2017 French Open Champion Jelena Ostapenko
Jelena Ostapenko demonstrated how mental, emotional aptitude is often more important than technically sound strokes.
Any high-performance tennis coach viewing the 2017 French Open Woman’s finals surely picked up on some interesting technical “flaws” in Jelena’s strokes. She chooses to use an eastern forehand grip on her two-handed backhand, she severely falls to her left on her serve, her forehand’s backswing is consistently 6 foot too long and her two-handed backhand volley is struck with a severe downward flight pattern.
So… how does someone with such glaring fundamental deficiencies win a grand slam?
The answer is…by not exclusively focusing on changing her strokes year in and year out.
With imperfect yet efficient fundamentals Jelena customized a beautiful game plan- accentuating her court speed, fitness level, patience and her fine motor skilled flat ball striking ability. Jelena’s obviously trained differently. Instead of grinding back & forth all day, my bet is that she focused on the art of winning.
She’s magnificent at changing the angle of the ball. I call this “playing keep away versus playing catch”. Even on the slow red clay, her strategic focus was to dominate with shorter points by utilizing pattern play. Jelena is brilliant at time management- essentially taking away the opponent’s recovery time. She does this by moving into “no man’s land” and taking short balls on the rise and fearlessly spotting when the opponent’s vulnerable and moving inside the court to knock off swing volleys.
Best of all was her emotional strength to attack relentlessly from the first point until the last.
Maybe we should learn from Jelena and apply positive coaching. This is done by letting go of ONLY focusing on the athlete’s flaws and instead, focusing on the athlete’s unique strengths as well.
Frank Giampaolo
www.maximizingtennispotential.com
