How can we better critique?

[thebuffman]

I just left the courts today and I am a little shook up to put it mildly. I saw a young pro hitting with a partner. The kid was 20 years old and my hitting buddy knows him. Told me that the kid plays satellite. I have never seen anything like those types of strokes in all of my life.

And his serve....what in the living world! His serve was so smooth and fluid. The racquet dropped so far down his back and climbed up to this effortless explosion into the ball. It was the smoothest thing i've ever seen. There was this loud crack and the ball was at the back fence. 5 feet high RISING! Every ground stroke was exploded into and the spin kicked the ball to his opponents shoulder.

I could go on and on about what I saw today. And to be honest, his opponent who is 17 years old, and in his own right is a good player for his age group, was no where on par with this 20 year old. So maybe he was looking so stellar because he didn't have anybody who could really give him a good challenge. His strokes however was a beautiful thing to watch. My hitting buddy then tells me that this kid has worked out with Verdasco. I was blown away. He introduced me to the kid and I took a look at his racquet which was packed with yellow fuzz all over the sweet spot. I asked, "what tension do you string at?" He replied, "between 60-62 lbs." I asked, "What is the weight of your racquet?" GET THIS, he goes, "almost one pound." I was done..... So I tried to find the balance point of the racquet and asked, "What is the balance?" I was thinking he would say something like 12pts HL. He goes, "its either perfectly balanced or a little head heavy." Okay....this killed everything I thought I ever knew about customizing a racquet.

So all of that stirred up this question: "Why do we critique each other so hard on the forums?" From what I saw today, I am now 100% guaranteed that not many of us posting videos of our strokes and serves will EVER attain strokes like what I saw today. IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN. EVER...NEVER EVER. However we critique each other according to the standards of professionals. We say things like, "You need to form your backhand like Federer." I now see how ridiculous it is to even mention the weekend warrior to anything associated with a pro. The pro's kinetic chain, timing and explosion is in a different stratosphere to what we have going on at the rec courts.

So how can we do a better job critiquing? What is a reasonable standard for most rec players to measure up to? Because if we continue to use what I just saw with my own eyes today as a standard for progress, we have ventured into the unrealistic.

 

[larry10s]

So how can we do a better job critiquing? What is a reasonable standard for most rec players to measure up to? Because if we continue to use what I just saw with my own eyes today as a standard for progress, we have ventured into the unrealistic.

buffman here is my 2 cents

you are correct most mortals and especially those who have life, job etc. beyond tennis will never reach the proficiency of the pros:sad:
all of us who spend 4- 10 hurs a week on tennis
AND did not attend an academy from the time they were 5
will never do what the pros do.
you have to accept that:shock:
HOWEVER by striving to have technique like the pros will get you to be able to compete to the top of the level you get to being as close to the pros that you reach
with poor technique you will NEVER get to 4.0. and definitely not higher.
SO critiqueing people to show them where their form needs improvementto look more like a pro is no disservice.

 

[larry10s]

i didnt want my post to be too long so it may come in stages .SORRY
here is a personal note
i started tennis at the age of 49 (now 57)
i am an overacheiver and have scored in the 95% in almost everything i have done academically.
my goal when i started was to kick ass of all the A+ players in my club
of course all of them started at a young age
played high school and college tennis
BUT I WAS GOING TO BE BETTER THAN THEM
reality
IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN
BUT
ive gotten to a point (strong 4.0) that if i play doubles with a good partner we dont lose 6-0 6-6
yes there are some that still they are just too strong and i dont belong on the court with them
(funny when i played worse i thought i should:shock

 

[larry10s]

so to sum up
i think we should be over critical in our replies for help from our brothers and sisters who try to play tennis and improve
yet i think we all need REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS.
you comments and others would be appreciated

 

[dak95_00]

Just my opinion!

If you are a rec player like myself and have no desire to play higher than rec and have fun, who cares what others think? I like to play and feel as though I improved. At my age and skill level, improvement can come in the form of fitness or in a particular shot. I'm happy if I hit that one shot just as close to perfect as I thought I should or could.

I could care less what others think. I'll post a video but I'm not really going to listen to the advice. I just find the rants to be humorous.

As a school teacher and coach of a variety of sports, it has been my experience for years that nearly everyone thinks higher of their own skills than is reality. I've seen kids tell me they are awesome at basketball unable to make a free throw in five attempts. I've seen golfers unable to sink a 2 foot putt. Tennis players who think they should be able to hit every shot as hard as they can and land them in. It is actually very comical.

Base your opinion where you like. You are right. Very, very, very few of us will ever reach the level that it takes to participate at any endeavor in a professional manner or call ourselves one of the best.

My advice:
Find a group of people you like and who push you to be better and play with them. Don't be a leach. Push them to get better too. Don't be afraid to practice your strokes when you play. Too many people just want to hit for 4 minutes and then play a match. How could you improve? If all you do is play matches, you are destined to just continue the same habits. You might perfect them too. That might not be a positive.

On equipment:
As a kid, I was always told that it wasn't the racquet that made the shot. It was the player that made the shot. This will always be true! Good players can adjust to their equipment no matter how good or crappy. Bad players like to blame their equipment. If two players are equal, then equipment might make a difference. It won't decide the match. I know. Some equipment makes the game more enjoyable for the average player but the grass isn't always greener. A good player with good strokes can play with an old woody and beat most people who play tennis easily.

 

[DeShaun]

I just left the courts today and I am a little shook up to put it mildly. I saw a young pro hitting with a partner. The kid was 20 years old and my hitting buddy knows him. Told me that the kid plays satellite. I have never seen anything like those types of strokes in all of my life.

And his serve....what in the living world! His serve was so smooth and fluid. The racquet dropped so far down his back and climbed up to this effortless explosion into the ball. It was the smoothest thing i've ever seen. There was this loud crack and the ball was at the back fence. 5 feet high RISING! Every ground stroke was exploded into and the spin kicked the ball to his opponents shoulder.

I could go on and on about what I saw today. And to be honest, his opponent who is 17 years old, and in his own right is a good player for his age group, was no where on par with this 20 year old. So maybe he was looking so stellar because he didn't have anybody who could really give him a good challenge. His strokes however was a beautiful thing to watch. My hitting buddy then tells me that this kid has worked out with Verdasco. I was blown away. He introduced me to the kid and I took a look at his racquet which was packed with yellow fuzz all over the sweet spot. I asked, "what tension do you string at?" He replied, "between 60-62 lbs." I asked, "What is the weight of your racquet?" GET THIS, he goes, "almost one pound." I was done..... So I tried to find the balance point of the racquet and asked, "What is the balance?" I was thinking he would say something like 12pts HL. He goes, "its either perfectly balanced or a little head heavy." Okay....this killed everything I thought I ever knew about customizing a racquet.

So all of that stirred up this question: "Why do we critique each other so hard on the forums?" From what I saw today, I am now 100% guaranteed that not many of us posting videos of our strokes and serves will EVER attain strokes like what I saw today. IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN. EVER...NEVER EVER. However we critique each other according to the standards of professionals. We say things like, "You need to form your backhand like Federer." I now see how ridiculous it is to even mention the weekend warrior to anything associated with a pro. The pro's kinetic chain, timing and explosion is in a different stratosphere to what we have going on at the rec courts.

So how can we do a better job critiquing? What is a reasonable standard for most rec players to measure up to? Because if we continue to use what I just saw with my own eyes today as a standard for progress, we have ventured into the unrealistic.

Of all the remarkable things you saw the kid doing, what one thing in particular could be adopted by us? His overall fluidity as relates to the kinetic chain? This would be my guess. So, maybe prioritizing the sharing of good general principles over the sharing of specific technical details might help us critique one another more effectively. It sounds like you were blown away by what you saw, and that in addition to technical details, having to do with stroke production, the kid was modeling certain principles which we ourselves could choose to focus on.

 

[thebuffman]

so to sum up
i think we should be over critical in our replies for help from our brothers and sisters who try to play tennis and improve
yet i think we all need REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS.
you comments and others would be appreciated

let me first buffer my comments by saying that i could be speaking out of shock from what i saw today on the court and should probably have tempered my original post a little so that i didn't sound so.....apathetic.

i disagree my friend. i think it is a disservice to be overly critical. being overly critical can really place the objective well out of reach making it unattainable. i believe if most of the critiques were measured around good solid fundamentals, people would do well to adhere to advice. however when critiques are measured around professional strokes, the goal becomes unattainable.

when i watched this guy hit today, i realized the mechanics he was executing could never be attained from advice through a forum. can't happen whatsoever. his hits were so crisp, so powerful, and the kinetic chain was so fluid that is was evident he achieved this through hours upon hours of drilling and coaching. like you say larry, most of us can't dedicate that amount of our time to training. so why critique each other according to those types of standards? how many times do we see people wanting help on their serve and the first thing someone says is "check out this youtube video on federer"? i now realize the flaw in this. people should be directed more toward fuzzy yellow or sportskool or etc. because these places promote good fundamentals of the stroke. to use federer as a model is flawed because normal weekend warriors cannot relate. i saw this kid hitting serves moving at least 130mph. and it was not like he was trying to kill the ball. his entire body moved in such a smooth fluid motion that it all translated into racquet head speed. and it was like he barely touched the ball. it was like the racquet was the end of a whip where energy snapped from the racquet into the ball. it was sheer perfection. most of us cannot learn this by simple critique or watching a pro serve video.

 

[thebuffman]

Of all the remarkable things you saw the kid doing, what one thing in particular could be adopted by us? His overall fluidity as relates to the kinetic chain? This would be my guess.

i would say footwork. footwork is the one thing we can work hard at and reach a professional level. the kid was always on top of the ball. the reason he could take full strokes is because he was never out of position.

 

[dlk]

^^^What would be your guess as to why his footwork was so good? Anticipation, sheer physicality, his prior shot dictating where his opponents should would return from?

 

[jdubbs]

I disagree with the OP. I've incorporated things from the pros and even TT posters into my game and improved exponentially in my comeback from a decade off. The game has changed so much. If something didn't work, I adjusted. Now I have a game which still needs improvement, but has really come a long way, and I've won a much higher % of matches because of it.

I don't have the supernatural ability of the top pros, but I'm pretty athletic for my age, so can incorporate some of the things I see the pros do.

 

[GetBetterer]

buffman, first off

As previously stated, not all of us plan on making a career out of Tennis. We simply play it for fun, for exercise and I believe there was a person who said he lost about 80 pounds or so from Tennis itself and sent us a message of praise which was kind.

However, the reason why many of our parents say become a lawyer, a doctor or some other distinctive job, is because in terms of economics, they are the highest of the high.

Even if you're not a Harvard or Stanford lawyer, you at least have a degree in Law, which can lead to more jobs such as being a judge or as many lawyers have been in the past -- the President. This is why we have many parents encouraging education, because it's a bigger win percentage.

In order to obtain a successful, and better career than the people mentioned above is to be some of the best players. Roger Federer, Kim Clijsters, Samantha Stosur, Justine Henin, Rafael Nadal, etc. Otherwise, if you look at the money the Round of 16 tournaments give -- it isn't a lot.

Now, telling everybody "YOU'RE NEVER GOING TO BE GOOD AS THE PRO'S OR THE GUY I SAW HIT WITH VERDASCO" isn't exactly a proficient plan either. Also, many of us don't go 'you need to hit like so-and-so.' I actually think many of the people here give more technical advice when asked for.

Also, you seem like a nice person but...how can we believe this story?

 

[UCSF2012]

What you're observing as "fluidity of strokes" is more "heavy rackets hit more powerful shots." If you've ever used lots of lead tape, you'd know that balls launch from the racket. The swing isn't as fast, but the ball riffles off. It's very easy to break 130mph when you're leaded and loaded (from personal experience). Once the lead's off, you're back to 115-120mph max.

 

[LeeD]

I think I agree as far as groundstrokes go, but for serves, the ball is not moving towards me, and a light racket seems to get about the same pop (ball speed) as a heavier racket.
A groundie is like a baseball batter.....ball incoming at 80+ mph, heavier bat with some swingspeed hitting farther with good contact.
But a serve is different...more like T ball than baseball, and a lighter bat or racket can be swung fast very easily, making repetitious shots easier to replicate ....:shock:
We're only hitting tennis balls, not baseballs, when we serve.

 

[thebuffman]

^^^What would be your guess as to why his footwork was so good? Anticipation, sheer physicality, his prior shot dictating where his opponents should would return from?

well i think it probably had a lot to do with his opponent. the guy he played against had good strokes (probably 4.5-5.0 strokes) but he was no where near the level of the 20 year old. perhaps if he was playing against another pro he would not look so dominant, balanced and always in position.

Now, telling everybody "YOU'RE NEVER GOING TO BE GOOD AS THE PRO'S OR THE GUY I SAW HIT WITH VERDASCO" isn't exactly a proficient plan either. Also, many of us don't go 'you need to hit like so-and-so.' I actually think many of the people here give more technical advice when asked for.

Also, you seem like a nice person but...how can we believe this story?

yeah, yeah it is. after what i saw today, telling people that you will NEVER hit like these guys is exactly a proficient plan. today i realized just how advanced these kids are. these folks have been playing this game and receiving intense training since they were kids. my hitting partner knows the kids father and this is why he wanted me to come hit at this particular court today so that i could see this guy practice. he tells me that he knew this kid when he was waist high and that his dad would train his service game by having him clear three stacked telephone books during his service motion.

my point is that a lot of the advice i see given can be way too technical even out of the scope of the current ability of the requester. and yes i do see people refer a lot to professional player videos on youtube. they will say things like, "notice how federer does x y and z in his take back and then blah blah blah." today i realized that this approach is erroneous. what it took for federer to be able to put x y and z together is sooooooo far out of the scope of time & effort that the normal rec player will ever be able to do.

now this is just how i am feeling today. like i say, it could all be the shock factor. all i know is that i've been working on my serve forever and on my best day i max out mph at mid 90's. when i saw what a real deal pro serve looked like, i realized why i am stuck in the 90's. it wasn't even like this kid hit any harder than me. as a matter of fact he stood about 5'10" and weighed about 170lbs and is no where near as muscular as me. i saw that it is so much more about fluidity and technique than trying to crush the ball. and when i saw him smacking aces all over the court i said to myself, "there is no way in the world i could ever serve like that. my motion is nothing like that." it was a demoralizing experience.

my takeaway from this is never to ask someone to "please critique my serve" again. instead i would rephrase it and say, what am i fundamentally doing right and wrong, and what should i do to correct it.

What you're observing as "fluidity of strokes" is more "heavy rackets hit more powerful shots." If you've ever used lots of lead tape, you'd know that balls launch from the racket. The swing isn't as fast, but the ball riffles off. It's very easy to break 130mph when you're leaded and loaded (from personal experience). Once the lead's off, you're back to 115-120mph max.

man you just might be right. i didn't even think people played with a one pound stick. is that even feasible?? do college and pro level players play with anything 14oz and above?? i thought the highest weights would be 13.5 at most.

 

[UCSF2012]

I think I agree as far as groundstrokes go, but for serves, the ball is not moving towards me, and a light racket seems to get about the same pop (ball speed) as a heavier racket.
A groundie is like a baseball batter.....ball incoming at 80+ mph, heavier bat with some swingspeed hitting farther with good contact.
But a serve is different...more like T ball than baseball, and a lighter bat or racket can be swung fast very easily, making repetitious shots easier to replicate ....:shock:
We're only hitting tennis balls, not baseballs, when we serve.

Ignore LeeD, here. He doesn't know what he's talking about. He's making guesses.

Lead changes many things on the serves. It slows your swing down while giving the ball more oomph. First serves launch more, while second serves have crazy more spin. Your contact point also changes, and you'll find that you have to toss out farther into the court just to get the ball in.

 

[UCSF2012]

man you just might be right. i didn't even think people played with a one pound stick. is that even feasible?? do college and pro level players play with anything 14oz and above?? i thought the highest weights would be 13.5 at most.

Guys like to exaggerate. It's a macho thing. Anything over 14oz isn't feasible to swing and degrades performance. (unless most of the weight's in the handle, in which case you can really pack on the lead). I'm willing to bet his racket's in the 13 oz range (which is technically "almost a pound.")

 

[thebuffman]

Ignore LeeD, here. He doesn't know what he's talking about. He's making guesses.

Lead changes many things on the serves. It slows your swing down while giving the ball more oomph. First serves launch more, while second serves have crazy more spin. Your contact point also changes, and you'll find that you have to toss out farther into the court just to get the ball in.

well i swing a 13.2oz bat and definitely have not maxed out the weight i am able to handle. even when i am in marathon matches going 3 full sets and lasting 2.5 hrs, my arm doesn't tire. so my take from what you are saying is that i might benefit from an even heavier stick.

 

[thebuffman]

Guys like to exaggerate. It's a macho thing. Anything over 14oz isn't feasible to swing and degrades performance. (unless most of the weight's in the handle, in which case you can really pack on the lead). I'm willing to bet his racket's in the 13 oz range (which is technically "almost a pound.")

true, guys to like to exaggerate. the kid strings racquets and this is why i was asking detailed questions because most racquet stringers are aware of weight, swing weight, balance etc. i asked if his racquet was around 13oz and he said, "no. it is heavier....closer to about 1#" he could have definitely been lying though. i felt the weight of it but can't really say that i could determine its true weight. 15oz+ is a bit excessive i would think.

 

[UCSF2012]

well i swing a 13.2oz bat and definitely have not maxed out the weight i am able to handle. even when i am in marathon matches going 3 full sets and lasting 2.5 hrs, my arm doesn't tire. so my take from what you are saying is that i might benefit from an even heavier stick.

Heavier isn't better. You have to find your optimum, and optimum takes into consideration WHERE you place the lead. The only way to find your optimum is to keep adding lead in small increments and pay testing it. Do you perform better or worse with such an increase? There comes a point where you have trouble swinging the racket.

Adding lead at 3/9 or 12 o'clock slows down the swing and adds punch. I don't know what adding it at the handle does. Always thought it was dead weight.

 

[Tennis Dunce]

If he's a 6.0 hitting against a 4.0 of course he looks like Superman. I think you just need to get out more.

 

[bhupaes]

Buffman, for me, any critique and advice are okay, even though I believe what you say is true - most of us will never get to play like that kid, period.

That said, I believe we can all learn to play like pros, albeit in slow motion... we can have a lot of fun getting good enough to bludgeon our slow poke friends on the tennis courts.