Help Kindly Requested on Junior Player

[stotty]

I watched the clip back again. I like his backhand a lot when he gets in position. His racket face is rather open on the take back but he seems comfortable with that and he hits it so sweetly off that wing at times. His sliced backhand lacks a bit of penetration but he has a nice feel for the shot and he could improve it quite easily by just knifing them a bit more. I find his forehand more of a liability and wouldn't want to rely on it when the bigger points come round.

His opponent seems a workhorse and nothing more...but he looks like he wants it.

But if Seiji just just had better footwork it would make all the difference in my view. It's not that he is slow, he just needs better footwork around the ball at times...micro steps....move out then back in type of stuff.

When I spoke with Sergio Casal about junior tennis development in Spain, he said, generally, Spanish coaches don't over obsess about technique but instead work very intensively on fitness, athleticism and footwork. Sergio is extremely skilled at hand feeding players from just a couple of feet away and getting them to work their socks off by just dropping balls around them from one side to the other or randomly.. He did a few of the drills with me and believe they are exhausting. But micro steps and positioning for Sergio is massive. For him it's the difference between making a shot or missing it....and misses, in Spanish tennis, he says, are deemed expensive.

[klacr]

I started this thread in 2014. An update on the player: while he has had some tennis ups and downs, he has had some real accomplishments including winning the 2016 Connecticut High School State Open Singles Championships. He currently plays college tennis (as a freshman) at a university in Connecticut on a tennis scholarship (not Yale - they just happen to be playing the match In the video below at the beautiful Yale indoor courts). He is very much enjoying the college tennis experience and is a really good kid . I have set forth below a link to a video of the second set of a recent match he played. He played no. 1 for his school that day. He lost the set 6-3 after being up 3-1. I would greatly appreciate your thoughts and suggestions. The suggestions you made in the thread from 2014 were absolutely of help. He is the player in the white shirt with the one-handed backhand.


Thanks in advance for your help! Here is the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdkc...ature=youtu.be

Seiji has grown up. I really like his strokes, especially his backhand. Looks very natural with it. The technical stuff is fine, as Stotty points out it looks like his footwork is a bit "casual".

But more important than that is what is between his ears when he is playing. He seems like a nice, laid back, soft spoken kind of kid. And thats great. But as a competitor there has to be a inferno, a burning desire to wanna compete, love the battle and get dirty. It looks s though he is struggling to find that. He seems uncomfortable yelling out or vocally pumping himself up. His opponent has no problems barking orders and pumping himself up. Seiji seems like he has a hard time finding on on-court persona. Should he be smooth and stoic, an ice-man like Borg. Or should he be fist pumping and visibly intense. I think once he finds this persona and becomes comfortable in his own skin he will start seeing some real growth.

Another thing, he is a freshman and is playing in line 1? Thats tough.

Kyle LaCroix USPTA
Boca Raton

[EdWeiss]

Stotty and Kyle: thanks for the terrific comments and for taking the time out to look at the video - you guys are great. I think your comments are very well thought out and perceptive. Agree on the mental side of things - that is a matter that he has wrestled with for a long time. Agree on the footwork point and also the backhand slice point. I would also like for him to find more opportunities to go to net as he volleys reasonably well, esp. off the forehand volley. Stotty on the forehand: he does tend to make some errors he should not make but I have seen matches where it is a real weapon in the key points of a mach. Don Brosseau had some interesting points in a separate email he sent to me and I will try to post them in the next day or so. Thanks again!!!!