you will see that he has decent internal rotation, but his flexion/extension at the elbow is severely compromised. I don't see him stepping away for that much time and, consequently, he will always be limited in how far he can go with his game because of his serve. He turns 24 in two days and it is getting very late for him to make that kind of commitment. He is just experiencing some success after years of hard work and that makes it even harder for him to step away right now. He can actually get into good tournaments without having to qualify. He can still get a lot better, but he will never reach his physical potential with that serve. And it's too bad, because for him to do that well with that motion, he has to have some amazing talent, both physical and mental. Too bad Mark Knowles didn't grab him back in Nassau and tell him to get his serve fixed when he was 12 or 13. Too bad because he will never approach his true potential, plus he is a US citizen now!

don