Some of the best players in the world have struggled with one of the most basic shots in tennis at the French Open.
PARIS — Raffaella Reggi rose to 13th in the world in women’s tennis in the late 1980s despite a serve so balky she once recorded 28 double faults in a match in Rome. With the shrill voices of fans pleading with her to use an underhand motion still ringing in her ears, Reggi said she walked into the press room afterward and professed, “I have no idea how to serve.”
Watching a player repeatedly start points by hitting balls into the net or, in the German Alexander Zverev’s case, beyond the baseline, can be excruciating.
“I had some flashbacks,” Reggi said of Zverev’s double-fault-filled performance in his United States Open final defeat to Dominic Thiem.
It’s akin to actors forgetting their lines during a soliloquy. You sit there, helpless to assist, willing them to get back in the flow. If all the court’s a stage, double faults are a tennis player’s inner heckler lashing out.
Mary Carillo, the NBC analyst and former French Open doubles champion, said, “It’s almost always the same culprit: nerves.”
How the anxiety seeps into the technical execution varies. It can be a wandering ball toss that throws off one’s rhythm or a tightening of the limbs that makes it harder to bend the knees and execute the natural arm swing. The challenge for those struggling with their serves, Carillo said, is to fight the instinct to bend the ball into the box slowly and carefully and instead accelerate their racket head speed.
“More action at the point of contact gives more margin, not less,” she said.
The serve is the only stroke in the sport where the player exercises complete control of the moment. It is a stand-alone action, so when the moment goes awry, there is stand-alone accountability.
The 23-time major singles champion Serena Williams, who has one of the most potent serves in the game, said that on those rare occasions when her best weapon is misfiring, “My brain is like: ‘Oh, my God! I never miss this!’”
The embarrassment of being a professional unable to execute this elemental shot faithfully can be acute.
“I mean, in practice I make the serves,” said an exasperated Coco Gauff, who opened the French Open stalking the baseline between service points yelling, “Focus!” as she piled up 12 double faults in a victory against Johanna Konta.
In the next round, Gauff had 19 in a three-set loss to Martina Trevisan of Italy. The 16-year-old Gauff has averaged almost 15 doubles in her last four matches.
“It’s just confidence, just a mind thing,” said Gauff, who added: “I don’t really think it’s a technical thing. I mean, we talk to a lot of people. Sometimes I mess up and hit a bad toss. I mean, when I’m out there on the court, I know I double-fault a lot, but I try not to think of it.”
Read more —>
Whisperer Serving Tip: Lighten up on your grip to accelerate the racket head. Most players ‘choke the chicken under stress’ particularly on serve.
AFR: If you want to be healthy at 80, you have to start by 50
/in Tennis4Life /by Goss EditorThirty years ago, a 54-year-old medical scientist and British health bureaucrat named Norman Lazarus was settling down to a nice dinner with his wife while on holiday in Switzerland. As he put his napkin on his lap, he saw the bulge of his middle-aged belly protruding over his belt.
Fast-forward to now: Lazarus is a twinkly-eyed, sprightly 84-year-old. Healthwise, he’s in the pink. He’s an endurance cyclist, has recently published a book, and is still working at King’s College London on unravelling the secrets of healthy ageing. His wife, June, who joined him on his health journey, is 87 and also has no age-related illnesses.
Lazarus deployed his medical know-how to develop a simple “trinity” of actions that, if started during middle-age, give you a solid shot at warding off the 20 or so avoidable diseases of age, including cardiovascular disease, pre-stroke hypertension, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, dementia, non-alcoholic liver disease, peripheral artery disease, and certain kinds of cancers.
His book, The Lazarus Strategy: How to Age Well and Wisely (Hachette Australia), is plain-speaking and impassioned. Get started, and get started now – not just for your own sake, but for the sake of our societies’ struggling health systems and ageing demographics.
He has become not only an evangelist, but a guinea pig. Tests on him and other elderly members of his cycling club show cardiovascular function equivalent to inactive people 30 years their junior, and their immune systems are still functioning at high capacity.
Ageing and slowing down is inevitable, he says, but disease and infirmity is not.
Read more —>
Club Championships Entries Close October 11
/in Club Championships /by The SecretaryEvent draws will be published on October 14 for the weekend matches starting October 18.
Social tennis will be limited while the championships are on so please remember to enter the club champs while there is room.
Note that you need to be a financial member to enter the championships or to play social. For your convenience, the Secretary advises that the club’s bank account details are: BSB 062 197 Account 010 000 562. Cost for full membership is $450, please include your name as a reference.
Due to COVID-19 regulations, guests can not play social unless they intend to join the club.
If you need a partner to enter, please contact me (Denis) and I will try to find you one.
Finally, if you book a court in club hours and then decide not to play, remember to cancel your booking. Otherwise the court is left vacant and another member misses out.
Denis Crowley
MLTC Club Captain
Serving Is Mental. So Stop Thinking So Much.
/in Ask the Pro /by RobSome of the best players in the world have struggled with one of the most basic shots in tennis at the French Open.
PARIS — Raffaella Reggi rose to 13th in the world in women’s tennis in the late 1980s despite a serve so balky she once recorded 28 double faults in a match in Rome. With the shrill voices of fans pleading with her to use an underhand motion still ringing in her ears, Reggi said she walked into the press room afterward and professed, “I have no idea how to serve.”
Watching a player repeatedly start points by hitting balls into the net or, in the German Alexander Zverev’s case, beyond the baseline, can be excruciating.
“I had some flashbacks,” Reggi said of Zverev’s double-fault-filled performance in his United States Open final defeat to Dominic Thiem.
It’s akin to actors forgetting their lines during a soliloquy. You sit there, helpless to assist, willing them to get back in the flow. If all the court’s a stage, double faults are a tennis player’s inner heckler lashing out.
Mary Carillo, the NBC analyst and former French Open doubles champion, said, “It’s almost always the same culprit: nerves.”
How the anxiety seeps into the technical execution varies. It can be a wandering ball toss that throws off one’s rhythm or a tightening of the limbs that makes it harder to bend the knees and execute the natural arm swing. The challenge for those struggling with their serves, Carillo said, is to fight the instinct to bend the ball into the box slowly and carefully and instead accelerate their racket head speed.
“More action at the point of contact gives more margin, not less,” she said.
The serve is the only stroke in the sport where the player exercises complete control of the moment. It is a stand-alone action, so when the moment goes awry, there is stand-alone accountability.
The 23-time major singles champion Serena Williams, who has one of the most potent serves in the game, said that on those rare occasions when her best weapon is misfiring, “My brain is like: ‘Oh, my God! I never miss this!’”
The embarrassment of being a professional unable to execute this elemental shot faithfully can be acute.
“I mean, in practice I make the serves,” said an exasperated Coco Gauff, who opened the French Open stalking the baseline between service points yelling, “Focus!” as she piled up 12 double faults in a victory against Johanna Konta.
In the next round, Gauff had 19 in a three-set loss to Martina Trevisan of Italy. The 16-year-old Gauff has averaged almost 15 doubles in her last four matches.
“It’s just confidence, just a mind thing,” said Gauff, who added: “I don’t really think it’s a technical thing. I mean, we talk to a lot of people. Sometimes I mess up and hit a bad toss. I mean, when I’m out there on the court, I know I double-fault a lot, but I try not to think of it.”
Read more —>
Whisperer Serving Tip: Lighten up on your grip to accelerate the racket head. Most players ‘choke the chicken under stress’ particularly on serve.
Are Underhand Serves Underhanded? Tennis Is Opening Up to the Crafty Tactic
/in Ask the Pro /by RobPlayers concede that the serve can be a good tactic against players who stand far, far back from the baseline. And they know when opponents are trying to show them up.
Neither the pioneer nor the present-day popularizer of the underhand serve has been in Paris this year during the French Open.
Michael Chang, who won the tournament with a clutch use of the serve in 1989, is back in the United States, spending time with his wife, Amber, and their three young children. Nick Kyrgios is back in Australia, spending time on social media as a freelance tennis critic, which should make for some testy conversations with his peers when he finally does return to the circuit in person.
But Chang’s and Kyrgios’s legacy has been on frequent display in the first week of the Grand Slam tournament.
Underhand serves, once broadly considered underhanded in the sport, have been popping up in the autumnal gloom like mushrooms in the French countryside.
Peak season may have been Wednesday. In the stretch of a couple of hours, you could watch Alexander Bublik hold serve with an underhander (it seems time for a punchy, one-word term), see Sara Errani save a match point with one and watch Mackenzie McDonald save nothing at all with a floating, sacrificial offering of an underhander that the 12-time French Open champion Rafael Nadal pounced on for a return winner en route to a 6-0, 6-1, 6-3 victory.
“If he’s winning, it’s a good tactic; if he’s losing, it’s a bad tactic,” Nadal said. He added that, for example, it was “not a good tactic” for Mackenzie. For Bublik, he said, “if that works,” it was “a good tactic.”
Unfortunately for Bublik, it did not work often enough. He lost his second-round match to Lorenzo Sonego in a duel that was also brimming with other tennis exotica, like serve-and-volley tactics and tweeners.
Read more —>
Seaside Championships 2020 cancelled
/in Manly Seaside Championships /by The SecretaryEffective immediately Tennis Australia & all State Associations has postponed all Tennis Australia sanctioned & operated events, competitions & tournaments until further notice.
Tennis has made this decision to take further precautions in the interest of the health & wellbeing of our community. Our goal is to avoid large gatherings of people which can occur at a number of our tournaments.
We have been advised that such action can be very effective in helping contain the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) and minimise the inevitable strain on our healthcare system. This decision is based on expert medical advice & is in line with the recommendations of the global tennis community.
Original 9 trailblazers stood for tennis equality in 1970
/in Goss, News /by RobNEW YORK (AP) — Billie Jean King and eight other women of the “Original 9” are celebrating the 50th anniversary of signing $1 contracts and breaking away from the U.S. tennis establishment to form the Virginia Slims circuit in 1970. It helped launch the WTA Tour, which now offers millions in global prize money.
Promoters were offering fewer tournaments and substantially less prize money for the women. They were galvanized when former player and promoter Jack Kramer announced the Pacific Southwest Open in Los Angeles would pay $12,500 to the men’s champion and $1,500 to the women’s champion.
apnews.com/article/new-york-billie-jean-king-virginia-us-open-tennis-championships-wimbledon-ec4f2a1684a5efd286cbfb31a7611764
Boris Becker denies criminal bankruptcy claims in London
/in Goss, News /by RobLONDON (AP) — Former tennis star Boris Becker appeared in a London court Thursday, pleading not guilty to a string of criminal charges related to his bankruptcy case.
Becker, who was declared bankrupt in June 2017, is accused of not complying with orders to disclose financial information and hiding properties in the U.K. and Germany from his bankruptcy trustees.
The 52-year-old faces seven years in jail if convicted.
Becker stood in the dock at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Thursday and denied 19 charges of failing to disclose money, property and debt between May and June 2017.
Saturday Social Court Captain Roster, Club Championships, Message from Paul, Reminders
/in Club News /by The SecretarySATURDAY SOCIAL COURT CAPTAIN ROSTER
September 26 – December 19, 2020
Sept 26 Ron Jeffs Ian Bate
Oct 3 Denis Crowley David Bowen
Oct 10 Julie Porteous Michelle Stevens
Oct 17-31 Club Championships
Nov 7 Tony Hamilton Des Tempany
Nov 14 Virginia Longfellow Bob Hill
Nov 21 Peter Roberts Narelle Kinsey
Nov 28 Milton da Rocha Carl Brazendale
Dec 5 Craig Withell Scott Anderson
Dec 12 Hugo Stegmann Mark Flogel
Dec 19 Jon Corney Peter Butcher
Court Captains operate 1pm-4pm. Members playing before 1pm and after 4pm arrange their own sets.
Diary your allotted date now. Should you be unavailable on your rostered date, you must arrange your own replacement.
VISITORS: During COVID, visitors are NOT permitted. The exception is anyone trialling with the aim of joining the Club. $20 fee to be collected prior to playing.
CLUB CHAMPIONSHIPS REMINDER
Members your fees are now due, to be eligible to play you must be a financial member.
MESSAGE FROM PAUL WIGNEY
Congratulations to the winners and well done to all the other teams for representing the club throughout the season. I was there in spirit. I am hoping that one day soon I can make a long awaited appearance at the old club. Best regards to all Paul.
REMINDER
A reminder there are two courts available for members’ use from 7am -9am on Wednesdays. You need to book through Manly Tennis Centre.
Thursday Ladies Badge Celebrate 3rd Place
/in Badge, Club News /by Goss EditorOur Thursday Ladies Badge Team finished off a successful season by winning the playoff 5-3 on Thursday for 3rd position in Division 2.
Narelle and Jane won all 4 sets and Lindy and Michelle won 1 set to complete the victory.
Thanks also to Pam Muir and Erin who were also part of the team.
Congrats on a good season ladies.
Paire says he played in Hamburg despite testing positive for COVID-19
/in Goss, News /by RobFrenchman Benoit Paire said on Wednesday that he was allowed to play in the Hamburg Open despite testing positive for COVID-19 because the “rules are different” in Germany.
Paire, who caused a storm at the US Open last month when he was forced to pull out of the grand slam after testing positive for COVID-19, said he returned a positive test again on his arrival in Germany but was told he was no longer contagious.
Paire played Norwegian Casper Ruud in his first round match but retired in the second set when he was down 6-4, 2-0.
“When I arrived, the test came back positive again,” Paire, who also played in the Rome Masters last week, told reporters. “I can’t take it anymore, I’m breaking.
And then I’m told, in Germany, if you are positive and have already completed the quarantine [period], they no longer test the players because even if you catch it again, you are no longer contagious.
“I said ‘thank you’ to the doctor and the tournament [organisers] for allowing me to play … In Paris, some are negative but since the coach tested positive, they cannot play. Here, in Germany, you test positive and you can still play.”
Six players in the French Open men’s and women’s qualifying draw were withdrawn this week after either testing positive for COVID-19 or after coming in close contact with a coach who tested positive.
Paire added that he fears he will be withdrawn from the French Open after a doctor in France told him there was a 50 per cent chance he would test positive when he arrives in Paris.
The French Open begins on Sunday.
Reuters
Spanish flu survivor still plays tennis at 102
/in Goss, Tennis4Life /by RobSpanish flu survivor Evelyn Schroedl is living through another pandemic. But, at age 102, she’s COVID-free and still playing tennis. Chip Reid has her story.
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/spanish-flu-survivor-still-plays-tennis-at-102/
Girls from Manly 2 Celebrate
/in Badge, Club News /by RobManly Ladies 2 won the third place playoff. Congrats Ladies on a great Badge season.