Playing Tournaments with a Sketchy Serve

[TCF]

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[lala28m]

Originally Posted by TCF

Oh yeah, I remember Deja. Dad still has the website.

http://www.dejanatural.com/

But the results?

http://www.tennisrecruiting.net/play....asp?id=550270

One tournament in the past year? She must be injured...

[barringer97]

Originally Posted by TCF

Oh yeah, I remember Deja. Dad still has the website.

http://www.dejanatural.com/

But the results?

http://www.tennisrecruiting.net/play....asp?id=550270

LOL! A knuckle serve? This guy (parent) is a joke. This HAS to be a joke, right?

[Alohajrtennis]

Originally Posted by lala28m

One tournament in the past year? She must be injured...

Or ran away from home....

[TCF]

[==========================

[arche3]

Originally Posted by TCF

I am pretty sure he was serious about it. Here is the serve on video in a match.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzvUg1u7tyw

Girl in white hat has a double loop serve?

[Bash and Crash]

Originally Posted by arche3

Girl in white hat has a double loop serve?

Some interesting serves by both girls. Would've been interesting to see where she would be if her dad let someone tweak her strokes, that girl has some serious natural tools.

[TCF]

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[coaching32yrs]

There is a difference between a junior's flawed strokes and a pros unconventional strokes. The way one junior was serving- she would never be able to consistently generate pace and spin. You just can't defeat the laws of physics and biomechanics. I have studied Dolgopolov's serve, unconventional but not flawed. In fact, his swing, point of contact, and follow through are very conventional. He uses different timing of the toss, load, and explosion up into the ball so the time between when the ball leaves his hand and contact is made is shorter. I am all for unconventional tennis as long as the stroke can generate pace, spin, and consistency without injury. Fabrice Santoro was one of my favorite players.

[TCF]

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[arche3]

Originally Posted by TCF

Yes, thats Deja. There used to be some training videos that were online, she was a very, very hard working girl.

Watched rest of vids on her site., in that lastnvid she is not the white hat girl. Watch it. White hat girls loops her racket around twice to serve. Deja has that reverse spin pancake serve.

What are the chances of two gals with really weird serves?

[Chemist]

Originally Posted by lala28m

One tournament in the past year? She must be injured...

This girl played 9 tournaments in CA with a 2-10 record in the past 12 months. Looks like a burn out to me.

[Chemist]

Originally Posted by arche3

Watched rest of vids on her site., in that lastnvid she is not the white hat girl. Watch it. White hat girls loops her racket around twice to serve. Deja has that reverse spin pancake serve.

What are the chances of two gals with really weird serves?

The girl without the hat is Deja. Her dad was cheering for her in the video. The dad did a nice job commentating her every move.

[BMC9670]

Originally Posted by Chemist

The girl without the hat is Deja. Her dad was cheering for her in the video. The dad did a nice job commentating her every move.

He's talking to her into the video - as if to coach when she watches it later. Interesting.... and a little weird.

[nightfire700]

Originally Posted by TCF

I never get this school of thought of laughing at people who tried to correct strokes. Okay....so what would you do as a coach? Teach all the kids the proper fundamentals, or simply let each kid hit every stroke any way they want to?

I am always curious when people bring up the fact a Shawn Marion made it in the NBA with an ugly jump shot.

Does this mean coaches should simply stop teaching or correcting technique because 1 out of 10000 talents can make it even with bad strokes?

So people mentioned Bartoli's flaws and suggested correcting them and she made it anyway. How about the thousands of others who never reached their tennis potential because they did not correct the flaws?

What is a bad stroke and who quantifies that? To me the job of a coach is to distinguish between a stroke that is bad according to a book vs a bad stroke for the kid. If a kid is playing an 'unconventional or flawed' stroke which by book is bad, the coach has to figure if it indeed is bad or will it become the kid's master stroke to rule the world. If the kid does go on to win the world, the books will get updated to include that 'unconventional' stroke as the next classic and suddenly everybody will start following it. Thats the real value of the coach - be open, experiment and build a game for the player rather than build the player for the game.

[TCF]

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[nightfire700]

Originally Posted by TCF

I think I have said numerous times the coach teaches fundamentals and gets out of the way. Then the player's own strokes develop around those fundamentals.

By the way, who are these players with revolutionary strokes that "rule the world". Top forehands have a high take back, racquet drop, contact, follow through. All the top serves have the same basic parts as the other top serves. The variations are stylistic, not fundamentals.

What ruling the world changes do you want a coach to spot in a kid.....a kid hitting the ball with the racquet held by their feet?

I didnt mean revolutionary when I said unconventional. I meant evolutionary. Of course the basic fundamentals are the same and I totally agree with you and thats what my point was - teach the basics and then improvise based on each kids/players strengths. I am not a tennis expert but Nadal's lasso forehand was unconventional 10 years back before Nadal made it popular and if 10-15 years back a kid was trying to hit a lasso forehand in every shot, a lot of coaches would have called it flawed and arm breaking and not natural or whatever. Today its ok to see 8-10 yr olds whipping lasso one after the other. Here is where a coach needs to jump in and analyse whether the lasso is good for a particular kid or not and make amends.

Its interesting that yesterday only I was reading Pete Sampras auto-biography and that at the age of 14 his coach forced him to move from a double handed backhand to the single handed and it took 2 years of beating in the tournaments before it worked for him. His DHBH was not flawed but his coach was convinced that the SHBD was the one for him and together they worked towards it.

Quoting Pete from the book -
"Its an easy thing to overlook, but always remember that everyone is different. There is no one-size-fits-all formula for development; if there was, a dozen or more players would all stand atop the record book, with exactly two Grand Slam titles each. I wouldn't suggest that, say,Michael Chang would have benefited from going to a single-handed backhand, or that he would have won Wimbledon if he had made the change. A lot of other factors would also have to have fallen in place for that to happen.
What I am saying is that its wise to look at your game and take the long view-where can your natural athletic inclinations take you in five, ten, fifteen years? Given Michael's size and the pace he generated, it would have been silly to try to create a power based server-and-volley game for him. It was clear in a dozen ways that he would be most effective as a counterpunching baseliner"

[Chemist]

Originally Posted by nightfire700

I didnt mean revolutionary when I said unconventional. I meant evolutionary. Of course the basic fundamentals are the same and I totally agree with you and thats what my point was - teach the basics and then improvise based on each kids/players strengths. I am not a tennis expert but Nadal's lasso forehand was unconventional 10 years back before Nadal made it popular and if 10-15 years back a kid was trying to hit a lasso forehand in every shot, a lot of coaches would have called it flawed and arm breaking and not natural or whatever. Today its ok to see 8-10 yr olds whipping lasso one after the other. Here is where a coach needs to jump in and analyse whether the lasso is good for a particular kid or not and make amends.

Its interesting that yesterday only I was reading Pete Sampras auto-biography and that at the age of 14 his coach forced him to move from a double handed backhand to the single handed and it took 2 years of beating in the tournaments before it worked for him. His DHBH was not flawed but his coach was convinced that the SHBD was the one for him and together they worked towards it.

Quoting Pete from the book -
"Its an easy thing to overlook, but always remember that everyone is different. There is no one-size-fits-all formula for development; if there was, a dozen or more players would all stand atop the record book, with exactly two Grand Slam titles each. I wouldn't suggest that, say,Michael Chang would have benefited from going to a single-handed backhand, or that he would have won Wimbledon if he had made the change. A lot of other factors would also have to have fallen in place for that to happen.
What I am saying is that its wise to look at your game and take the long view-where can your natural athletic inclinations take you in five, ten, fifteen years? Given Michael's size and the pace he generated, it would have been silly to try to create a power based server-and-volley game for him. It was clear in a dozen ways that he would be most effective as a counterpunching baseliner"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpfcuanlWOc

One can see that Rafa used lasso forehand when he had to run to his forehand side to hit balls cross court. I guess that he would have to run a few more inches to hit the same shot with a conventional forehand. The video clips below show that Rafa hit with more conventional forehand when he did not have to run much. Rafa would probably use conventional forehand to attack a short ball 90% of the time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn6ePkVxJEs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsLgd4eH3Q4

[TCF]

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[ga tennis]

We have really been working hard on the serve. I have had alot of success lately teaching her the kick serve by having her stand out on the singles line on the ad side trying to make the ball kick into the side fence. Im really trying to focus on the racket head speed hitting up and landing inside the court on the left foot.I just want the same shape on every serve. She still sometimes struggles on the deuce side because she tends to open the shoulders up a littl;e to much. I know you want variety on the serve but right now i just want her to perfect her kicker.The top 12s can attack it because it gets up high in there strike zone but in a few years when it really matters its gonna be hard to handle.