The Belichik approach: Attack or neutralize the strength?

[arturohernandez]

I trust that everyone saw the Super Bowl. I am not a Patriots fan but you have to appreciate what they have accomplished.

So I bought "The education of a coach" a rather old book on Belichik but it seemed like the best one.

His dad was a scout and what his dad said was that every team wants to play to its strength especially under pressure.

So he would scout teams and suggest a way to counter their strength so that they had to play in a way they did not like to play.

If a team liked to run, make them pass and vice versa.

The effect on his son is obvious. Look at what the Patriots did to the Rams.

The whole night I was yelling for the Rams to try dink and drop. Short pass patterns. Anything to try and get in the game.

They never really did.

They kept trying to go deep. With no success.

The Rams were outcoached. But they also have a young quarterback who likely is not able to adapt easily.

It's the Super Bowl so there is no way a team can expect to win the way they always do.

It got me thinking about tennis and about attacking people's strengths.

In tennis is attacking the strength really what Bill Tilden suggested?

Or is it making people play their strengths in ways they do not like?

Nadal is weak when people attack his forehand but only crosscourt.

So it is attacking the strength but it is also trying to get him to play the way he does not like.

More like neutralizing the strength.

Any thoughts?

[arturohernandez]

Victim number one: The St. Louis Rams, yes in 2002, the first Super Bowl the Pats won.

Belicic's (his grandfather was Croatian) approach: Disrupt the Rams timing by disrupting Marshall Faulk.

Martz the opposing coach was being yelled at because his team said that they could win by just running up the middle.

Martz said "F!!$$ it, I am going to win my way."

Neutralize their strength by attacking it.

Make them play the way they don't like to play.

[stotty]

Ever thought of joining some of those lovely sentences together, auturohernandez? You write like you're making a shopping list.

I wouldn't call Nadal's forehand weak in any scenario. Maybe there is a tiny, tiny chink if you can get him moving out wide to a low, fast ball but no one in there right mind would make a game plan of it. It's about the best forehand the game has ever seen! That Novak can trade with him with his backhand is unusual. He's about the only guy that can.

I knew after a set and a bit it was all over in that Aussie final. It wasn't that Nadal's forehand was weak or broke down, he just couldn't do any damage with it. That's tough when your best weapon is making no impact and, worse, your opponent is hitting into it for fun. Roland Garros is going to be really interesting if they both make it to the final.

[arturohernandez]

I also think that Nadal is just a bit slower. Djokovic tried the same approach in their matches back in 2012. The thing is that Nadal would make insane gets on his forehand out wide and make people play one more shot. Eventually he would wear them out. So maybe it is a bit of both him slowing down just a tad and the fact that at 32 he cannot run for as long as he did at 25.

If Belichick were a tennis coach, I think he would say that Nadal prefers to play in his back hand corner. So rather than fearing the forehand it is better to neutralize it. But still the idea of attacking their strength and making them play the way they do not like to play is an interesting one. Of course, the hard part is pulling it off.

Is that less list like?

[stotty]

I also think that Nadal is just a bit slower. Djokovic tried the same approach in their matches back in 2012. The thing is that Nadal would make insane gets on his forehand out wide and make people play one more shot. Eventually he would wear them out. So maybe it is a bit of both him slowing down just a tad and the fact that at 32 he cannot run for as long as he did at 25.

If Belichick were a tennis coach, I think he would say that Nadal prefers to play in his back hand corner. So rather than fearing the forehand it is better to neutralize it. But still the idea of attacking their strength and making them play the way they do not like to play is an interesting one. Of course, the hard part is pulling it off.

Is that less list like?

Yes much less like a shopping list. You write well!

I still think Bill's point was to play into a strength at its strongest. But, yes, if you can make life difficult in the process, why not. I think Novak has sewn something terrible in Rafa's mind, rather like Roger has but in another way.

[bottle]

Love this conversation. And the more tangential way you both invoke the name of Bill Tilden-- hooray for subtlety.

That Bill Belichick-- he a weird kind of duck. Did you see the clip from last week where he made a long speech-- maybe there was more than one? In the clip I saw he started by saying not that his father was a scout but that both his father and mother were educators. From then on I could do nothing but consider him as very professorial. And low key beyond belief. He reminded me of the duck-billed platypus in the big ad for the Australian Open the Aussies kept playing over and over-- and which I hated because it was full of duck-billed platitudes compared to the corresponding ad of the last several years that had a wonderful poem behind it repeated again and again the way a good poem should be in order to give up its meaning a little at a time. Nah, nothing but crummy ad-man's "prose" becoming tediouser and tediouser even though the visual background was similar.

Okay, back to Belichick. He went to Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut where I was a reporter over four years. It's one of the country's biggest scholar producers like Haverford or Reed-- little colleges that nobody has heard of very much but that produce more researchers and educators-- proportionally-- than anyplace else.

I find it very hard to relate that part of Belichick with his and Tom Brady's cozying up to Trump. And know Gisele Bundchen was absolutely right when she advised her husband Tom to back off of the Trump thing. I don't think, when the rise and fall of Donald Trump is finally chronicled, anyone will ever be able to count for its size the number of asses he produced through his mere existence on earth as an example, I guess.

A personal note: I am very loyal to my alma mater, Brown University. So I was naturally charmed when Brady made a video saying what a great player and person the Patriot's fullback Develin, an engineer back at Brown was. Brady pointed out how close Brown is to Foxboro. He further said that most of the teams don't even have a fullback nowadays but the Patriots do and he plays a big role in their success. I had to like both Brady and Develin after watching that clip.

But I looked for Develin's name throughout the game. He was mentioned once for a great block, I think.

I was in a basement room full of tennis players all rooting for the Rams. I couldn't give my full noisy allegiance to the Patriots because of an online article I'd just read pointing to their Trumpiness. The article asked how anyone who values sanity could support such a team. Also, I haven't believed any Americans worthy of the noun patriot since Patrick Henry and Nathan Hale. Now Victor Lazlo in CASABLANCA-- there's a patriot. In fact the word "patriot" maybe should always be accompanied by the proper adjective "Hungarian" even though Hungary is currently reeling from an infestation of Trumpopioid Mumps.

[arturohernandez]

Love this conversation. And the more tangential way you both invoke the name of Bill Tilden-- hooray for subtlety.

That Bill Belichick-- he a weird kind of duck. Did you see the clip from last week where he made a long speech-- maybe there was more than one? In the clip I saw he started by saying not that his father was a scout but that both his father and mother were educators.

I will try to stay out of the political realm since every night my wife and I turn on the news to see who beat up whom. Both of us watch with utter dread and wonder how politicians could be so far removed from the reality of day to day life.

Okay, but back to tennis and strategy.

Belichick's dad was a football coach but managed to get a Professor position along with it. Meaning he was guaranteed a job for life as long as he continued to be productive. His dad never sought the limelight. He was coveted by so many teams. But he never wanted the fame. Apparently, Bill is the same way. He just wants to think about football. The rest is a waste of time. It's interesting you mention the Trump connection. Belichick's grandfather was from Croatia and moved to Pennsylvania and later Ohio. They lived through the depression and managed to cobble a way through life. Steve Belichick was younger and had the luxury of playing football. So his family comes from the part of the country that sought solace in Trump as an answer to global forces that continue to make some very wealthy and others not.

There is a really nice article in the NYT many years ago that points to the "softness" of American youth and the effects on tennis.

Belichick is as old school as you get. Kind of like Robert Landsdorp, Richard Williams, Mike Agassi and the female Russian coaches. They have an edge and are not always the most likable. But they give it you straight and they have high expectations of their trainees.

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/s...ay-talent.html

"The reasons that the United States is losing ground on the talent map have less to do with training mechanisms and more to do with bigger factors: a highly distractive youth culture, a focus on the glamour of winning rather than on the brickwork of building technique and a sporting environment that is gentler than those found in many of the world's harder corners.

You can't keep breast-feeding them all the time," Robert Lansdorp, a tennis coach in Los Angeles, told me. "You've got to make them an independent thinker." Lansdorp, who is in his 60s, has coached Sharapova, along with the former No. 1-ranked players Pete Sampras, Tracy Austin and Lindsay Davenport, all three of whom grew up in the same area and played at the same run-of-the-mill tennis clubs near Los Angeles. "You don't need a fancy academy," he said. "You need fundamentals and discipline, and in this country nobody gives a damn about fundamentals and discipline." Lansdorp also mentioned that he'd visited Spartak last year to teach a clinic. "It was a pretty different place," he said. "But that Larisa, she sure knows her stuff."

[doctorhl]

Discipline?? The majority of youth tennis I have observed have no concept of true physical and mental discipline. They all need to spend a little time in some of the best U.S boxing gyms to eat a little humble pie.

[bottle]

Discipline?? The majority of youth tennis I have observed have no concept of true physical and mental discipline. They all need to spend a little time in some of the best U.S boxing gyms to eat a little humble pie.

Or they could become oarsmen or oarswomen and not get hit so long as they didn't catch a crab (https://www.google.com/search?q=catc...hrome&ie=UTF-8).

[arturohernandez]

Or they could become oarsmen or oarswomen and not get hit so long as they didn't catch a crab (https://www.google.com/search?q=catc...hrome&ie=UTF-8).

No pain no gain!