Mr Topspin
Semi-Pro
Rafa's uncle and coach Toni does not get enough credit but what he has achieved with Rafa is unbelievable.
He guided Rafa to clay court dominance early on in Rafa's career. Then helped Rafa develop a solid grass court game. What ever Rafa's detractors say Rafa does change many aspects of his grass court game in relation to his position on the baseline, his hit point on return of serve and the way he flattens out his shots on the grass. Josh Goodall, the tennis analyst in Britain has done numerous comparisons on the changes Rafa makes from Clay to grass on the BBC during the Wimbledon fortnight. (A google on Goodall and Rafa will show the data).
While today's grass may be slower and high bouncing it is still vastly different to clay and bounces much lower and has far more bad bounces than any other surface. I believe Coach Toni's influence and tactics have helped change an essentially clay court specialist into a multi surface winner with his guidance.
Next, if we look at the players Rafa struggled against early on, we see guys like Blake, Nalbandian, Berdych and Soderling. Yet Uncle Toni helped Rafa turn those trends around. Rafa has dominated all those guys with slight changes to his tactics.
One firm example is Murray. Murray won the last two grand slam meetings aginst Rafa in a dominant fashion and yet on grass despite serving exceptionally well, Murray lost in straights aginst Rafa. This was because Coach Toni wrote a perfect playbook for Rafa on how to neutrailse Murray. Therefore, Rafa hit alot of slices to the Murray forehand, he hit a lot more up the middle forcing Murray to create his own angles and his own pace. Murray prefers to redirect power not creating his own and thus struggled to hurt Rafa off the ground on a consistent basis.
Rafa employed the same tactic against Giles Simon in 09 when he won the OZ open. Once again Simon had beaten Rafa in their prior meeting and Coach Toni drafted the perfect strategy.
And further proof of Coach Toni's foresight and strategy were evidenced when Rafa's clay court game was changed further in response to the Soderling defeat last year. The response was a change in strings which resulted in less spin and more depth in Rafa's shots. This is fundamental change to Rafa's game as his huge topspin is what has contributed to his prowess on the clay and yet the change in strings to a more aggressive game in order to keep big hitters like Soderling pinned to the baseline.
Mats Willander commented on this change in Rafa and said it was a testament to Rafa's coaching team that the four time champion at RG was still prepared to make changes in order to continously improve his game.
And the result was fantastic. Rafa straight setted Soderling at the RG final and beat him in 4 sets at Wimbledon with the subtle changes made to the Rafa game in the last six months.
Therefore, is Coach Toni the best coach going today?
He guided Rafa to clay court dominance early on in Rafa's career. Then helped Rafa develop a solid grass court game. What ever Rafa's detractors say Rafa does change many aspects of his grass court game in relation to his position on the baseline, his hit point on return of serve and the way he flattens out his shots on the grass. Josh Goodall, the tennis analyst in Britain has done numerous comparisons on the changes Rafa makes from Clay to grass on the BBC during the Wimbledon fortnight. (A google on Goodall and Rafa will show the data).
While today's grass may be slower and high bouncing it is still vastly different to clay and bounces much lower and has far more bad bounces than any other surface. I believe Coach Toni's influence and tactics have helped change an essentially clay court specialist into a multi surface winner with his guidance.
Next, if we look at the players Rafa struggled against early on, we see guys like Blake, Nalbandian, Berdych and Soderling. Yet Uncle Toni helped Rafa turn those trends around. Rafa has dominated all those guys with slight changes to his tactics.
One firm example is Murray. Murray won the last two grand slam meetings aginst Rafa in a dominant fashion and yet on grass despite serving exceptionally well, Murray lost in straights aginst Rafa. This was because Coach Toni wrote a perfect playbook for Rafa on how to neutrailse Murray. Therefore, Rafa hit alot of slices to the Murray forehand, he hit a lot more up the middle forcing Murray to create his own angles and his own pace. Murray prefers to redirect power not creating his own and thus struggled to hurt Rafa off the ground on a consistent basis.
Rafa employed the same tactic against Giles Simon in 09 when he won the OZ open. Once again Simon had beaten Rafa in their prior meeting and Coach Toni drafted the perfect strategy.
And further proof of Coach Toni's foresight and strategy were evidenced when Rafa's clay court game was changed further in response to the Soderling defeat last year. The response was a change in strings which resulted in less spin and more depth in Rafa's shots. This is fundamental change to Rafa's game as his huge topspin is what has contributed to his prowess on the clay and yet the change in strings to a more aggressive game in order to keep big hitters like Soderling pinned to the baseline.
Mats Willander commented on this change in Rafa and said it was a testament to Rafa's coaching team that the four time champion at RG was still prepared to make changes in order to continously improve his game.
And the result was fantastic. Rafa straight setted Soderling at the RG final and beat him in 4 sets at Wimbledon with the subtle changes made to the Rafa game in the last six months.
Therefore, is Coach Toni the best coach going today?
