her game (strokes) is/are awkward and stilted? She's gorgeous and all, and I'll root for her, but she just doesn't have very graceful strokes...
P_
her game (strokes) is/are awkward and stilted? She's gorgeous and all, and I'll root for her, but she just doesn't have very graceful strokes...
P_
her game (strokes) is/are awkward and stilted? She's gorgeous and all, and I'll root for her, but she just doesn't have very graceful strokes...
P_
Ugly technique, but that's true for most of the WTA. There are very few exceptions. Stosur comes to mind, but she can't win nowadays.
No, not graceful at all, and since she ruined Angelique's chances of winning her first slam, let's hope she loses.
I'm just happy that the Canadian program seems to be emphasizing aggressive, yet smart, tennis with its players. Bouchard and Raonic, awkward style or not, seem to play with the mindset of attacking, rather than rallying the ball all day, which seems to be the industry standard nowadays. And guess what: it's paying off for both of them. Their peers seem completely taken aback.
True, true. She (and almost all wta players) have the same problem.She does seem to play really "stiff". That's the best word I can use to describe her strokes. It certainly doesn't look very fluid, but it doesn't seem to matter.
Gulbis' forehand takes the cake for awkwardness.
I thought it was going to say Bouchard anyone else think that.... she has manly deep voice? Anyone else noticed this? first time I heard her in a post match conference I was pretty surprised
No, not graceful at all, and since she ruined Angelique's chances of winning her first slam, let's hope she loses.
her game (strokes) is/are awkward and stilted? She's gorgeous and all, and I'll root for her, but she just doesn't have very graceful strokes...
P_
Sometimes the most aesthetic way of hitting a shot isn't the most efficient, depending on the attributes of the person involved.
Efficiency will always win over aesthetics. In fact, in modern tennis I'm not even sure what 'aesthetically pleasing' even means tbh, it's a very obtuse concept when you weigh up the myriad of considerations that go into each players approach.
Exactly. Look at Nadal. No one would teach someone else his FH technique, but it's one of the best singular shots of all time.
I absolutely agree. I can't help thinking that last night, I wasted 90 minutes of my life watching two women trying very badly to play tennis like men very badly. I hope the poster who dreaded watching a Djokovic-Nadal topspin slug fest was also watching the Bouchard-Halep semifinal yesterday evening. That game should put to rest any more debate about the women's game as far as I am concerned.
From now on, I am not going to waste my time watching any more women's games where Serena, Maria, Li Na, Agnieska, or Victoria aren't playing, though I will probably watch the Kvitova-Bouchard game on Saturday because when Petra is on, she's a delight to watch (a bit like Cleijsters in my opinion.)
No, not graceful at all, and since she ruined Angelique's chances of winning her first slam, let's hope she loses.
I thought it was going to say Bouchard anyone else think that.... she has manly deep voice? Anyone else noticed this? first time I heard her in a post match conference I was pretty surprised
her game (strokes) is/are awkward and stilted? She's gorgeous and all, and I'll root for her, but she just doesn't have very graceful strokes...
P_
her game (strokes) is/are awkward and stilted? She's gorgeous and all, and I'll root for her, but she just doesn't have very graceful strokes...
P_
How in the world did you get that from that match? What is "playing like men"?
You people finding new ways to criticize Bouchard are trying too hard. Just say she has ugly technique and be done with it. :lol:
Exactly. Look at Nadal. No one would teach someone else his FH technique, but it's one of the best singular shots of all time.
He changed his FH a while back and adopted Federer's FH. Hadn't you noticed?
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It's very weird. She just kind of squats and takes a full roundhouse swing. Mindless ballbashing.
Good post, nice to see not everybody around here is completely clueless about the sport.People tend to equate unorthodox/"not by the book" with bad/flawed technique. From a coaching standpoint, this is wrong. Bouchard's technique might look a little odd, but it's still very efficient. And with her aggressive/hug the baseline/take the ball early style of play, the more compact the strokes the better. But when she's rushed, i.e. when the ball is hit hard right at her, the "oddness" of her technique is magnified because she can't get proper shoulder turn so it looks like she squats/lunges at the ball. This is more a positional/movement/footwork issue (getting out of her own way) than any perceived technical issue with her groundstrokes, and it can be fixed with a couple more years of strength and conditioning (building a better/stronger core).
To answer your first question, I watched the game without my pink rose-tinted glasses.
To answer your second, I can only say that I came away from watching the match with the impression that I'd just been treated to a bad imitation of Djokovic vs Nadal, only in skirts. But that could be just me.
Her strokes are terrible but she can get away with it because of today's ultra powerful racquets. Give her a wood racquet and she would pretty much suck.
Well, guys like McEnroe used to use a wood racquet and he'd been doing pretty well over the past two decades with his modern racquet. In any case, there would have been no need to change technique/coaching if they just left things alone. There was nothing wrong with wood racquets. People quite enjoyed tennis with them.Players who used wood rackets would have sucked at using modern rackets as well. Technique/coaching has evolved along with racket technology. It makes no sense to dissociate the two.