The recent 2008 French Open final has really hit a sore spot with a lot of us where Federer appeared to not really give much of an extended effort to try to "change a losing game".
My post the other day stirred up lots of debate, and one of your fellow WebTennis.net subscribers, Roger Underwood from Australia, was kind enough to pass along an article he wrote which ironically focuses on the exact same subject of not changing a losing game when Federer lost to Djokavic at the Australian earlier this year.
With Roger's permission, here is his article...
I also have some comments at the end.
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Roger Federer and the Reign of Technology
By Peter Underwood and Roger Underwood
To many tennis fans, Roger Federer’s defeat by Novak Djokavic in the Australian Open was painful. For the World Champion not only comprehensively lost, but appeared out of form, out of sorts, and out of ideas. Why?
One obvious reason might be that Federer was having a bad day – something that happens to everybody – even Federer. However to those who love tennis history, this can only be a part of the explanation: why did he appear incapable of devising any sort of response to his young opponent’s barrage? Why, the match slipping away, bash it out from the baseline against an opponent whose martial strategy was precisely that?
Now greybeards are notoriously inclined to sentimentalise the past – to them yesterday’s heroes are incomparably more heroic than today’s. Greybeards also have a galling tendency of locating the defects of the upstart heroes, then offering foolproof prescriptions for these defects. Nevertheless, sometimes the past can help explain the present, and even offer a way forward.
We have just completed a book on ‘The Pros’ – the little band of ‘professional’ tennis players who, before 1967 and ‘Open Tennis’, played for money before the public. Only after that were they allowed to compete against the so-called ‘amateurs’ in the great fiestas like Wimbledon and today’s Australian Open.
In our book we analyse the style and the strategy of the eight pro champions from 1930 to 1967. One of them, Ken Rosewall, was in the gallery watching the Federer match. Another, Rod Laver, had given his name to the arena in which it was played. What can the old masters tell us?
First, both were in the direct line of the first pro champion ‘Big Bill’ Tilden, guru to several generations of tennis players. Two Tilden maxims are central here.
The first was ‘always change a losing game’. The second involved what Tilden called exaltedly, ‘the tennis player’. To Tilden, the maestro tennis player possessed facility at net and the baseline, powers of defence as well as attack, and a capacity to change pace or spin. Moreover they had the ability to draw on these manifold resources when occasion and opponent demanded.
So, if in trouble, Rosewall and Laver were exemplary with the unexpected. Indeed the Laver genius of invention was such that he appeared to relish being put in a position to test it. John Newcombe once said that he never knew when he was in bigger trouble, being two sets to love up on ‘The Rocket’, or two sets down - and he wasn’t entirely joking. What Newcombe meant was this: being behind seemed to fire up Laver’s wondrous best, both technically and strategically.
As for the almost tiny Rosewall, his forte was taking on the goliaths: by his quickness, and his mastery of the net, he could ‘turn back his opponent’s pace’, making them flounder, and incapable of setting up their power strokes. In a rare flight of poetry, the American Marty Riessen said of Rosewall’s capacity to surprise, ‘you never see him coming, and you never hear him coming’.
So, most respectfully, we might ask why Federer didn’t take a leaf from the book of these earlier masters – and sometimes follow in his serve, or break up his opponent’s rhythm by changes of pace, placement, or spin.
However for Federer to do so involves something more than questioning his game plan –which has, admittedly been monumentally successful. He must also challenge a belief central to modern tennis, and which explains much of the modern game’s rigidity.
This belief is that improved technology means that the only way to win is by pulverising the ball with huge topspin, and slugging it out from the baseline. Rather than a goal, the net is regarded as a danger zone. Thus when they do find themselves at net many modern players resemble the clergyman who discovers himself not at a choir meeting but in a bordello.
A good part of the reason for this is that they all seem party to one of the modern age’s most insidious and often ludicrous beliefs: that technology is invested with magical power.
Federer hits the ball much harder than did that legendary pair of little blokes, Rosewall and Laver. Yet he seems governed by the ‘technological imperative’ – everything, today, is different: the new apparatus allows only baseline slug-feasts. So strategy is emasculated.
In elite sport, as in warfare, the victor’s most important weapon remains the same - a flexible mind. Roger Federer, as he looks back on the Australian debacle, might do well to take out some old tennis videos, and perhaps reflect on John McEnroe’s famous remark: ‘Tennis is 75% mental: and the rest is mental’.
Reference: “The Pros - Forgotten Heroes” by Peter Underwood, with Roger Underwood, 2007. Unpublished MS
Contact by email: yorkgum@westnet.com.au
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Thanks Roger for your thoughts and I couldn't agree more.
As a teaching professional, my biggest concern is that young players to our game are being taught this stuff that is so well described in Mr. Underwood's article.
We're talking baseline only strategies that are simply based on ball bashing with extreme forehand grips.
Hey, I wish Fed would use all of the different grips I know he has available to him. I've always said that he's the best guy on the planet because he has so many grips available to him. Unfortunately, we're not seeing him use them when it's appropriate to try and "change a losing game".
I'm telling you, if we continue to teach and promote a Nadal style of play, we're going to kill off this game somewhere down the road.
I've seen way too many young adults who were taught baseline only strategies give up tennis in their mid 20s and early 30s because that style just isn't any fun or because of the injuries suffered from that style. As juniors, tennis was less about "fun" and more about pure winning.
And as they got older, the young adults' perception of trying to convert to an "all-court" style of play using lots of different grips was just to big of an ordeal to have to face.
I'm not promoting total doom and gloom, but I am saying that we have to demand something different from our teaching pros at least.
I worked out on the court with my good friend Michael Wayman yesterday and we had this same conversation.
And you know, Michael said what Mr. Underwood's article was really all about, let's give Nadal and Fed wood rackets and let the boys have a bit of a bash and let's see what happens.
The racket technology has allowed the tournament pros to do things we've never ever seen before in tennis. But that doesn't mean we should be teaching it.
Don't give in to the glitzy hype of the Roddick forehand and service motion that doesn't naturally move him forward into the court.
If you're reading this post and you're a young teaching pro, please, teach your juniors how to volley FIRST.
Teach them how to play doubles before you teach them how to play singles.
Yeah I know, sort of radical. But think about it for a minute. As a teaching pro, what really is your job?
Your job is not to help kids become touring pros or even to play just like the pros we see on TV.
Your job is to help kids learn how to play tennis for the rest of their lives. And that means teaching them everything about the game. Don't limit them...
If they get good enough to play on the tour, then it's all gravy.
Baseline only ball bashing strategies and techniques will not get it done if you want to help people play tennis for their rest of their lives.
Brent
www.webtennis.net/Tennis-Lessons.htm
