Casual Kitchen Test

How is it possible that a player with Roger Federer's sublime talent can look like such an amateur in the French Open Final? How can Rafael Nadal beat him so badly? There's some encouragement here for all of us club players out there. Roger is forcing it. He doesn't have a lot of chances in any given game to take control of a point. Rafa is such a quick player, such a natural retreiver, and he can go from defense to offense in a point so quickly that Roger knows that any potentially neutral ball Rafa hits to him might be the last he sees. That extra mental pressure is what causes Roger to force shots-- just as regular players like you and I force shots when we are playing an opponent with just a slightly better baseline game. And if you know you might only get one or two chances in a GAME to put away a point, you'll go for a little bit too much on any given shot. Some of those shots might go in, but on the margin most of those shots become unforced errors. T...

Watching the French Open Women's final this morning and thinking that Anna Ivanovic and Dinara Safina are basically Lindsay Davenport 2.0. Big girls, 6' tall or more and not that quick around the court. But both just a notch quicker than Davenport, and just a notch stronger, and just a little bit better than she was in her prime.

For those of you at home trying to improve your tennis games, there is a great learning opportunity at 3-2 in the second set of the French Open Women's final. Ivanovic is serving with a game point to go up 4-2. Take a close look at the next two points after this: 1) She double faults. 2) Then she makes an unforced error from the baseline. It's now break point for Safina. Here's where, if you're in Ivanovic's shoes, you have to stop and adjust. You have to kill this string of errors right here, right now. And on the next point, you must get a solid first serve in play. But in Ivanovic's case, she steps right up to the baseline, rushes into her service motion, and dumps first serve into the net. Granted, Safina wasn't able to take advantage of the second serve that came next, and Ivanovic ended up holding serve a couple of deuces later. Lucky for Ivanovic. But I mention this series of points because this is a typical situation players will face at all skill ...