The following post is an excerpt from the Second Edition of The Tennis Parent’s Bible
Available through most online retailers!
A NEW WAY TO LOOK AT STRATEGY
To understand on-court control dramas, take a minute and think of a tennis match as a control contest. Each player is attempting to pull their opponent into their style of play to gain command of the match.
Three Control Dramas Seen in High Level Tennis:
- The Power Contest
- The Speed Contest
- The Patience Contest
To simplify the process, the goal of competition is to choose the contest your athlete performs best. Then formulate a plan to PULL their opponent out of their own world and into your athlete’s world. Let’s look a little deeper, yet keep it simple:
I have a top 300 WTA player training with me. We have customized her game plan to hide her weaknesses and expose her strengths. Her body type and brain type play a major role in customizing her success.
Weaknesses
Ann is light in stature. Her opponents are generally much bigger and stronger. We checked off and excluded the “Power Contest” from her A game plan. This is not to say that she might use power as a B or C game plan. Ann also has focus issues. We checked off the “Patience Contest” and excluded it as her A game plan.
Strengths
Ann possesses great speed and anticipatory skills. We chose the “Speed Contest” as her A game plan. Ann is extremely intuitive. She can sense when the opponent is vulnerable and knows “How” and “When” to move in and take away the opponents recovery and decision making time.
When Ann chooses to play her “Speed Contest”, she most often is able to move the bigger girls enough to force errors. She can also pull the retrievers off the court to open up winning angles. When Ann chooses to get into a “boomball-power” contest with bigger, stronger girls, she loses. When she chooses to out moonball a “World Class” moonballer she loses!
As I mentioned earlier, this section should be a conversation opener with your athlete and their entourage. Knowing who you are is an important step in formulating your most successful game plans.
