Making of a Tennis Maestro
For many players in International and Local competitions, mid-October is the end of the season. The year would have taught valuable lessons, sweet tastes of success, and some daunting memories. In all, every player would have made their own history. All these will not be in vain in the journey of a player. In fact, these will be the best things that could have happened to develop into the next stage of their Tennis. Regardless of victories and defeats, the year would leave vivid memories and strength in personality – the best spring board for the future.
It’s the best ride
Most would agree that the best ride in Tennis or in any sport comes in as a ‘Player’. The Administrator, official, officiator, regulator, promoter, reporter and even the coach’s experience cannot match the passion, excitement and the emotion that a player will experience.
It is an amazing sensation to see another ball come at you in Tennis, challenging and pushing you to the limits which only the player experiences. While every service to the game will be erased in time and in history, performances of players will be etched in stone. I do not know who the president or the secretary of CLTA in 1939 was but I know the names of Oscar Pinto and Hilden Sansoni, Dauglas Fonseka and a few of other names of players during this era, vividly. If one has never been a keen player, I feel the best ride was missed.
The best players in the world are often questioned by viewers as to ‘why’ she or he is still playing? The answer is they still pushed by passion and feel the best is yet to come. If players cannot take the challenges and leave the arena, they will lose the best part of the ride. This is the truth. Good players build on their performance each year. This is what makes them good. How they stay on top for a decade in good many instances, is worth looking into.
Passion and game making
Passion supports the personality to mature. When these two fuse, it acts as a motivator boosting performance. Stanislaus Wawrinka got this formula right in the 2014 Australian-Open and then lost it the rest of the year. Li-Na also got it in Australian then got shaken by external factors which led to physical break down. Petra Kvitova won Wimbledon this year performing at a peak rarely seen among women but did not sustain it.
All these mean the fusion of passion and personality is not an easy one. In recent times the player who got the balance right is Roger Federer and will go down in history for this. His ability to link passion, personality and skills to play the game in the strongest expression possible is exceptional. If you are a player, try to develop a passion for Tennis game making skills and you will develop the personality to perform. Post season training is most suited for this aspect. At competition level coaching is all about this and not how to take the racquet back or to react faster.
Stroke making is an effective instrument only to enable good game making. I know good many readers will not completely understand what this statement means. If this is not understood winning is a difficult task. It refers to ‘sports intelligence’. Without this a player is a mere ‘ball machine.’ Matches cannot be won being a ‘ball machine.’
Leads for individualism
To avoid being a mere ball-machine, individualism must be cultivated from the very young days. This is what gives personality. Even in team sports, it is the individual performances that make the difference. This is why everybody wants to know ‘who’ is in the team.
In Tennis, what are you as a game maker, is what you are for yourself and this is what matters most to perform. Thinking for yourself, finding one’s own comfort zone, training to build and not burn and phasing out to last a full career are the leads for individualism. The secret of success in Tennis after 14 years of age lies in how many sets you played in the week alone and not in how many hours you spent on court. In fact of recent times in Sri Lanka, more hours are destroying the personality than developing it.
Player Stock taking
If you are player, take stock of your performance yourself in a manner you can understand and not by others understanding. How did you win; why did you lose; how much are the critical strokes supporting you; are you waiting till the opponent give you a point; or winning with a good game; are your reactions good enough to accommodate your vision; etc. This is what a good player does to become better. If your sports intelligence is good you will be telling the coaches what you want! This is something many players do not know. New season will come sooner than you think. Use this post season time to increase your sports intelligence and your game will shoot up to be good enough for the WTA and ATP rankings.
The maestro of our time
Who can say Roger Federer is not having a journey of his life? It must be known that he walked alone without a coach most of his way. It induced immense strength in him to perform under most daunting situations. Even now unlike other players he hardly looks at his coach Stephan Edberg’ seated on the side lines during the match, simply because he has enough in him to do the journey of his life time alone. Such is maestro Federer’s sports intelligence.
-George Paldano, former international player; Accredited Coach of Germany, ITF and USPTR; National, Davis Cup and Federation Cup coach.– -
gptennis.ceylon@gmail.com-