2012 Davis Cup

[don_budge]

The Beauty of Davis Cup...

There's something sterile and numbing about the more "professional" events.
They need to become more like Davis Cup rather than the other way around.

So true John...to have these two guys end up on the stage to settle matters of great importance. Bit players...one a clay court specialist and the other a doubles specialist at this point in his career. One up for the challenge with more variety in his arsenal...the other helpless in the face of relentless pressure. Such drama and emotion was generated from this match. I could feel it and it almost made we want to throw up it was so intense. It ignited some passionate celebrating. What a beautiful thing for the Czech Republic...and for Davis Cup!

[don_budge]

tennis_chiro vs. licensedcoach

I see both of you are replying to this thread...which one is going to be first. I can't wait to read what you guys have to say! One in California in the middle of the night and the other in Great Britain in the middle of the morning on the other side of the pond. It is a cyber world afterall.

[tennis_chiro]

Tilting at windmills again!

It seems today that generally speaking the modern tennis player hits hard and harder from the baseline. One doesn't really have to think to hard to oneself to understand that they were trained not to think or rather that they were not trained to think very complicated thoughts, tactically speaking.

It's the same thing with ill behaved children...don't blame the child so much as the parent. Begin to try to understand the implications of social engineering and the effects upon the parents. The coaching has gone along with the modern day paradigm for professional tennis...I blame the coaching but I also understand the there are the powers that are beyond and over and above the coaches. Maybe we should throw in a little Calculus or Literature in the training of a tennis player...to provoke deeper thoughts.

The paradigm may be changing a bit though. Roger wants faster courts. Let's see if Roger gets what Roger wants.

So here's how it could happen:

A Silicon Valley multibillionaire (worth at least $10MMM) wakes up one morning bored with his life and decides he wants to indulge his love for tennis and, in particular, the classic tennis game pre-Prince. He decides to take a mere 2 or 3 percent of his fortune to bankroll just the prize money for a two or three year circuit where rackets are limited to a maximum of 80 square inches of string bed, courts must have a minimum speed (which would be faster than any outdoor tournament surface currently played on today; DecoTurf has a record of how much sand they put in their first courts at Flushing Meadows). The vast majority of the bankroll would go to actual prize money, but in the first two years there would have to be probably 20% of the money spent for appearance fees to get the top 8 players to play. Oh, better standardize the ball too. And the material that can be used for strings in these professional matches. Oh, and coaches will have to sit in the private coaches box which will not be visible from the court...

What? You don't think that's likely to happen... It's just as likely as the idea that we get our game back. Racket companies like the technology of power. Court construction companies like having to resurface courts to keep them slow. Sneaker companies like the courts wearing out the shoes. String companies like planned obsolesence of the strings the players use today.

I'll let you take it from there d_b.

don

PS There will be a shot clock on the umpire's chair and time will be enforced. If a player takes an injury timeout, his opponent gets to talk to his coach or even hit with him until the injured player is "ready"! The injured player thereby suffers a penalty for delaying the game. Good thing I'm not that Silicone Valley billionaire!

[stotty]

Thinkers

It seems today that generally speaking the modern tennis player hits hard and harder from the baseline. One doesn't really have to think to hard to oneself to understand that they were trained not to think or rather that they were not trained to think very complicated thoughts, tactically speaking.

It's the same thing with ill behaved children...don't blame the child so much as the parent. Begin to try to understand the implications of social engineering and the effects upon the parents. The coaching has gone along with the modern day paradigm for professional tennis...I blame the coaching but I also understand the there are the powers that are beyond and over and above the coaches. Maybe we should throw in a little Calculus or Literature in the training of a tennis player...to provoke deeper thoughts.

The paradigm may be changing a bit though. Roger wants faster courts. Let's see if Roger gets what Roger wants.

I blamed the coaching too at first...why not...best person to blame is the coach...gotta to be his fault...can't be anyone else...surely the student could never be to blame. But then I thought...hmm...hold on a moment some of these guys on the tour are in their mid-twenties, Almagro 27...doesn't there come a time when a player has to work things out for himself, maybe look across the net and try and figure something out for himself?

If as a top player you haven't developing variety in your game, then you haven't been THINKING too much. Federer has added additional parts to his game in the last couple of years, and good job. He'd be dead and buried by now if he had not.

Nadal, Federer and Djokovic are great thinkers (pains me that I cannot quite put Murray in with them; he does think but temperament lets him down). They become deeply engrossed in their matches. Djokovic and Nadal do actually have some variety in their one dimensional games, and Federer of course is just sublime. All three players are tactically astute and can win matches by the thread of a needle.

The thing with Almagro is he makes a damn good living being boring...and that just isn't right.

Yes, speed let's speed the courts up, let's have change.

[don_budge]

tennis_chiro (3:22 AM) by a nose...stotty (3:26 AM) a close second

So here's how it could happen:

A Silicon Valley multibillionaire (worth at least $10MMM) wakes up one morning bored with his life and decides he wants to indulge his love for tennis and, in particular, the classic tennis game pre-Prince. He decides to take a mere 2 or 3 percent of his fortune to bankroll just the prize money for a two or three year circuit where rackets are limited to a maximum of 80 square inches of string bed, courts must have a minimum speed (which would be faster than any outdoor tournament surface currently played on today; DecoTurf has a record of how much sand they put in their first courts at Flushing Meadows). The vast majority of the bankroll would go to actual prize money, but in the first two years there would have to be probably 20% of the money spent for appearance fees to get the top 8 players to play. Oh, better standardize the ball too. And the material that can be used for strings in these professional matches. Oh, and coaches will have to sit in the private coaches box which will not be visible from the court...

What? You don't think that's likely to happen... It's just as likely as the idea that we get our game back. Racket companies like the technology of power. Court construction companies like having to resurface courts to keep them slow. Sneaker companies like the courts wearing out the shoes. String companies like planned obsolesence of the strings the players use today.

I'll let you take it from there d_b.

don

PS There will be a shot clock on the umpire's chair and time will be enforced. If a player takes an injury timeout, his opponent gets to talk to his coach or even hit with him until the injured player is "ready"! The injured player thereby suffers a penalty for delaying the game. Good thing I'm not that Silicone Valley billionaire!

Damned good, tennis_chiro. My thoughts exactly. Take it from there? Take it where? You got it. Captured the scene. It’s a Hollywood screen play now...in process. Starring you as Howard Hughes. What a wonderful response! I love the part where the injury faker is getting treatment and the opponent is staying loose with his coach. I remember that if it got to the point where you needed an injury time out you packed up your stuff and left the stadium.

Tilting at windmills? They don’t call me don_quixote for nothing. Oh wait...that was a different life.

I blamed the coaching too at first...why not...best person to blame is the coach...gotta to be his fault...can't be anyone else...surely the student could never be to blame. But then I thought...hmm...hold on a moment some of these guys on the tour are in their mid-twenties, Almagro 27...doesn't there come a time when a player has to work things out for himself, maybe look across the net and try and figure something out for himself?

If as a top player you haven't developing variety in your game, then you haven't been THINKING too much. Federer has added additional parts to his game in the last couple of years, and good job. He'd be dead and buried by now if he had not.

Nadal, Federer and Djokovic are great thinkers (pains me that I cannot quite put Murray in with them; he does think but temperament lets him down). They become deeply engrossed in their matches. Djokovic and Nadal do actually have some variety in their one dimensional games, and Federer of course is just sublime. All three players are tactically astute and can win matches by the thread of a needle.

The thing with Almagro is he makes a damn good living being boring...and that just isn't right.

Yes, speed let's speed the courts up, let's have change.

These guys are just kids Stotty. Let’s see...27 years old and that puts him at what, born in 1985. He was post 1984 so he doesn’t have a clue and unless he has somebody in his ear from the good old days of classic tennis where all players had variety in their games he is clueless. Just like the rest of the herd.

Given the conditions that the players are playing under it is sort of normal to see them regress to the boring one dimensional game that has devolved from the full court game of the past. Even the coaches are up against it...much as tennis_chiro has illustrated with his screen play in process about the Silicon Valley billionaire trying to revive the game from its boring self. Their acumen was bought out by a consortium of industries and the vacuum was left over to those hawking strong gripped forehands, two hand backhands and serves that are built and designed for speed and power...not guile.

I really question if any of those three of the triumvirate you have noted are so tactically astute. They more or less react and their game plans all look alike which is no surprise because all of their opponents look alike. Even Federer seems to me to be somewhat tactically challenged...he has gone through many periods looking pretty clueless against the other two nemesis’ when he cannot seem to figure out to play the backhand of Nadal or to play the backhand of Djokovic with a combination of underspin, depth and drive. When Federer gets into position to attack the net he goes way too often with the topspin which sets up ever so nicely for Messrs. Nadal and Djokovic.

These comments come on the heels of the masterpiece that Radek Stepanek wove around his victim Almagro so perhaps I am being a bit overly critical...but not much. Stepanek played perfectly to the occasion and the conditions and on paper he should of been an overwhelming underdog. His age and his ranking being the deciding indicators. But he took everything into account, came up with a solid game plan and executed it to a T. He actually seemed to take a page out of the McEnroe book of tactics...again maybe a slight exaggeration.

I remember Phil from Switzerland talking about his fellow country man and saying that he has never read a book and that he didn’t even know who Don Budge was. Imagine that.

[stotty]

What you see is what you get....

I think tactics are more prominent among the top four...or at least retooling is more apparent than in players ranked lower.

Federer ruled tennis...then along came Nadal.

I think Nadal tooled his whole game up to beat Federer. And if he could beat Federer then he could beat anyone, right? So he beat Federer time and time again and eventually he came to rule tennis.

Then along came Djokovic with an antidote game to beat Nadal...and with a game to tackle Federer as well. So Djokovic came to rule tennis.

Nadal then beefed up his backhand and even his serve...not much, but a bit. He upgraded these strokes to tackle Djokovic. In doing so he notched up two cheap wins and even retained (aided by the weather) his Roland Garros title. We're still not sure if he can "really" beat Djokovic if Djokovic is firing on all cylinders, but that is not necessarily my point...my point is that he retooled.

Federer has since added a drop shot and made more frequent trips to the net than he ever has before.

None of this kind of thing seems to be going on at Almagro's level...no retooling...no taking time out to learn different things...different shots.

Lew Hoad took months out of the game to improve his backhand to be able to play Gonzales...he sacrificed results to get comfortable using his improved backhand in matches...he lost in order to learn...to better his game...and he beat Gonzales more than anyone else as a result.

There's too much money in the game today. Number 20 in the world is a millionaire so long as he maintains that position for a short while....no need to retool....just make a great living. The players ranked below the top four have a different mentality altogether...they're just journeymen...with limited ambition. Psychologically what "you see is what you get". If a player cannot see/envisage himself beating Nadal/Federer/Djokovic...he won't. It comes down to what a player settles for...

[julian1]

A question for the English expert bottle

A quote from the UNKNOWN poster from Sweden
---->
I remember Phil from Switzerland talking about his fellow country man and saying that he has never read a book and that he didn’t even know who Don Budge was. Imagine that. and saying that he has never read a book and that he didn’t even know who Don Budge was. Imagine that.
----->
A question:
is "he" above referring to Phil or "his fellow country man"?
PS
"BOTH" is NOT the correct answer

[julian1]

Phychology is NOT everything

I think tactics are more prominent among the top four...or at least retooling is more apparent than in players ranked lower.

Federer ruled tennis...then along came Nadal.

I think Nadal tooled his whole game up to beat Federer. And if he could beat Federer then he could beat anyone, right? So he beat Federer time and time again and eventually he came to rule tennis.

Then along came Djokovic with an antidote game to beat Nadal...and with a game to tackle Federer as well. So Djokovic came to rule tennis.

Nadal then beefed up his backhand and even his serve...not much, but a bit. He upgraded these strokes to tackle Djokovic. In doing so he notched up two cheap wins and even retained (aided by the weather) his Roland Garros title. We're still not sure if he can "really" beat Djokovic if Djokovic is firing on all cylinders, but that is not necessarily my point...my point is that he retooled.

Federer has since added a drop shot and made more frequent trips to the net than he ever has before.

None of this kind of thing seems to be going on at Almagro's level...no retooling...no taking time out to learn different things...different shots.

Lew Hoad took months out of the game to improve his backhand to be able to play Gonzales...he sacrificed results to get comfortable using his improved backhand in matches...he lost in order to learn...to better his game...and he beat Gonzales more than anyone else as a result.

There's too much money in the game today. Number 20 in the world is a millionaire so long as he maintains that position for a short while....no need to retool....just make a great living. The players below have a different mentality altogether...they're just journeyman...with limited ambition. Psychologically what "you see is what you get". If a player cannot see/envisage himself beating Nadal/Federer/Djokovic...he won't. It comes down to what a player settles for...

I just found a quote on the Swedish Internet
"Psychology is NOT everything,skills do matter as well"
There is always golden middle between comfort zone and a level of skills.
PS Sorry for the typo in the title,I cannot fix it

[stotty]

A quote from the UNKNOWN poster from Sweden
---->
I remember Phil from Switzerland talking about his fellow country man and saying that he has never read a book and that he didn’t even know who Don Budge was. Imagine that. and saying that he has never read a book and that he didn’t even know who Don Budge was. Imagine that.
----->
A question:
is "he" above referring to Phil or "his fellow country man"?
PS
"BOTH" is NOT the correct answer

Nitpicking comment. Pretty obvious I would have thought....

[julian1]

You ruined my day

Nitpicking comment. Pretty obvious I would have thought....

I hoped Mr Bottle would respond.
Now he will NOT.

[don_budge]

Back to the Surface...tennis_chiro's "Tilting at Windmills"

So here's how it could happen:

A Silicon Valley multibillionaire (worth at least $10MMM) wakes up one morning bored with his life and decides he wants to indulge his love for tennis and, in particular, the classic tennis game pre-Prince. He decides to take a mere 2 or 3 percent of his fortune to bankroll just the prize money for a two or three year circuit where rackets are limited to a maximum of 80 square inches of string bed, courts must have a minimum speed (which would be faster than any outdoor tournament surface currently played on today; DecoTurf has a record of how much sand they put in their first courts at Flushing Meadows). The vast majority of the bankroll would go to actual prize money, but in the first two years there would have to be probably 20% of the money spent for appearance fees to get the top 8 players to play. Oh, better standardize the ball too. And the material that can be used for strings in these professional matches. Oh, and coaches will have to sit in the private coaches box which will not be visible from the court...

What? You don't think that's likely to happen... It's just as likely as the idea that we get our game back. Racket companies like the technology of power. Court construction companies like having to resurface courts to keep them slow. Sneaker companies like the courts wearing out the shoes. String companies like planned obsolesence of the strings the players use today.

I'll let you take it from there d_b.

don

PS There will be a shot clock on the umpire's chair and time will be enforced. If a player takes an injury timeout, his opponent gets to talk to his coach or even hit with him until the injured player is "ready"! The injured player thereby suffers a penalty for delaying the game. Good thing I'm not that Silicone Valley billionaire!

Bringing this post back to the surface...it deserves more exposure because it is brilliant! julian1...you are burying legitimate forum material with your litter. I am asking you nicely...please cease and desist. All joking aside.

[bottle]

Julian:

I do tend to agree, hopefully not too much, with don_budge, tennis_chiro and licensedcoach on their ideas of what's important, although I'd bet I think some things are goes they don't such as my backward forehand called The Ziegenfuss.

As far as me being some Johnson, Partridge, Safire or Lynn Truss on tennis fora language, I think not. Hey, tennis fora language-- an Italian immigrant tennis-a coach a-speaks.

And I do have the temerity to call myself a writer-- a good way to incur extra insults-- but a writer's view of the niceties of English is bound to differ from a grammarian's.

I'm more interested in voice and unguarded prose as subject-- put another way, in overcoming self-consciousness both in English and in the on-court language of tennis and in-a dance.

Put another way, in riffing (the jazz term). The internet may get a lot of knocks but it's great for riffs. And so is tennis. If one can string three good points together, maybe one can leverage up to ten.

Also, I'm very interested in the relationship between the verbal language that instructors or self-instructors use to enhance fluid tennis and proprioception.

"Neurolinguistics," to put the big label on it.

When I was a crew coach I met other coaches who built lists of kinesthetic cues that worked-- a good idea I remember thinking at the time.

Will respond any time, Julian. No prob.

Oh, the Silicon Valley billionaire post. Provocative opinions for sure. I promise to respond here in this thread very soon, but that shouldn't stop you, Julian, or anyone else from beating me to the punch.

[bottle]

Multibillionaire's Tennis Fetish

The most recent reproduction of this essay occurs in Post # 26 . And of course is not "fetish" at all or even quixoticism but extremely sound ideas. So interesting to see someone (tennis_chiro) use a little indirection. First, he knows he's got to have some fun or he won't write anything. Second, all tennis writing carries this implicit threat: "I am about to be extremely boring." Not so if you're tennis_chiro. He never bores. He makes the extra effort to capture the interest of his reader every time. And I'll bet he makes that same effort with any student every time he walks out on a teaching court.

An excellent finesse player-- the guy in Virginia who beat me 100 times in a row; why did he keep calling me back?-- once told me he hated all the tennis magazines because they just seemed to be re-packaging the same things over and over in formulaic fashion.

But this essay is different. It's provocative, attacking the status quo. What are its ideas? Speed up the courts. Reduce racket head size. Standardize the ball and the string jobs. Make strings that don't wear out so fast. Enforce time limits between points. Player gets to hit with coach when opponent takes or abuses an injury time out. What an opportunity that would be to solve some problem or theme emerging in the match!

I got the chance to hit for a few minutes with my "coach" (a USPTA pro) on the way to a tournament one time and utterly demolished an opponent who had beaten me severely twice before.

But tennis_chiro is not just about reform. He's about realities. Drawing on his experience of running high level tournaments with huge draws, he explains the need for appearance fees to capture the world's top eight players.

Most of all, he points to large fate-like forces deteriorating the game and makes some subtle observations about them. The resurfacing companies love the extra work that sand-infused slow courts provide. The moment little nubs break off and those courts get the least bit slick, the wool hats decide to resurface.

I wouldn't. I want more aces and service winners. LayKold was my best surface.

More abrasive courts sell more sneakers, too.

Hey, tennis is supposed to be a game, not just a biz.

So have better rules. Love the one about players not being able to see the coach during play! A nice balance to the rule that the coach can come down and practice during the injury timeout.

The ideas are whimsical and fun but sober at the same time. And there's a kind of freedom in all fields of interest that comes from a few more rules or limits, i.e., structure.

At the same time, however, the deviousness or joy of invention in tennis needs preservation.

We want better rackets and better everything. My first great sport seemed wide open in this regard. You could row any way of your choice to win, could order any boat, any style of oar and ergometer (though we had none)-- whatever worked best.

For a while virtually all of the roughly three hundred competitive rowing colleges were using composite boats, so Harvard reverted to traditional wood but dominated. They had the crews right then to win in anything however.

And there was a contest by Richard Brandon (?) to follow up to the cross the English Channel in a human-propelled air vehicle program-- a contest to spring loose the fastest human propelled water craft.

I found it profoundly interesting that a single scull-- a traditional long arrow-like water craft propelled by two hi-tech sculls or oars was faster than any paddleboat that anyone could devise.

Anyway, tennis_chiro's billionaire thought only in terms of a three-year (and therefore experimental) circuit. This would be a great circuit. Not the only circuit but a great one.

[tennis_chiro]

Thanks for the kindness you show me!

...
Anyway, tennis_chiro's billionaire thought only in terms of a three-year (and therefore experimental) circuit. This would be a great circuit. Not the only circuit but a great one.

I just want to say I really give thanks, and not just on Thanksgiving, for the kindness with which my words get treated on this site, especially by my friends in Sweden, the UK and Michigan.

But the billionaire was not entirely selfless. He's convinced that if he footed the bill for the first couple of years, the ratings would be so good, that the circuit would actually end up being self-sustaining, and though it might take a while, he might actually get his money back; at least part of it. And he'd go down as a figure in history for saving classic tennis!

don