Racquet Mailbag - March
Racquet Mailbag - March
Short tennis players, Asian tennis, long vs short socks, tennis' Netflix show and gatekeeping, nextgen on grass
I asked a bunch of you on twitter for questions on all things tennis. Here are my answers:
Matt: Long socks. Short socks in tennis is a cardinal sin for which Agassi and Fish will never be forgiven.
Matt: Depends on the player and circumstance. Some players are superstitious (Gasquet often gets it into his head that he likes one or two ‘lucky’ balls and will keep asking the ballkid for them over and over for e.g). Others want a fast ball if they’re serving, i.e the least fluffy of the balls currently in use. And others want a slower ball, perhaps if their opponent is ripping the ball in a hot patch of form and they want to slow the point down a bit.
Matt: It depends how big the change is. In coaching there are high and low latency changes. Something like a complete overhaul of forehand or serve technique for e.g (very difficult for adult pros) would have to take place during an off season or longer layoff (although the off season is often not long enough to properly accomplish things like this). Mannarino is a good example of a player who significantly altered their forehand technique, and Delpo on his backhand, but both did so during long wrist injury enforced absences and via necessity. If it’s something like working on the 3 shot chain combo or simpler bits of strategy or technique tweaks (for eg both Nadal and Djokovic’s serves in the last decade have mostly changed iteratively rather than any massive overhauls), then it’s a constant work in progress throughout the season and during off seasons. As for the easiest shot to improve? I’d argue the serve and the return in some ways, mostly because they’re two shots the players can stop and think about before hitting them compared to mid-rally forehands and backhands where intuition and habits (often engrained in players from a very young age) can be harder to budge.
Matt: I always like to caveat answers to questions like this with the reality that the competitive landscape once the Big 3 of Fed, Nadal and Djokovic retire is going to be very different. Can Medvedev beat all or some of Tsitsipas, Thiem (if fit), Djokovic and Nadal to win Roland Garros in the next year or so? Probably not. But could he make the final if he gets a good draw, avoiding stronger clay courters like Tsitsipas, once Nadal and Djokovic are retired? Sure, far weirder things have happened in tennis. Medvedev already showed a sort of surface atheism ability on clay last year at Roland Garros with the new Wilson balls, before getting dismantled by Tsitsipas in the quarter finals. And Meddy has shown he can play on the red stuff (like the 2019 Monte Carlo where he beat Tsitsipas and Djokovic back to back), at least when he’s not having philosophical meltdowns about how little his game suits the surface.
Matt: Zverev has 10 days to appeal the fine and decision to strip him of prize money and ranking points from Acapulco (day ten is tomorrow). The ATP mentioned that they were reviewing the incident further, so it seems likely that either they’ll announce more punishment over the next 48 hours after the 10 day period is up, or they will have decided that the fine and prize-money/ranking-point docking is enough.
Matt: Not a fool’s errand. There’s far too much to write on this question but there are a couple of current approaches:
(this is most of the current focus by tennis orgs): increase revenue at tennis’ largest and most profitable events via pooling and better selling of data and media rights, alongside general tournament revenue, which would in turn eventually trickle down to lower ranked players via profit sharing proposals (although the profit sharing proposals mostly stand to benefit the higher ranked players competing at those premier events at first, with “intention to further broaden the scope of the profit sharing bonus pool”, ie share the spoils with lower ranked players, being a longer term goal of the ATP’s strategic plan). It’s worth noting that these are, for now, separate endeavours when it comes to the Slams, the WTA and the ATP. And different Slams offer different %’s of revenue as prize money (for e.g the Australian Open pre pandemic was offering about 18% of its revenue, and increasing that % year on year, as prize money compared to the US Open’s relatively static 14-15%).
Alongside the above, this sport probably needs to think of better ways to promote and present the lower rungs of the sport, including fan engagement and revenue generation, regardless of how successful the premier events are. At the moment some of the lower rungs of tennis are seen as necessary but chronically unsuccessful from an economic POV. But it has never been easier to build communities around niches than it is in 2022, and fans of lower rung tournaments are definitely a niche area for tennis. Doubling down on what makes the most successful challenger events so vibrant, for e.g the Genova Challenger, with its phenomenal sold out fan experience and community initiatives, and applying common threads of in-person success to other areas of the lower rungs of this sport would be a start. Leveraging more targeted ticketing tech. Giving all young players ‘zoomer PR’ training so that they know best practices for livestreaming their practices, building fan communities etc. so they can grow a following from their junior days onwards, create some personal revenue streams, and help do some of the promotional work and attention/narrative building for these smaller tournaments themselves. Less conventional commentary and media access would also help. There is also a very delicate balance between the vital revenue that comes in from betting data for the smaller events and its impact on integrity and player abuse at those levels.
Will try and write something properly on this soon.
Matt: It’s very player, and scenario, specific. For example, it’s a badly kept secret that Mouratoglou is more of a cheerleader and motivator for Serena rather than adding anything particularly technical. For Goran and Djokovic, working on the serve and net game seems to have been a clear priority, as well as some of the more basic elements of short point and first strike strategy. Although frankly Novak’s late-career serve has been excellent since the middle of 2018 (and was already improving noticeably from 2014/15 onwards). Moya has had a specific impact on Nadal’s serve technique, 2nd serve aggression, lead tape experimentation on the racquet head, short point construction, and backhand. But again, as with all these truly great players, it can be hard to tease apart what was them and what was the coach.
Matt: For those unaware, the WTA finally snagged a new title sponsor, after more than a decade without one, in the shape of Hologic (a leading global medical device and diagnostics company focused on women’s health). This is awesome news, not just because of the financial stability a title sponsor will bring amid uncertain Chinese tennis revenues in the fallout of the WTA’s brave stand RE Peng Shuai, but also because it aligns with both the WTA players and organisation. So often you see a sports sponsor that is represented by players who, behind closed doors, couldn’t give a shit about that business or its products. But Hologic and WTA’s plans include “current and former WTA players sharing personal stories that underscore the importance of preventive testing and screening for diseases like breast and cervical cancer and working with the tour to create Hologic WTA Labs, which will be focused on research specific to female athletes.” A sponsorship home run if ever there was one.
It’s a great question. I think as India hopefully continues to flourish, that market will get more and more attention from this sport. It’s an area which has had legions of passionate tennis fans throughout both the Sampras/Agassi and then Big 3 era’s on the men’s side especially, and yet hasn’t had the tournaments (although the economics have been tricky in the past) or broadcasting deals to really capitalise on that interest (they only got region specific pricing for India on TennisTV starting last year!!). When it comes to the Middle East, I would personally love to see at least a 250 level tournament in Israel for e.g, but it would depend on tournament sanctions. The Tel Aviv Open had a rich history until 1996, and were it not for the 2014 war in Gaza (قِطَاعُ غَزَّةَ) it would have returned to the ATP calendar that year. Women’s tennis in China is facing a very fragile moment with the ongoing Peng Shuai fallout, and it would be a significant shame if only one half of the sport (ATP) continued to be able to grow the game in China while the other half (WTA) couldn’t, both from the perspective of player development and fan access. One can certainly argue that the 9 WTA events that took place in China in 2019 placed too much of the tour’s focus and economic interest in that one country, but there’s no escaping that China’s unique ability to afford and invest in tennis, to the scale of some of those larger events on the men’s and women’s side, can help sell and enable the prospect of a larger Asian swing of tennis in general, including existing events in Japan and more expansion into S.Korea, Malaysia, Singapore et al (also alongside, after or before, the Australian Swing).
TL;DR I hope tennis continues to make great efforts to develop its Asian markets, partially because I believe tennis and its unusually international status, and the mutual understanding between cultures that status enables, represents one of the best things about this sport. But also because there are plenty of passionate fans in Asian countries who are probably under-served access wise at the moment.
Matt: I will be absolutely amazed if a 5ft 9 or below player wins a Slam on the men’s side in the next ten years. Could probably make that twenty years and beyond, but anything that far out and changes to the game become too unpredictable. I think you’re stuck with Cressy for now RE strict serve and volleyers (although I enjoy watching Cressy play). It’s just not the optimal strategy, at least not exclusively, for most tennis players with elite ambitions these days. Could change though.
Matt: I don’t have a favourite gamestyle to watch. Perhaps weirdly, I can find any kind of tennis interesting, whether it’s moonballers or serve and volleyers. I do have favourite matchups though. On the men’s side it’s still Nadal Djokovic matches purely because they push the sport, and each other, to places it’s/they’ve never been before. From a piece I wrote a few months ago:
And because both Nadal and Djokovic have this unusual ability to play near-optimal tennis so consistently, both were often forced into what would usually be sub-optimal or unusually risky points to find the edge against one another. This is partly why I think those two pushed each other in ways which no one else could… The edge in some of the biggest matches between prime Nadal and Djokovic felt thinner than any rivalry I’ve ever seen.
On the women’s side it’s usually matchups featuring variety against linear power hitters (for eg Barty vs Sabalenka in Madrid/Stuttgart/Miami or Hsieh vs Osaka in Miami/Cincy).
Matt: Analytics have played a significant role in tennis for some time now, but most of that role will have been non-obvious to the average fan. Pretty much all of the elite players are working with a mixture of strategy consultants all the way up to things like full-stack analytics firms which work closely with players and their coaches on match reports, insights, performance markers, improvement plans etc. As for fans, or more generally analytics as a consumer product, tennis has lagged behind other sports over the past decade when it comes to making data available, and presenting that data in interesting ways to both casual fans at home and to bettors. Fragmentation is partly to blame here as different tournaments and tours have different partnerships with data providers, meaning aggregation has historically been tough. But the consumer and betting side is evolving rather fast as of the end of 2021, at least on the men’s side, as the new ATP Tennis Data Innovations unit seeks to extract significantly more revenue from tennis data and some of its media. Expect to see more of this soon.
Matt: Lol at the second bit of this question. For anyone unfamiliar, tennis is getting its own Netflix show, likely airing in 2023, in the mould of DTS or Drive To Survive. As for the first bit of the question…do I think a Netflix show is the best way to bring in new fans? It’s not necessarily the ‘best’ or highest impact area, no. Do I think it could be transformatively great for new fan growth in tennis and will probably be extremely net positive? Yes. Do I also think it will probably be annoying for many of the already established, hardcore fans of tennis, in the same way that many existing F1 fans have found the influx of Drive to Survive fans nauseating? Also yes. If it were up to me to figure out the ‘best’ way to bring in and satisfy new fans, I would probably prioritise completely overhauling the streaming and media platforms in tennis when it comes to the largest potential long term impact. But seeing as that doesn’t stand much of a chance of happening right now, I’ll gladly take the Netflix show. If done right, it’s impact on tennis’ growth could be absurdly large. Just standby for angry gatekeepers.
Matt: It wouldn’t help at all and would likely be bad for your game. Djokovic, or arguably someone an inch or two taller like Auger-Aliassime considering the recent evolution of the modern game, is essentially the ideal men’s tennis physique right now. Strong legs, mostly very skinny upper body although with a shredded core, large dominant forearm, huge arse (wtf is this Frankenstein). Kokkinakis is a good cautionary example of how useless and counterproductive some of the more vanity-focused (or non-tennis specific) areas of muscle building can be.
Matt: I’m speculatively in favour of anything that moves Tsitsipas’ father away from being the main coaching focus. There are quite specific, and well known, areas of improvement needed for Tsistipas, and I’d be surprised if his dad was the best positioned person for the job in that regard. Again though, I haven’t seen enough of Enqvist’s coaching chops to know how good that partnership could be. I’ll probably write another season scorecard for Tsitsipas at the end of 2022 and we’ll see whether anything has changed.
Matt: If I have to choose out of current players — 30% Korda, 50% Brooksby, 20% Fritz
Matt: If the women want it, unequivocally yes. There are lots of reasons for this, but selfishly, and something that isn’t discussed often, I think having both men and women play Best of 5 sets during the second week of the Slams represents the best chance for best of 5 set tennis to avoid becoming extinct longer term. That longer format has quietly been eradicated everywhere apart from the men’s draw at Slams (Olympics, Davis Cup, Masters 1000’s, ATP/WTA finals all used to be best of 5 at some point). It feels like only a matter of time (although arguably a long time) before the powers-that-be decide to equalize the format across the board. I hope this is wrong.
Matt: Elo rankings are fine and interesting for many purposes, especially when it comes to working out surface specific form/ability and difficulty adjusted wins/losses. One of the problems with using it for the ranking system however is that extremely unlikely events in Elo terms, which come with large point swings based on the difference in Elo between two competing players, have the potential to make accurate ranking progress more convoluted. For e.g if you replace the ATP point Rankings with Elo rankings and you have Nadal (peak Elo) playing against Ernest Gulbis (low Elo) on clay, and Nadal gets injured in the first set and retires, then the point swing would be enormous in favour of Gulbis, and away from Nadal, rather than the standardised ranking point gain a player gets for winning a single round at a tournament. That method may fail to reflect the reality of form in that instance. Not only this but if a player is bad on clay but excellent on hard courts, and they lose in the first round of every clay court tournament, because of the way Elo weights losses to low Elo players much more heavily than it does against high Elo players, that player would likely be lower ranked than they should be on hard courts unless there are surface specific rankings (which would actually be interesting, but complicated for casual fans to follow). There are other issues with using it as a ranking system replacement, including Elo point inflation. But I’d be open to more work on more specific Elo orientated systems in tennis.
Matt: Pretty simple case of matchup differences. Medvedev’s huge 1st serve can retain a decent serving advantage against Djokovic. His flat, low and often central groundstrokes can force Djokovic to generate his own pace and angles. And Medvedev’s youth and fitness can sometimes outmatch Djokovic in the more physical points. Conversely, Nadal’s serve, even in its improved state, runs into a performance wall against Djokovic’s all-time great return game (Djokovic’s backhand return deals with Rafa’s favoured lefty serve spots better than anyone else). Nadal also has significant trouble returning Djokovic’s improved, late-career slice serve spots, and Rafa’s cross court forehand strength goes into Djokovic’s backhand in rallies which is unusually adept at taking topspin on the rise on hard courts. A younger Nadal could mitigate some of these issues with his physical abilities. An older Nadal, relying more than ever on short, first strike points on hard courts, often doesn’t get to lean on the same serve and serve+1 crutches that beat everyone else apart from Djokovic. Also Nadal matches up quite well against Medvedev on many outdoor hard courts (indoor less so).
All of that said, I don’t think a healthy Nadal is as big of an underdog against Djokovic on hard courts these days as he is often made out to be. An underdog for sure though.
Matt: ‘Suck’ is a strong word. But the simple answer is that none of them have any opportunity to play on grass outside of the tiny window that is the modern grass court season. If tennis wants its younger players to not suck on grass then there needs to be more opportunity to play on it. With more grass court tennis, perhaps a greater variation of skill sets would be developed out of necessity. Also modern movement, mostly developed and honed on hard and clay courts, is extremely dynamic and aggressive compared to some of the more traditional grass court tennis, meaning grass courts have become a bit like ice rinks during the first few days of play as unfamiliar players grapple with an inability to split step and foot plant in quite the same, explosive way they do on the other surfaces.
This will never happen because Wimbledon like their lawns too much, but I still don’t see why the area behind the baseline needs to be as lush as it is during the 1st week of play. It inevitably gets rubbed away into dirt anyway and has no bearing on the ball bounce (it’s only function is to be run on by the players). It’s also the place where all the worst slips happen in week one.
Matt: This is exactly what the ATP Next Gen Finals is for — experimenting with the format with a view to using the more successful elements on the main tour in the future. Coaching is already allowed at the Next Gen Finals, there’s a different scoring format, automated line calls etc. I’d actually like to see them experiment more with crazier things like a slightly higher net (the net hasn’t increased in height despite avg player height and spin rocketing up), although this won’t happen and would be irritating and incongruous for players.
Thanks to anyone who submitted questions and apologies to anyone who didn’t have their question answered (I ran out of time and room). I’ll try and do these monthly.
— MW
Twitter: @mattracquet
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Some great responses here, Matt. Re S&V. I'm more bullish on Cressy and that style in general than I've been for a long time. I think the height and the serving ability just keeps getting better and with many guys returning deep it's going to be interesting watching him and that style evolve. He probably has the worst groundstrokes in the top 100 (maybe top 300-400, even). If he could develop his forehand 10% more he would be a nightmare at Wimbledon. If I was Opelka I'd be taking notes and looking to implement that somewhat. At least on return (Cressy 1st serve return won:25% to Opelka's 20%. Cressy second serve won 45% to Opelka's 42%).