"Winning ugly" in tennis is all about finding your opponent's weaknesses

Since I've whole-heartedly gotten back into competitive tennis, former pro Brad Gilbert's classic Winning Ugly: Mental Warfare in Tennis and Lessons from a Master has been a book at the top of my list to read. I'm going to sum up the most interesting bits in this three-part series. Here's part 1. 

First published in 1992, when Jim Courier and Monica Seles were each number one in the world, I'm finding the advice to be timeless, even through the Nadal/Federer/Djokovic era and into the modern Alcaraz/Sinner/Zverev one.

Gilbert was a winner when he played on the pro tour not because he was a better athlete than his competitors but because he thought a lot between points and matches. Timothy Gallwey’s philosophies, which I recently wrote about, are on the intuitive processes while Gilbert’s is on the analytical processes. Gallwey focuses on the inner game while Gilbert focuses on seeing what’s in front of you and doing something about it.

He says that by using the advice given in Winning Ugly, tennis players’ chances of winning each match will go up by 20 percent. 

Gilbert prepares for 10 minutes on his way to matches by trying to answer what weaknesses of his opponent to exploit. This will determine how he will serve, what parts of his own game he should rely upon, and where he wants to place himself most often on the court.

Exploiting opportunities is key, and Gilbert says it's even easier at the recreational level than the pro level. Only once or twice out of every 10 matches will you encounter another player who isn’t lazy and is actually thinking about a game plan before the match. Players usually just show up to play, but you can get a step up on them if you review your notes on that player (if you have played them before), arrive at the courts early and stretch to loosen up, hit around with anyone else who might be there for some light warm-up, and work on your serve before the match. That should almost be an assurance to win the match over your opponent, Gilbert writes. "Recreational players are usually long on running and short on thinking." 

I sometimes play guys who, two hours into the match, ask if I have any extra water. That should be a sign that they aren’t too serious, Gilbert claims. Therefore, the tennis bag checklist is crucial:

• Why do some people have seemingly way too many rackets? There’s good reason. If control is proving to be a problem on any given day (or even just over the course of the past three or four games), go to a more tightly strung racket (which will be a higher number). If I’m getting overpowered and need more power myself, I can go with a racket strung looser (which will be a lower number). I've always found stringing confusing. Go here for how it's done.
• Take tape and band aids. I could have used some in my last match when a toenail got crunched halfway through. 
• Along these lines, take two Advil or Tylenol or whatever pain medicine before and after a match and bring some in your bag. And bring pain rubs. 
• Even just a few minutes of stretching before a match will pay off. Opponents often just warm up their arms and hands. Focus on your legs. Running in tennis movements back and forth and up and back in the court, and kicking your butt as you run, will get the legs ready. "Gradual, gentle, smooth stretching, never strain," and especially stretch the groin. Finally, don't forget to stretch after matches before cooling down. 

In the warmup with the other player: 

• Continue stretching. 
• Get your eyes and body working together. 
• Begin to assess your opponent. 
• For defrosting your strokes in the short warmup, volley for a few minutes and stay on the balls of your feet, work on hitting deep with your baseline strokes and try to work on your weaker stroke (typically the backhand), hit a few overheads to help practice your serve, and practice tossing the ball 4 or 5 times before actually warming up your serve.

What to watch for when warming up with your opponent, especially if you’ve never played them before:

• When he's at the net warming up his volley, hit a surprise lob to see whether his footwork is quick or clumsy.
• When he's at the net, hit a ball near his feet to see if he bends his knees or drops his racket with the lazy man’s volley.
• When warming up at the baseline, hit the ball down the middle to see whether he favors the forehand or backhand. And does he hit slices or other unusual shots, does he have big looping strokes or compact ones? The strokes that are the prettiest in warmup are ugly in a match, so never be impressed in the warmup.

To deal with pre-match nerves: 

• Practice taking deep breaths, like you have asthma.
• To avoid heavy feet, stay on the balls of your feet, not only in warmups but in the important parts of a match. Tell yourself “toes not heels.” This works on your opponent's mind too. 
• Try to read the label on the ball as it comes to you. This will take your mind off your nerves and onto a pleasant distraction, even if you can't truly tell whether the ball says Penn or Wilson.
• Sing a song.

That should be enough for a while. I'll report back with more of Gilbert's advice after I've read another third of his classic.

Challengers challenges

I watched quite a bit of Day 1 of the French Open. Then I went and hit around on the courts for a while.

I should have stopped with the tennis at that point.

Instead I went to see Challengers tonight, and struggled mightily to stay interested in the new hit film featuring Zendaya.

The acting is fine. But there's not enough of it. 

Zendaya and crew look impressive on the tennis courts, even if there's a chance their strokes are all CGI.

The bonkers soundtrack (and not in a good way) never fails to come ripping in and slow down the action, making the movie a good 20 minutes longer than it needs to be. 

The movie itself is a soft-porn vehicle to feature Zendaya basically in a 2-hour-plus music video.

It makes sense that the music - supplied by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails - is there to add suspense to who will win the challenge to gain Zendaya's love. But the story itself is as threadbare and vacant as Reznor's way-over-dramatic (and way in the foreground) music. And the three main characters are so unlikeable that it takes away the chance for investment in caring much about any of them.

It would make sense if I liked Challengers. Director Luca Guadagnino cites Alfred Hitchcock and Psycho as among his favorite directors and films, and I can see some of those attempts to emulate the master here. His work on 2017's Call Me By Your Name was much better than Challengers, which is closer in style to his remake of Suspiria (pro tip: see the original version, not Guadagnino's).

In the end (and especially with that lame ending), the whole thing somehow makes me a little embarassed that I love the sport of tennis so much. I need to schedule my next match to wipe the taste of Challengers out of my mouth.

1.5 out of 5 stars

Serving in tennis is tough, but it can at least be a little easier with good advice

It's downright strange that serving is so difficult in tennis. I mean, I almost never miss a serve in volleyball and I almost never play volleyball. But I play tennis all the time and the serve remains at least a partial mystery and I view it as a lifetime goal to improve it.

I can rocket my first serve but it often has a low percentage, so it’s not great. I used to dink my second serve instead of swinging hard through from the 7 o’clock to the 2 o’clock positions to get good spin and action. At least I'm doing that now and realize that swinging slow is a recipe for a double fault. 

I’ve been getting coached and watching and reading a lot about serving in recent years and I think my serve is finally becoming a weapon, which is an ultimate goal for someone at the 4.0 level like myself.

Returning your opponent’s serve is also part of this equation. I tend to think I'm fairly decent at reading my opponent's body language to anticipate where the serve is going to go. But I don't think I've ever consciously watched the toss to get clued into where it will go. This article online at Feel Tennis has some good pointers along those lines. The advice is also helpful in showing where I should be tossing the ball myself depending on whether I'm serving flat, with a slice, or with a kick/topspin (see image above).

For match play, the serve begins right at the coin toss. It’s been assumed forever that if you win the toss, you elect to serve. But Ian Westermann, in his, well, essential book (and website) Essential Tennis, says electing serve is the right choice “for about 20 percent of the tennis-playing population. If your serve is a weapon and you can consistently get it in, then by all means, serve!”

He says that if you are a skill level of 3.5 or below, always let your opponent serve. Even at 4.0 and higher, let your opponent serve unless: 

• your serve is a weapon
• you’ve had a chance to fully warm up your serve, and 
• you’re “on” and feeling great before the match starts.

Also, if you lose the toss and your opponent elects to serve, choose the side for yourself that will have your opponent serving into the sun to start things off. 

In a recent scenario, I played a guy who only took six warmup serves and I had gotten there before him and taken a couple dozen warmups, so I knew he didn’t need much warmup and would just get his serve in no matter what, plus I was warmed up, so I made the easy call to serve first.

On the actual serve itself, Westermann recommends stopping trying to serve your brains out on the first serve, which, as mentioned, I’ve done most of my life. He logically says to find the serve that gives your opponent the most trouble, which will be different from player to player, but that a kick serve that the returner has to try to hit at head level may be a good option for many servers. 

For a second serve, he preaches “up and away,” meaning to keep a quickness in your motion and a slice spin (moving your racket from 7 to 2 o'clock). Slowing down your motion, even though it seems like the right thing to do, is never the answer. I’ve been working on that a lot over the past year, trying to eliminate my tendency to dink my second serve, and I can vouch that this is absolutely the right advice. It just takes a little getting used to after a lifetime of having a bad habit.

Westermann says players are only as strong as their weakest link, which is often the second serve. His recommendations for getting rid of the dink - what he calls the pattycake - second serve are:

• to practice rolling the tennis ball on your palm with your racket up above your head where you would be hitting the serve (see the photo to the right), which will in turn give you a sense of feel for how you'll be putting spin on the ball
• then nice and casually flip the ball off your hand and turn your racket so the side that was rubbing the ball is flipped to facing the wall or fence behind you and the court, and
• then continue further on and have the racket go down around in front of your legs, so that your motion has completed almost a full circle.

Westermann says that after getting comfortable with all those individual parts of the full motion in his "curve the serve" technique, try performing an actual serve with that motion. The full swing should be mostly parallel to the baseline rather than towards the opponent and that you should hear an aggressive "clicking" or "brushing" sound rather than a flat "thud" sound. Once you see that your second serve is clearing the net by 4 or 5 feet, then you can start getting more aggressive with it since you know you have so much room to work with.

Westermann also recommends playing a set with an opponent and making it a rule that you both only get one serve each time. This will help both of you to make your serves tougher to return and more accurate at the same time.

Concentration, breathing, and thinking differently about competition are some keys to tennis improvement

I summarized some of the helpful hints from the first half of the classic tennis self-help book, The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance, by Timothy Gallwey. It begins to repeat itself quite a bit as it enters its second half. There is lots of interesting but repetitive mumbo jumbo about the Self 1 and Self 2 (conscious and unconscious). 

That said, there really might be something to not worrying so much about the “external” score of your tennis matches or how far you make it in the tournament but rather focusing on what’s important to you in your “inner mind.” These may be things like overcoming anxiety or nervousness before a match, achieving a fun time on the court, or any number of other inner accomplishments. Here are some of the more interesting tennis tips I gleaned: 

• Play around with your grip style to see if you are holding the racket the right way for you. I’ve never been able to keep track of the different ways many teachers have instructed me to grip the racket. For many years, the Eastern grip dominated, and it’s still the United States Tennis Association’s approved style. It’s when you basically hold the racket as if you were shaking someone’s hand. But a lot of competitive players are nowadays using the “semi-Western grip,” in which a right-handed player will turn the racket a quarter turn back so that the wrist is bent up in the direction of the elbow a bit. I tried that for a while but I’ve basically gone back to a pretty Eastern grip style, which is not to say I shouldn't still always experiment.
• Go out and videotape yourself in a match. Then analyze the tape to see where your feet, your hips, your shoulders are on good shots and on bad ones. Observe where your backswing is. Where is the ball on your racket at the time of impact, and what is the angle of your racket at the point of impact? Is there any hesitancy in the follow-through? How is weight distributed from the start to the end of the follow-through?
• Counterintuitively, tightening the muscles of the arm and the wrist on the serve reduces power, so it’s important to find the right level of muscle tension. There is no one right way, which is obvious when noting that no pros' serves look the same.
• Whenever you discover you have a bad habit, don’t work to break it but rather try new habits and see how they go. See if you can get in the groove. The thing with tennis is that you don’t need to try to do everything like your favorite pro player because everyone is different and things work differently for different people.

Pretty much every stroke and improvement follows the same process:

Don’t

• Criticize or judge past behavior
• Tell yourself to change, instructing with words
• Try hard and make yourself do it right

Do

• Observe existing behavior non-judgmentally
• Picture desired outcome
• Let it happen
• Continue to observe and learn

For better concentration, try focusing on the seams of the ball. Not just the ball. Not just watching the ball. Really get engrossed in how the ball spins, and watch it this way from the time it bounced off the opponent’s racket. I am suspicious of this hint, but I will try it nonetheless. To help, try saying "bounce" out loud when the ball bounces and "hit" when your racket hits the ball. Likewise, listening to the sound of the ball off your racket can be illuminating, perhaps even more than watching the ball. Once you hit the ball right in the sweet spot of the strings, you might find great satisfaction in often trying to replicate that sound. Flat, slice, and kick serves will each produce different sounds. And there may be no more satisfying sound than that of a volley performed perfectly. 

Relaxed concentration is another tactic Gallwey uses. He will often cheat forward to return a serve soon after its first bounce then attack the net. It not only confuses an opponent but it builds quicker and more accurate reactions over time. “Concentration seems to slow time down.” In order to stay focused between points, “focus on breathing … observing breath going in, going out out, going in, going out in its natural rhythm.” 

Competition is another part of the equation in the book - and Gallwey makes the point that tennis can be both competition and cooperation between the two opponents. For example: 

• Instead of hoping the other player double faults, you can hope it lands in the service court so you can have a better mind state for the return shot. 
• If your opponent has a weak backhand, hitting it to his backhand will be a nice thing to do in helping him improve that shot. 

This book gets a 4.5 out 5 stars. After I try many of the tactics, I'll have a better sense of whether it should be 5 out of 5 or something less.

Andre Agassi hit his lowest lows in the mid-1990s. Could he redeem himself?

This is part 3 of my series on Andre Agassi's Open: An Autobiography, a must-read for tennis fans. Part 1 covered his epic 5-setter at the 2006 U.S. Open against Marcos Baghdatis, his upbringing by a violent father, an incident in Washington D.C.'s Rock Creek Park, and his rise in the junior ranks. Part 2 covered his rise to sports greatness and falling in love with celebrity Brooke Shields.

The second half of tennis legend Andre Agassi’s brilliant bio Open begins with him finally ascending to number-1 in the world, taking the place of Pete Sampras, who has held the honor for the previous 82 weeks. That said, Agassi didn’t feel anything. He wanted to feel something, but he didn't. To have something to keep going for, he set a goal to win the French Open, which would give him championships at all four of the major tournaments. 

Agassi also read in the papers that Boris Becker was trash talking him to reporters, and 1995 became "the Summer of Revenge" as the two will inevitably play each other. Agassi won tournaments by beating Stefan Edberg in D.C., Sampras in Montreal, and Michael Chang in Cincinnati, but he wanted Becker. At that year’s U.S. Open, he finally got his chance - in the semis, with the winner to play Sampras in the final. Agassi told the security guard in the tunnel to keep him and Boris apart. Down by two sets, Becker wanted to rattle Andre and began blowing kisses to Andre's girlfriend, Brooke Shields, in the stands. Agassi ended up winning the match in three sets but would he be completely spent 18 hours later for the final? It turned out he wasn't spent. He had injured a rib, but played Pete anyway, losing in four sets.

The loss semeed to slowly destroy Agassi. As he failed to secure the number-1 spot above Sampras, Shields rocketed to further stardom and landed a plum supporting role on Friends - the number-1 TV show in the world. They went to L.A. together and Andre met the whole Friends crew but something irritated him while watching Brooke lick Joey’s hand in a scene. He walked out, drove all the way back to Vegas, and smashed all his tennis trophies and rackets. Brooke was incensed that he left, which she said destroyed her concentration for the rest of her scenes on set. They made up, but the writing already seemed to be on the wall for their eventual demise as a couple. Regardless, Agassi proposed to her on the beach one night and she accepted while he instantly had the thought that they were moving too fast. 

In 1996, Agassi appeared to be losing his mind to everyone watching him on the court. He knew it was happening as well. At one point, he gave a bunch of money for college to someone who worked at his favorite restaurant in New York City and it seemed to click that he felt much better about helping other people than he did about helping himself. This is underlined by how he won the gold medal for his country that year in the Olympics (and also had an unmatched record in Davis Cup team play) but then he returned immediately to the tennis tour in Cincinnati where he was “playing for myself again … smashing my racket in a fit of rage.” 

Back home in Vegas at his bachelor pad, one afternoon he was sitting around with his assistant Slim, who talked him into trying crystal meth. Andre continued to struggle on the court. Meanwhile, Brooke became obsessed with wedding planning and taped a photo onto the fridge of how she wanted her body to reach perfection for when the time came to put on the wedding dress. The photo: Steffi Graf.

Andre and Brooke two got married in a swelteringly hot - with sweat dripping down Andre’s forehead - church in Monterey in April 1997. He was stressed, miserable, and mortified about his sweat outbreak throughout the weekend’s festivities. The capper was when he hurt his wrist shooting bow and arrows and would have to pull out of the French Open, adding that clay is the toughest surface for a tender wrist. 

Andre continued being miserable, doing drugs in Vegas while Brooke was in L.A., helping friends who has child-medical emergencies, and then coach Brad Gilbert talked him into coming back for Cincinnati, where he was beaten by one of my favorite players ever, Gustavo Kuerten, in 46 minutes. Andre made it that fall into the round of 16 at the U.S. Open, losing to the red-hot Patrick Rafter. After yet another first-round loss, at Stuttgart, Gilbert had a heart-to-heart with Andre, telling him he needed to completely start over - get back in shape and then start playing lowly challenger matches. 

Then a doctor called to tell him he would be suspended for three months because the USTA found the crystal meth in his system. Andre lied in his letter that he didn’t intentionally take the drugs. Regardless, his trainer Gil, dealing with his daughter’s recent broken neck, jumped in with his usual gusto to get 27-year-old Andre back in shape for the first time in years. Gilbert got him ready for his first challenger tournament, which Andre lost in the final. The coach needed to start researching some technique for his fallen player. “Every shot is an educated guess. You need to retrain that muscle with which a tennis player decides in the heat of battle that this shot is the right one and this shot is the wrong one.” 

This comeback - if that’s what it was - was keeping Agassi busy. He hardly ever saw Shields, who was working 12-hour days on her new hit TV show Suddenly Susan. She didn’t watch his tennis and he didn’t ask about her show. He did however take the time to start a foundation for kids at risk, which included a 25,000 square-foot Boys and Girls Club. It started as tennis courts and a computer lab, but Andre wanted to do more and he caught wind of how forming a charter school could align with his vision. 

Fresh back from a visit in South Africa with Nelson Mandela, Andre woke up on New Year’s Day and decided 1998 would be his year. He made it to the fourth round of the Australian Open. Next he beat Sampras in the final of the San Jose Open. He won Scottsdale but not Indian Wells. The main thing was that he started to feel like he really wanted to win again, especially for his new team at the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy. He also received a call that the USTA had accepted his explanation and would not suspend him for the crystal meth, but karma for that lie may have come in the form of a hurt shoulder at the French Open. He missed two weeks and actually, during that time, unusually missed tennis. After a loss at Wimbledon, he and Brooke finally took their honeymoon to a private island in the Caribbean. Brooke wanted to keep busy with things like scuba diving and Andre wanted to relax in the room; they headed back home three days early, never getting in synch. 

At Legg Mason in D.C., Andre started a process of waking up early and writing out his goals for the day. He won the final in 50 minutes 6-2, 6-0, for his fourth D.C. title. He kept winning and again beat Sampras, knocking him out of the number-1 ranking and placing himself all the way up to number 9. He failed to win the U.S. Open but got back to work building the Academy in the worst neighborhood of West Las Vegas. Andre didn’t even really notice when Brooke didn’t show up for the groundbreaking. They decide to separate for three weeks, but when Andre suggested they go to therapy together instead of separately, it became clear that Brooke didn’t want to try to help Andre with all his struggles. He sold his wedding band at a pawn shop and donated the money in Brooke’s name to his Academy. And he said he wanted the “fastest divorce in the history of divorce.”

This book has it all, and I'm looking forward to reading how much Andre can redeem himself in the end. Stay tuned for my final report.

A little “green” tennis wisdom

The Little Green Book of Tennis Wisdom, edited by Julie Ganz, is a breezy quick read of great quotes about tennis. Here are my the ones I found most interesting.

From the section on the history of the game:

• The word “tenes” went through 24 transformations before it became the word “tennis.”
• Henry VIII was a world-class player.
• Before the Open Era in the U.S., tennis was “hidden away from the great unwashed behind Ivy-covered walls,” according to Bud Collins.
• Rod Laver had no show of emotion. He was “like a good plumber.” He won all four majors in one year - an almost-impossible accomplishment.
• Bjorn Borg was bigger than the game. He was like Elvis.
• The optic yellow ball of the early 1970s “helped transform tennis from a country club pastime to a billion-dollar sports enterprise.”
• Andre Agassi brought in the MTV generation and the Hollywood elite.
• France dominated tennis from 1925-1935, Australia in the 1960s, the U.S. In the 1990s, and Spain around the early 2010s.

From the section on advice:

• John McEnroe says the most important quality of a winner is desire and the ability to keep at it when not playing that well.
• Martina Navratilova says she prefers creative players way more than cookie-cutter players.
• Lleyton Hewitt said many matches are won and lost in the locker room.
• Rod Laver said the best volley is a short stiff jab, with almost no backstroke. “You’re blocking the ball, not stroking it.”
• Serena Williams said she had never met a tennis player who hates sushi.
• Author Timothy Gallwey noted that tennis can help you learn to trust yourself, which is far more valuable than learning how to hit a forceful forehand.
• Tennis can be a little dull unless there is some pizzazz, Nick Bollettieri said.
• Author David Foster Wallace called the sport the most beautiful one and the most demanding.

From the section on the Grand Slams:

• It’s not right to compare the four slams. That’s why you don’t see pundits doing it. They are all great and valuable in their own ways.
• Roger Federer said he thought players were the most inspired at the Australian Open, perhaps because it’s the start of a new year.
• Navratilova said winning Wimbledon is like a drug that you just want to do again. Andre Agassi also said something along those lines. 
• Andy Roddick said his footwork on the French Open clay was awful.
• Novak Djokovic rightly noted that the U.S. Open is about the night session with the rowdy crowds interacting with the players.
• Roddick said the adrenaline rush of the first 30 seconds after winning a match is like no other he experienced before starting to play tennis or that he expects he’ll ever feel again. 
• Nadal said he plays every point like his life depends upon it.
• Jim Courier said the dumber you are on court, the better you’ll play. 

In the section on doubles:

• The masters make others feel foolish or simply tempt them to beat themselves.
• It’s a game of subtlety, touch, and deft hands at the net.
• One doctor said that you can tell if a couple should stay together when you watch them play mixed doubles.
• Mixed double and regular doubles can make you better because you learn to relax a little. It’s  also a great way to polish net skills.

A worthy ending inspiration comes from the ping pong section: Keanu Reeves is, of course, apparently really good at it.

Breaking bad habits - not an easy task - is key to improving in life and in tennis

I was recently watching some footage of Rafael Nadal playing tennis as a kid, and it was amazing to see how similar his game then was to what it has been throughout his career. It's clearly an example of someone who built good habits from early on. That meant he didn't have to change much when he was older, and he used all that extra time and energy not tinkering with or worrying about the fundamentals that he had already baked in as good habits. Most of us build bad habits over a lifetime and then it becomes very difficult to break out of them, change, and improve ourselves.

To improve in tennis, it helps to break bad habits, but it also helps to have the right perspective, notes Ian Westermann in his 2022 book Essential Tennis. Part of the right perspective, he writes, is to realize that winning every point and reaching perfection should never be the goal. 

An interesting stat in professional tennis is that, over the years, the person who is number-one in the world averages winning about 55 percent of the total points. Even Nadal, who has won pretty close to 100 percent of his matches at the French Open still is around that 55 percent mark in terms of actual total points won at Roland Garros. It’s part of what makes his competitive fire so impressive. He seems to win the most important points, but he loses plenty along the way. So when your opponent hits a great lob winner or aces you, Westermann advises not to change your game plan or throw a fit but to instead say out loud to yourself, “I guess that was just one of the 45 percent of points they were supposed to win.”

Another important takeaway from the book is that deciding you want to get better at an aspect of your game doesn’t always help. Say you want to work on improving your backhand, so you buy a ball machine and hit backhands with it every day. What might happen is that you reinforce your bad habits. 

I took lessons this weekend from my neighbor who is an excellent coach and he taught us some new and awkward drills that I think is relate to finding new ways to push yourself and improve. He had us consciously step across the line on the court with our front foot as we were hitting the ball, causing us to focus on our footwork rather than the act of hitting. This felt weird but I could already feel the power growing in my shots. Also, he had us jump step with our front foot as we were hitting approach shots. This too felt awkward and is hard to do (at least until it becomes a habit), but the power and control of having good footwork (and consciously thinking about where our feet are and how they’re adjusting to each shot) very well might be a better improvement tactic than hitting a shot that you’ve done all your life (possibly not that well) over and over. Serena Williams’ forehand isn’t as perfect as can be because she’s hit it so many times but rather because she got it right, it became her habit, and now she’s got free time to think about all the other things in life, like testing out a bunch of rackets to make sure she’s using the ones she likes best. 

In terms of my personal tennis improvement, I’ve been working on my serve (especially my second serve) for a long time and I’m finally pretty happy with where it’s at. I think I won’t double fault much anymore. I've put a spin on it and it consistently gives people trouble. There's not much more someone at my level of play can want.

So now I think I have time to work on other aspects of my game that have been long-time bad habits and I don't need to worry about my serve so much anymore. My serve has definitely been taking up an inordinate amount of my time, when you consider how many other important elements there are to having a strong tennis game. 

Net game and backhands are areas I should think about going forward in terms of forming some better habits. My net game has always been a strength. But I’ve been missing too many shots - mainly overhead slams - lately, and I’m also not getting to the net as quickly or as often as I once did. Like many people, my backhand is not as powerful as my forehand and sometimes I don’t make the passing shots with it as well as I would like.

And Westermann importantly notes that these improvements don’t have to always happen on the courts. I use an Eastern grip for my serves and forehands. He writes that I could hold my racket at home sometimes in a Western grip. I’m not sure how he means that will make me better, but it sounds interesting from a muscle-memory perspective. I can also improve my footwork while watching a match on TV by doing a split step - while sitting or standing - every time the player at the top of the screen hits the ball. That will build muscle memory to take into the courts in terms of better footwork.

Essential Tennis looks like THE guide to making necessary improvements

The top roadblocks keeping people from playing their best tennis are time, age, athletic ability, and money. (It can cost $50,000 annually to raise a top-level junior player!)

But the biggest obstacle of all - according to Ian Westerman, the author of 2022's Essential Tennis: Improve Faster, Play Smarter, and Win More Matches - is likely the ball! That’s because our obsession with focusing on hitting a good shot with the right arc and speed and to where we want can keep us from focusing on having good movement and swing techniques. Focusing on results and the ball also tightens us up. 

His coaching philosophy is that, “for every aspect of tennis, there is one element that’s more important than any other. If you can make even a tiny improvement in that element, you will become a better player much faster than if you focused on other things.” He notes, for example, that there are a dozen things to do to make your forehand better, but instead try to pick one element to focus on. For example, you can notice when your opponent is out of position and don’t change technique but rather hit the ball into the open court.

(Bonus advice to me from Coach Matt at College Park JTCC is to, on my second serve, swing faster and keep my head up to keep it popping. This has been working and my second serve looks better and more accurate than ever before. It's also helping my first serve, which I can now rely upon to be a true weapon and hit it harder and more accurately than ever, without tightening up worrying that I'll make double faults.)

Back to Westermann, he writes that self assessment is essential to any hopes of improving. To that end, setting up a camera while playing is really helpful to finding where improvement is needed, otherwise we’re just guessing. Along those lines, keep a journal while playing and jot down objective notes about what went well and what needs improving. Also take a few notes about your opponent, his strengths and weaknesses and how you would approach playing him the next time.

All of this advice comes from just the Introduction in the book. I can’t wait to keep reading it (and writing about it) because I’m already suspecting it’s the best tennis-instructional guide out there. In my past several matches, I’ve implemented the bit about focusing only on hitting the ball where my opponents aren’t and I’ve notice my serve getting better and my shots getting more powerful and successfully mixed. I haven’t lost. 

Tonight I’ll be playing "match play" in this league at the JTCC, on chalky clay courts, where we usually play about one set of doubles or singles before rotating to the next opponent. It’s a lot of fun, and I’ll add that I haven’t lost any singles matches since I started absorbing the advice of this book.

Relaxed, non-self-judgemental concentration will help you find your "Inner Game of Tennis"

The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance by Timothy Gallwey is a somewhat legendary tome in tennis circles. First published in 1974, I'm finally reading it for the first time and I'm taking away lots of helpful tips.

I long grew up as a John McEnroe-inspired tennis hothead, quick to throw my racket or belt out loud questions to myself asking why I hit a ball a certain way when I knew I should have hit it another, better way. In other words, I'm the perfect audience for this book. At least I used to be. I'm a lot calmer now on the court, but I'm hoping the Inner Game philosophy will get me even closer to tennis zen.

The book, in the most simple of terms, is all about focusing on the present moment, quieting the mind to enhance performance, and letting go of self-judgment. It introduces the concept of Self 1 (the conscious mind, which must be quieted) and Self 2 (the unconscious mind, which must be trusted) and how that inner battle affects the level of success for tennis players.

The book starts with a quote I love from Maharaji: "If I’m entertaining myself in the game, I will win."

And Gallwey writes that the secret to winning any game is in not trying too hard, adding:

• Players must perform spontaneously and with a calm mind. 
• The will to win unlocks energy and is never discouraged by losing. 
• This is similar to a natural process, the one we used when we were learning to walk and talk.

When coaching or learning tennis, it’s important to remember that images are more effective than words, showing is better than telling, and too much instruction is worse than none. In fact, trying too hard at either often produces negative results!

Talking to yourself and coaching yourself - almost like you are two separate people - can make you more tense and worse on the court. Self judging will typically grow and grow until the ego turns it into self-fulfilling prophecies, or generalizations like “my game is trash” or “I’m a poor server.”

However, making your inner instructor nonjudgemental - seeing what is happening rather than how good or how bad it is happening - will help keep you from trying too hard and will help achieve a relaxed kind of concentration.

What does all that mumbo jumbo mean in practice, you may now be asking? Well, here are some tennis tips that I'm hoping to have taken away from reading this book:

• I'm thinking that the way I may be able to process all of it - in both practice and in the heat of battle - will be to bring out the old sports journalist in myself and report my practices and matches in my head from a neutral perspective, without overly criticizing or overly congratulating myself. 
• The author makes the point that there is no problem with assessing your serve and noting that your first serve, for example, was in 50 percent of the time in a match. It’s ok to assess that and try to make improvements. But judging that your first serve was bad will likely lead to tightness, trying too hard, condemnation, and other results that will not be helpful while playing. Blocking out the judgemental will allow you to pick up on details that you might have otherwise passed by while you were either admiring yourself or criticizing your shots and form.
• In order to return Pete Sampras’ serve, you would have about a half second to make an incredible array of movements and decisions. Even with just returning the serve of an average player, there is about one second for all this. It is “a mind-boggling achievement … yet it is not uncommon.” Keeping in mind all this silent intelligence can allow us to “dissolve the unnecessary self-instructions” and over-control. Here's an experiment: tighten your muscles in your hand and wrist and you will find that the snap of the wrist that generates much of the power of your serve will not snap nearly as fast as if your wrist is not tightened. Similarly, if you’re constantly telling yourself what you did wrong on the last point, your cheeks and other parts of your body will tense and tighten and your game will suffer even more.
• Players are usually aware of how they hit the ball but not as aware of where they want the ball to go. Don’t try to hit the ball deep or the serve over the net. Just ask Self 2 to let it happen. Step back and envision the arc needed for the shot. If it doesn’t go where you intended, don’t make a conscious effort to correct it, just let go and see what happens next time. One way I'll practice this will be to set a tennis-ball can somewhere on the other side of the court so I can tell myself that that’s where I'm going to aim. Then I'll try watching my improvements with detachment and not by attempting to get it correct.
• Try role playing as a different type of player than you normally might be. Some players play defensively, some offensively, some play with a “formal” style in which they care more about looking good and stylish than winning, and some will do anything to win and hit the ball in a way that their opponents seem to find most bothersome. Try role playing and being different than your normal type of playing. It will be fun and could extend your range.

I'm going to work on these tips for a while before coming back to read the last two-thirds of this book.

"Image is Everything" was never what Andre Agassi was about

This is part 2 of my series on Andre Agassi's Open: An Autobiography, which, at least through the first half, is the best tennis book I've ever read. Part 1 covered his epic 5-setter at the 2006 U.S. Open against Marcos Baghdatis, his upbringing by a violent father, an incident in Washington D.C.'s Rock Creek Park, and his rise in the junior ranks.

At age 17, Andre Agassi won his first pro tournament, in Brazil, where, as soon as the final ended, he held his $90,000 check on one hand and kissed Brazilian girls in thongs in the other.

Agassi said he was never what the press wrote about him because when he explained himself to them, he never understood himself in the first place. One example: they wrote that he was punk rock, but he loved listening to “cheesy pop like Barry Manilow and Richard Marx.” Also, people thought he wore his hair in a long Mohawk because he wanted to stand out but it was really because he was losing it quickly and wanted as much of it as possible while he had the chance. Eventually, a friend in business school at Georgetown, during a meal at The Tombs (where, incidentally, I was recruited by professors before becoming a Hoya myself), convinced Agassi that all he had to do was start winning and the press would back off and maybe even start praising him.

Even though he had met Jimmy Conners several times growing up, when Agassi tried to talk to the legend before their first pro match, in the 1988 U.S. Open, Conners was “an asshole, rude, condescending, egomaniac prick” who said he didn’t remember him. Agassi destroyed Conners but lost in the next round once again to Ivan Lendl.

Cool tennis tip: If you identify someone’s weakness, for example a backhand, it might not always be best to hit to that backhand with pace. If you hit there without pace, the player will have to generate their own and it could increase their vulnerability.

Other than a match when Agassi was 10 and Pete Sampras from California was 9, the two played in Rome for the first time as pros and Andre won 6-2, 6-1, thinking Pete was so bad he’d never see him on tour again.

At the 1989 French Open, Jim Courier beat Agassi in the third round and rubbed it in by glaring at Andre in the locker room afterwards and going for a post-match run to show that Agassi didn’t provide enough of a cardio workout for him. Agassi was also disgusted that Michael Chang won the tournament and hence a Slam before him, as Chang thanked god “for making the ball go over the net.”

Agassi with Gil Reyes

Agassi started training with a coach at UNLV, Gil Reyes, a real character who taught him that he had been training his body all wrong and it was a miracle he hadn’t already suffered a career-ending injury. 

Cool tennis tip: For example, Reyes told Andre to stop running five miles a day because when do you ever do that in a tennis match? He said Andre didn’t need to be training his long-distance muscles but rather his start-and-stop muscles. Which makes a ton of sense especially to me, since I hate running for running’s sake.

Gil eventually quit work at the university and began working full time with Andre, In a scene straight out of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the two took Andre's Corvette from Vegas to Scottsdale for a celebrity tournament and they get two speeding tickets. The policeman took them 45 minutes to court in the town of Kingman, where the judge proceeded to fawn over Andre and get many autographs from him. Turns out the judge was a huge tennis fan and, instead of sentencing Andre, told him to go give ‘em hell in the tourney, but to have Gil drive the rest of the way.

Gil didn’t try to change Andre because if he could have done that, he said he would have changed himself. But he did believe he could give Andre structure and a blueprint for achieving his goals. He said they were going to be fighters together and that it was “on.”

The night before Agassi’s first final of a Grand Slam, the 1990 French Open, having already disposed of Jim Courier and Michael Chang, his hairpiece fell apart and his brother has to run all over Paris to find bobby pins to keep it in place during the match. Agassi lost to Ecuador’s Andrés Gómez, but at least he didn’t lose his hairpiece.

 
Agassi skipped Wimbledon but added 10 pounds of muscle working with Gil over the summer and showed up lean and mean for the U.S. Open. He licked his lips when he got to the final, knowing he was about to play that guy who looked so bad just a year ago. Pete Sampras, who had just beaten John McEnroe in the previous round, disposed of Andre 6-4, 6-3, 6-2.

He lost his third Slam title in a row to Jim Courier at the 1991 French Open. He said he had a strong will to lose - lose, not win - at 4-4 in the fifth set.

One thing that’s amazing to me is how many Slams Agassi just skipped. Throughout his early years, he completely avoided the Australian Open. You don’t find that with today’s pros much, unless they are injured. I wonder how many more Slams Agassi could have accrued.

After a night in Argentina at the Davis Cup, Andre went out and drank too much with McEnroe and his wife Tatum O’Neal. The next day he played hungover but plated well, wearing Oakley sunglasses to cover up his red eyes. Soon, the founder of Oakley sent him a red Dodge Viper.

At age 22, Agassi, after beating Boris Becker and McEnroe along the path, finally got his first Grand Slam title, at the 1992 Wimbledon, in five sets over Goran Ivanisevic, who would later go on to become Novak Djokovic’s coach. Perhaps most of all, he couldn’t wait to attend that night’s famed Wimbledon Ball, where the men’s winner got to dance with the women’s champ. Andre had a crush on Steffi Graf since he’s first seen her. Andre was then informed by the stuffy attendees that they don’t have that dance tradition anymore, but he did get to meet Steffi briefly and told her he would love to get together and talk with her sometime.

Then, Agassi fired up a friendship with Barbra Streisand and learned that she too had a powerful talent - singing - that she hated to use, like him with tennis. He actually dated her, despite the 28-year difference and she told reporters he was a “Zen master.” I find his love of soft-rock legends like Streisand, Manilow, Marx, Celine Dion, Kenny G, and Michael Bolton hilarious and one of the most endearing things about Agassi - very much in contrast to his bad boy (and unwanted by him) “Image is Everything” persona.

As he recovered from a fairly serious wrist surgery, Kenny G’s wife Lyndie set him up with Brooke Shields. She was in the African bush making a movie and the only way they could begin contacting each other was via fax machine. The faxes soon became intimate and Andre soon stopped calling Barbra.

Agassi met with the quirky player/coach Brad Gilbert, author of Winning Ugly, and Brad said Andre appeared to have lost the fire he had at age 16, when he used to take the ball early and aggressively. He said Andre’s problem was his perfectionism, which messed with his head when he inevitably fell short. He said, with the talent Andre had, he didn’t need to go for the winners every time, but rather to be solid and remember the other guy has weaknesses to be attacked. 

Cool tennis tip: Gilbert said to think about how many sets it will take to win a tournament (21 in the Slams) and count backwards from there - simplify and focus on that number. 

After Brad talked at him for a while and then convinced him which pasta to order, it was clear that Brad Gilbert needed to join Andre’s team and become his coach. Andre then prceeded to go on a terrible losing streak, but Gilbert kept telling him good things were about the start happening.

Coach was right. Andre beat Michael Stich to win the 1994 U.S Open. He finally realized that he had the team around him that he wanted, once Brooke and Brad rounded it out. (And weirdly enough, Brooke’s grandfather Frank Shields was the last unseeded player, in 1966, until Andre in 1994, to win the Open.)

Break Point serves the masses a view of the draining pro tennis tour

I love playing tennis and watching pro tennis, so it goes to follow that I would think Break Point - Season 1 on Netflix would be great. And it is pretty great, but I think people who don't follow tennis will find it even more eye opening. I already understand that life on the tour is pounding and often lonely, and matches take superhuman strength. I play two or three times a week and I would never win a game against a male or female player in the top 100. Neither would you. (Take it from Serena Williams' former coach Patrick Mouratoglou.) The gulf between amateur and pro in tennis is about as big as it gets.

Nick Kyrgios gets a helping hand

All that said, it is really cool getting to know the featured batch of players a little more. Nick Kyrgios offers the high point of the season, with episode 1 almost exclusively featuring his run at the January 2022 Australian Open. He receives loving support from his girlfriend, not an easy task for someone whose mental game has been the only thing to hold him back from being among the greats. You probably love or hate him, but I thought the show did a good job of helping his image by seeing things from his perspective, having fought a long battle upwards from being a little overweight boy growing up in Australia.

During the same tournament, Matteo Berretini and Ajla Tomljanovic are dating and working to help each other advance as far as possible. Their relationship eventually doesn't survive the stresses of the tour, but Tomljanovic has an exciting 2022, highlighted in the show by when she knocks off Serena Williams late in the season at the US Open. Berretini can't take advantage of the absence of tennis legend Novak Djokovic from the Australian Open because of vaccination issues, and ends up fading over the course of the season.

In episode 3, California's Taylor Fritz wins Indian Wells (the fifth biggest tournament in tennis) and secures a hold on the claim as the top U.S. player out of an exciting group gaining prominence. He is a California kid with a lot of power and a lot of promise. Maryland's Frances Tiafoe (he trains at one of my regular haunts) becomes another lovable character over the course of the season, as a crowd exciter and a victor over Rafael Nadal in the 2022 US Open.

Other highlights: Spain's Paula Badosa offers a glimpse into how mentally draining pro tennis can be, and Ons Jabeur shows how her status as arguably Africa's greatest player ever and definitely Tunisia's finest unfolds.

The show could have definitely benefited from more of the game's true greats Nadal, Djokovic, Carlos Alcaraz, and Daniil Medvedev. But that is a minor complaint because the characters featured are indeed worthy characters.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Best Magazine Reads: Andy Roddick opens up about his tennis career

It’s hard to believe it was more than 20 years ago that I sat on the bleachers, mere feet away from the action, watching Andy Roddick play doubles at Washington D.C.’s then-named Legg Mason Tennis Classic. Besides the incredible power of his shots, what I remember most was that I was close enough to overhear him whispering to his partner to just let Roddick return everything to their opponents.

It’s equally hard to believe, as a new GQ feature on Roddick notes, that it’s been 20 years since Roddick or any man from the U.S. has won the U.S. Open. Here are some other great nuggets from that article about one of my favorite tennis players of all time:

• He has thrown away nearly all his trophies.
• He lives near Charlotte, North Carolina and has a “lodge-like getaway in Cashiers, North Carolina, a remote village in the Blue Ridge Mountains.”
• Roddick co-owns a whiskey brand named Sweetens Cove, with Peyton Manning.
• He has a bulldog named Bob Costas.
• Of course that one major he won was mainly due to the poor timing of his career. He was at #1 for 13 weeks before losing that spot for good to upstarts Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic. Without the arrival of those big three, commentator Jim Courier says there’s no reason to believe Roddick, had he played a few years earlier, couldn’t have had another five major championship wins.
• Roddick and Chris Evert remain the only two tennis players ever to host Saturday Night Live. How in the world is John McEnroe not on that list?
• Speaking of legends, in 2006, Roddick’s ranking had dipped to #10 when he hired the reclusive Jimmy Connors as his coach. Conners got him back up to #3 in the year-and-half they worked together.
• His only regret was not winning Wimbledon, which he really wanted. Connors, too, really wanted Andy to win Wimbledon at the end of their run together and was said to have been seen bawling his eyes out in the locker room after Roddick lost there when he was coaching him.
• He is excited about the major chances of great young U.S. players now like Frances Tiafoe and Taylor Fritz. But he doesn’t think he’ll coach any of them since he has a lot of other things going on, such as his Tennis Channel commentating gig, the virtual healthcare business he’s cofounded called ViewFi, and the Andy Roddick Foundation focused on helping low-income Austin kids through summer and after-school programs.

Wrapping up another stellar year in men's and women's tennis

Another amazing year of professional tennis has, for the serious part of the season, come to an end. The highlight had to be the year-ended ascent to Coco Gauff's first Grand Slam title, at the U.S. Open. It seems like it took forever for this day to come, so it's easy to forget Coco is still only 19 years old.

That's even younger than Carlos Alcaraz, who lost his chance for a rematch with Novak Djokovik, losing to Daniil Medvedev in the semis. I really enjoy Medvedev's kind of goofball powerful style of play, but he was no match for Djokovik's record 24th Grand Slam win in the final.

With Rafael Nadal presently sidelined, Alcaraz is now my favorite player. This year, Alcaraz won Wimbledon and kept Djoko from a Grand Slam sweep, as he also captured the Australian Open and the French Open. U.S. players Francis Tiafoe, Taylor Fritz, Ben Shelton, and Chris Eubanks are my next favorites. Perhaps 2024 will be the year one or more of them break through for a Grand Slam title, although Shelton and Eubanks could still be a year or two away.

Besides Medvedev and the Americans, I think the only real threats to knock off the two greatest players right now - Djokovik and Alcaraz - are Nick Kyrios, Nadal, Holger Rune, Jannik Sinner, and Andrey Rublev.

Gauff's win was truly remarkable. She was able to outlast the new number-one woman Aryna Sabalenka, who will unseat Iga Swiatek, who has held the number-one spot for 75 straight weeks (third-longest in WTA histroy). That said, Swiatek only won the French, with Sabalenka winning the Australian, and Markéta Vondroušová taking Wimbledon. The women's game seems to be getting some exciting parity, with any one of those ladies possibly winning big tourneys next year. Karolina Muchova, Ons Jabeur, Elena Rybakina, Jessica Pegula, and now maybe even comebacker Madison Keys have real shots at being in that top-level mix soon too. 

My favorite women's players for now are Gauff, Pegula, Swiatek, and Muchova.

It's nice to get a break from all the tennis for the next few months. But it won't be long until the Australian Open and then the fifth-best tournamant, Indian Wells, will bring us back in action. For now, I'll get to focus on my own fall singles TennisDC season starting next week.

Andre Agassi dishes the juice on the classic tennis scene of the 1980s

At age 36, while playing in his last U.S. Open, tennis legend Andre Agassi recalled how his body, especially in the morning, felt like that of a 96-year-old and how he hated tennis with a passion, as he always had.

Part of his preparation for matches would be to say things out loud that would make him feel brave, like “control what you can control.”

In Open: An Autobiography, Agassi's excellent 2010 book, the tennis legend leads off telling about his epic 5-setter at the 2006 U.S. Open against Marcos Baghdatis, in which both of them go through severe physical turmoil.

When he was a boy, his violent Armenian father would demand Andre hit 2,500 balls a day and one million balls a year on their backyard Vegas desert court to help make him unbeatable. And he would foam at the mouth if young Andre hit the ball into the net, training him with a net raised an extra six inches. His father set him up to hit with Jimmy Connors when Andre was four, and Connors said the boy was “sure to become very good.”

Not only did little Andre hit against Connors, but he got to hit with his idol Bjorn Borg and Ilie Nastase, who was a real jerk to him. His father bet a large sum of money with the former NFL great Jim Brown to battle Andre, and Andre crushed Brown 6-3, 6-3, 6-2.

His father escaped from Iran and landed in Chicago via Ellis Island. He changed his name to Mike and was a boxer who instilled in Andre to counterpunch. If someone’s strong suit was their forehand, keep hitting it to their forehand so they come to hate their forehand. The same for a serve or any other strength.

His father screwed up the tennis chances of Andre’s other siblings by holding on too long as their coach, so he sends the boy away to Florida, to the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, whose owner seems 250 years old to Andre because of his love of tanning. He quickly finds out that the place is like a Lord of the Rings jungle prison. One inmate is Jim Courier, who likes to play drums his parents sent him. One reason Agassi had his famous pierced ears was because jewelry was not allowed by the creepy heads of Bradenton Academy, where the tennis kids bussed to school while at Bolletierri. He also got a pink mohawk. Eventually Agassi amazingly coerces Nick to let him drop out of school to take correspondence courses. Andre is so excited that, at 14, he will never have to learn anything ever again! Even more amazingly, Nick eventually becomes Andre’s coach and, dare say, friend.

In Agassi’s second tournament as a pro, when he was still just 16, he played John McEnroe, “which feels like playing John Lennon. The man is a legend … although I’ve often rooted against him, because his arch rival, Borg, was my idol.” McEnroe won soundly, 6-3, 6-3. But the star gives a glowing endorsement of the kid after the match and that gets the tennis world aware of the possible new star.

Agassi was a bit intimidated the first time he headed to New York for the U.S. Open, in 1986. He lost in the first round and proceeded to go on a terrible losing streak. He felt he was often better than the players he was losing to but instead of raising his game like he did with better players, he was pressing, “not letting things flow,” which “is one of the deadliest things you can do in tennis.” 

At one point he walked across the street after losing in Washington D.C. and “berated the trees” in Rock Creek Park. He then gave all his racquets to a group of homeless men in the park. At this point he was truly set to quit tennis, but there was a message on his machine back at the hotel that tells his a player has dropped out of a North Carolina tournament and they would pay him $2,000 just to show up. It was there that he started to catch fire, soon winning matches against Michael Chang, Luke Jensen, and Pat Cash. He eventually lost to world #1 Ivan Lendl in Vermont in the semis (after he also witnessed Lendl walking around the locker room before the match with nothing but tennis shoes on). Lendl, ever the jerk, told the press that all Agassi had was a “haircut and a forehand.”

That's my summary of the book's first third (see Part 2). As you can tell, it's juicy stuff. And besides a haircut and a forehand, Agassi sure can spin a yarn.

My TennisDC season ends with heartbreaking but encouraging loss in the tourney semis

My spring TennisDC 18+ singles league has wrapped now that I bowed out in the semifinals. After perhaps my best match of the season in the quarterfinals, a 6-3, 6-4 victory at Fort Stevens (see one rally that I lose in the video above), the semis would prove to be a more difficult and chaotic battle. 

On Wednesday night, I took the first set 6-4 and felt I was continuing to play the same steady, solid type of match as the previous one. My serve has been greatly improving this summer and I was getting everything back and not missing. I wasn't going for big winners. Rather, I noted that my opponent was making errors, so my plan was to play defensively and just keep the ball in play.

He had a 5-3 lead in the second set when his errors started happening again and I was grabbing a second wind in the brutal heat of the Turkey Thicket courts. I evened things at 5-5 and then he suggested we suspend the match. Granted, despite the heat, the after-dinner masses had transpired and people were patiently waiting for courts. The claustrophobia was made even greater by the hordes of people playing pickleball right next to our court and, of course, the Summer of '23 style heat. I agreed to pick up the match later, although in retrospect trying to win the next two games and the match might have been a wiser strategy.

Regardless, we met back up Friday morning. The courts were already scorching even though we arrived before normal work hours in an attempt to get a result as early as possible. The previous session had gone two hours and this one would prove to stretch over an hour, and although the heat no doubt affected me, his youth probably meant it was rougher on me. I definitely felt less strong and less able to always get the ball back as consistently as I had been.

We broke each others' serves after reconvening at 5-5 in the second set to make it 6-6. The tiebreaker was a neck-and-neck barnburner. In fact, it was almost like I was playing myself. His style was very similar and the overall score in points must have been completely even. He was able to sneak out the tiebreaker 8-6.

Since we were running out of time before we both had to get to work, we decided to settle it with a 10-point tiebreaker rather than a full third set. It looked like I was going to pull it out when I was up 6-4. But then I double faulted and he called up a couple winners out of the depths. He came back to take the tiebreaker 10-7.

Despite the loss, I was really happy with my performance. In the Spring 1 season, I wasn't even trying to win but rather I was getting back in match shape after a few years away from singles competition. But this was Spring 2 season and going 6-2 and making it to the semis was a greater jump in performance than I expected. Hopefully I can win the Fall season.

----

I tried a cool app with a free one-month trial this season called Swing Vision. You can see what the video looks like in the photo above. It records matches or practicing and analyzes how you're doing. I wasn't going to pay a $150 yearly subscription for it, but I may buy a monthly subscroption for $25 later down the line if I want to check in on how I'm doing. 

Here are a few screenshots of the kinds of stats it collects, from a little more than one set in that quarterfinal match win:

10 fun things to know about Carlos Alcaraz

I'm of course tennis crazy. Crazy about playing it. Crazy about watching it. Some of my favorite men's players (I love the women too!) over the years have been John McEnroe, Jimmy Conners, Andre Agassi (look for some articles from me about him soon because I'm reading his memoir), Gustavo Kuerten, Rafael Nadal, and now, with Nadal's career in its twilight, young, 20-year-old Carlos Alcaraz is quickly assuming the status as my favorite player.

For good reason too. After winning the US Open last fall (and along the way becoming the youngest player to reach the quarterfinals there since 1990), he's added his second major victory with Sunday's classic five-set win over the the little-liked Novak Djokovic in the Wimbledon final. It was a beautiful thing to witness all five hours. 

And now, since we'll be seeing a lot more of Carlito, here are 10 things that will help you too like the kid even more.

1. To be precise, the Wimbledon final was 4 hours and 42 minutes and was the third-longest final in Wimbledon history. 
2. Even Djokovik was graceful in defeat. He said, "I must say, the slices, the chipping returns, the net play — it's very impressive. I didn't expect him to play so well this year on grass, but he's proven that he's the best player in the world, no doubt." 
3. Alcaraz grew up in El Palmar, named for the palm trees oddly located in the inland Spanish village, where his once semi-pro dad ran a tennis academy.
4. Little Carlito started playing tennis at age 3 with his three brothers, quickly becoming "spectacular," according to early coaches.
5. Hard to believe now, since Carlos is so even tempered and courteous, but he apparently started out with a McEnroe-like hot temper. He has even said he was "a totally different person" back then and that he didn't actually enjoy tennis as much as he does now.
6. Alcaraz is the youngest player to reach the top 10 in the ATP rankings since Nadal in 2005.
7. His coach is Juan Carlos Ferrero, who won the French Open in 2003, the same year Alcaraz was born. He has obviously been doing a tremendous job navigating Alcaraz to the number 1 world ranking.
8. His actual style can most succinctly be described as aggressive, with a powerful forehand, and his idol is Nadal, with whom he indeed has many similarities in style.
9. He loves basketball and his favorite team is the Real Madrid hoops squad.
10. With Serena Williams, Roger Federer, Nadal, and even Djokovik having retired or getting close to retirement, Alcaraz truly has a chance to assume a tennis throne for many years ahead, as the leader of a huge pack of possible contenders.

Battle of the Sexes tries to reach the dramatic level of real tennis

Tennis has been one of my lifelong passions.

But there have been few tennis movies that have come close to matching the drama of McEnroe vs. Borg or Nadal vs. Federer or, heck, even Gustavo Kuerten vs. Sergi Bruguera.



I mean, how can you match the beauty and story of the likes of the above short on Guga's first French Open win or those of my other favorite men's players of all time (ranked):

10. Andy Roddick
09. Roger Federer
08. Pete Sampras
07. Bjorn Borg
06. Arthur Ashe
05. Rafael Nadal
04. Andre Agassi
03. Jimmy Conners
02. Gustavo Kuerten
01. John McEnroe

This week, Hollywood nearly reached the higher plane of actual tennis, when we caught Battle of the Sexes at E Street Cinema in Washington, D.C. As an interesting side note, we happened into free tickets because the Secret Service wanted to move us along in line so we wouldn't disturb the entrance of Mike Pence and Josh Brolin attending the premiere of Only the Brave.

I have to admit that Billie Jean King always got on my nerves, but when she was playing, I was far too young to understand the cultural significance of her off-court actions. She never seemed to be that exciting when I watched her play against the likes of Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert.

But I was too young to have known about the match between King and Bobby Riggs, played in the movie with lovable squirm-ability by the incapable-of-not-being-funny Steve Carell. And Emma Stone made me forget any of my biases against King, as she plays her with determined vulnerability.

This movie, like Hidden Figures and other recent historical dramas, should be enjoyable for just about anyone, whether you're interested in the actual subject matter or not.

For me, it's an added bonus that I have that tennis obsession. Now if only I could find the time to get back out on the court to win a few more competitive championships in TennisDC.

4 out of 5 stars

Best Magazine Reads: GQ nails why Federer is awesome, but not my favorite tennis player

Over the years, I've come to appreciate Roger Federer's steely perfection, his Switzerland-ness, if you will.

But he's still not my favorite player.

He's awesome to behold, but in reality, you always know you're going to get the exact same forehands, the perfect one-hand backhand, the same serve percentage, and the same extraordinary-human courteous post-match interviews.

John McEnroe might be my favorite athlete, not just tennis player. I've loved watching Gustavo Kuerten and Raphael Nadal.

So GQ's April cover story on Federer summed it up for me:

Friends of mine, hitting partners, are Federer fans for real. They own his racket, his sneakers, the hat with his RF logo. When he loses, they're wrecked; when he wins, it's only slightly less painful, because it's one fewer win they get to witness. Federer fans admire not only the game but the gestalt, what he represents. Integrity. Class. Flawlessness on and off the court. Whereas my problem's always been with that same idea of perfection, the absence of blemishes. As a fan, I need some grit to grab. More for me are Andy Murray's self-defeatism, Stan Wawrinka's sourness, Nadal's nervous mannerisms. Basically, men who are capable of tragic mistakes, who demonstrate, physically and noisily, what it takes to beat back their own worst tendencies—or, just as often, fail in trying. And then there's a side of my vanity—and I'm not proud to say this here—that's occasionally thought that being a Federer fan is just too easy. 

What is Roger Federer? Roger Federer: is Swiss. Very normal, laughs a lot. On some level he's a product of the '90s—he used to have bleached hair, he had posters in his bedroom of Shaq, Michael Jordan, Stefan Edberg, Boris Becker. (Also Pamela Anderson. “I remember that one,” he said, chuckling. “She was on my door.”) He's polite, he's fastidious. He's a family man who loves movies. In private he's goofy, earnest about his interests, and he seriously doesn't mind getting excited when he tells a story. Basically, Roger Federer is kind of a dork, in the very best sense. 

“You don't want to give anything away to your opponent. I used to do that all the time when I was little. Throwing rackets, shouting, all that stuff. You give an edge to your opponent if you do that. Eventually, you develop your demeanor. Rafa has his tics. Stan has his look. I have my look. You become this shield.”

It's a good, quick read beyond that. And that photo of those hairy-man legs is almost downright shocking.

A Tennis and Swimming Spring Break in Scottsdale

It's so nice to be visiting Rachel's grandmother (one of PCLB's biggest fans!) in Scottsdale, Arizona for spring break this week. The temperatures are 90 in the day and 55 at night, which is refreshing after an awful D.C. winter.

We arrived yesterday and are staying with Rachel's sister's family and her parents in a rented house with a pool and orange and grapefruit trees. I've already squeezed about 20 fresh fruits for juice.

The last time I was in Arizona was in January 2000, when my St. Louis Rams won their only Super Bowl. I remember watching them take down the Tennessee Titans at the last minute 23-16.

Rachel's grandmother lives in a place called The Racquet Club, which is perfect since I love playing tennis. I played pickleball this morning (a cross of tennis and ping pong played on a tennis court) with Rachel's dad and have already found several people to play pickup tennis with for the week. Then came back for a swim.