Producing the Next Champion
The USTA is pouring a tremendous amount of money and effort into producing the next Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, Andy Roddick, or Jim Courier. A gilt-edged panel of national and regional coaches has been created along with a detailed blueprint for developing and grooming the next bunch of young champions. The program is well-intentioned, well funded, and no effort is to be spared. The coaches are excellent, their reputations are on the line, and they are motivated to do a great job. I certainly see a positive role for them, but I just wanted to point out a factor in coaching that is a potential source of trouble but often missed. (Luckily for all of us, America is so big, we have so many tennis courts, coaches, and players that we are likely to see another great player emerge just by chance, regardless of any formal coaching and development program.)
Over-coaching: This danger is that the coaches will unwittingly weaken young players by spoon-feeding and over-advising them. Of course the tennis coaching business is a highly competitive one and players think it’s helpful for the coach to do a good bit of spoon-feeding. (Like milkshakes, this is attractive at the moment, but not good for you in the long run.) And if one coach won’t do it, the player may move to another who will.
What’s resulted is that these days, when a promising player has a problem, the nearest expert will quickly provide the solution. These players will not have to internally struggle for answers. Many of today’s coaches have, maybe by necessity, an affinity for this “mother-hen” approach to instruction where the most promising players get the instructional “full-court press” rather than a bit of advice combined with a shove towards self-reliance, independence and personal responsibility. Many coaches feel impelled to stand on court and supply most of the motivation for the day’s workout. They feed their charges endless buckets of balls while micromanaging their strokes and the intensity of their effort. This method often produces excellent strikers of the ball but weak, dependent people. It is, unfortunately, easier to produce robust groundstrokes than robust characters.
But what is my evidence for this theory? To be more exact, my theory is that: 1. Today’s players are mentally weaker than players of the pre-Open Era, and 2. The cause of it is coaches/parents/trainers/sports psychologists that hover over the players and try to help too much. Of course this is only theory, and an unproven one at that. But looking at various bits of disparate evidence and, putting them all together makes for a compelling argument. (at least in my mind) It is like a criminal case where the prosecutor must prove up his case with many bits of circumstantial evidence, no single one of which is totally compelling. Below I will try to identify the most pertinent ones.
Players are potential celebrities: This trend has been going on ever since the Open Era made the top players celebrities. The glare of the television cameras and the flash bulbs of the news-people have attracted a flock of coaches, psychologists, trainers and other advice-givers who are only too willing to share the burdens of world-wide fame with the players. The coaches are certainly not bad people and of course they want to do their jobs well. But they have an all-too-human incentive to tell the players and parents what they want to hear. And feeding the players endless balls, advice, and sympathy for any “problems” they may have is, in a sense, quite admirable because it requires an energetic coach. On the other hand, it can also make the players dependent and weak.
Tanking was rare before the Open Era: In my opinion the players of Open Era hit the ball far better than the champions of earlier times but are weaker mentally. Today’s players are far more likely to tank than were the players who developed before the flowering of the Open Era. Before the Open Era tanking was a relatively rare phenomenon in any sizable tournament, but unheard of in a major. Tanking in a Wimbledon final would have been utterly beyond conception for the likes of Budge, Kramer, Laver, Emerson, Gonzales, Sedgeman, Newcombe, Rosewall, Stolle, Smith, Roche, Ralston, McKinley, Trabert, Olmedo, etc. and I could easily augment this list with a hundred lesser-known names like Richey, Pasarell, Dell, Holmberg, Scott, Riessen, Froehling, Bond, FitzGibbon, and others. It was very unusual, in those days, for anybody among the top ten players from any major tennis country to tank in any tournament, and in a Slam Final, unimaginable.
As a personal example, Donald Dell and I (both of us ranked among the top ten men in the US in the 1960’s) toured the world together for a year in 1965. We played over 25 tournaments and fought our guts out in every one of them, in addition to 25 – 30 exhibitions in which we played each other and tried to win every time. There was no prize money. We just didn’t like losing and none of the other top players did either.
Open Era tanking: I am not for a moment claiming that all the name players of the Open Era are mentally soft. Of course there are many great competitors among them, most notable of whom is Rafael Nadal, who is as great a fighter as anyone who has ever played the game. Federer, Djokovic, and Murray are pretty good fighters, but not as good as Nadal. (Murray didn’t enhance his reputation as a fighter by losing early in Dubai this year and intimating to the press that he doesn’t try as hard in the smaller tournaments as he does in the majors.)
In stark contrast to the pre-Open Era champions, I recall watching Andre Agassi and Michael Stich warm up for the US Open final in 1994 and wondering, “Which one of these guys is going to get behind and tank first?” I did not have long to wait. Down a break in the first set Stich energetically set out to make the afternoon flight back to Dusselsorf by just going through the motions, whacking away at the ball and bitching at umpires. On the other hand, had Agassi run into difficulty first he was equally capable of an early dive. Nor are these guys terribly unusual.
In the 1994 Wimbledon final Goran Ivanisevic tanked the third set 6 – 0 against Pete Sampras after losing the first two sets in tie-breakers. Though he was substantially more resilient than Ivanisavec, Agassi, and Stich, Pete Sampras’ fighting spirit does not call to mind Jimmy Connors or Pancho Gonzales. I watched him throw in the towel after falling behind on too many occasions. (The Los Angeles Open of 2001 comes to mind. He had lost the first set of the final to Agassi, and my friend, Mike Franks, who was sitting next to me asked, “What’s your guess of the score that Agassi will win the second, 6-1 or 6-2? It was 6-2.) And the list of players with leaky intestinal fortitude does not, by any means, end here. Even Stephen Edberg and Ivan Lendl, were, early in their careers, noted for giving up on numerous occasions, not the least notable of which was the 1983 final of the US Open. Here, trailing two sets to one, Lendl tanked the fourth set, 6 – 0 against an ailing and aging Jimmy Connors after deciding, possibly, that putting up with the windy conditions and Connor’s remorseless efforts for three sets entitled him to dinner and an early movie with his girlfriend.
Jimmy Connors was renowned for his fighting spirit during his career, as were Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe. But their reputations as incredible competitors came partially from the fact that so many of their opponents were relatively weaker upstairs. Great competitors that they were, none of these guys would have stood out had they competed against the likes of Pancho Gonzales, Don Budge, Jack Kramer, Rod Laver, Roy Emerson, John Newcombe, etc. Fighting to the end was, in earlier days, the norm. (A factor helping Connors, Borg, and McEnroe was that they were raised and largely developed as players in the pre-Open Era, so they came up in a tougher, anonymous environment.)
I will not bother to discuss the loss of heart that occurs so regularly in obscure minor events, despite hefty guarantees, substantial prize money, and valuable computer points. But it is hard to fathom in the finals of Slam Events, where winning is worth millions of dollars and a place in the history books of the game. How weak can one be to throw in the towel when the ultimate prize is so close? With so much at stake it would pay to simply stay on the court as long as possible and hope the other guy slips and sprains his ankle. Millions of people play the lottery with odds worse than this.
The players of the pre-Open Era were not inherently stronger people. Don’t get me wrong. Players of the earlier era were not inherently stronger people than today’s players. It’s just that today’s players have been brought up in a totally different environment. And the question is, “What are the changes that have caused the differences?”
Is it the money? Many people claim that the money has changed the players. They say that today’s stars are so rich that they lose motivation. This does not make sense to me. In the pre-Open Era we played for no money at all, just trophies and honors. How could you get less motivation than that? Today’s players get honors and trophies, just like we did, but they get MONEY TOO. No matter how much a player might have, it’s hard to see how adding money to their other prizes could be a disincentive. In fact, if they have reached the point that another few million is a negative, I will supply them with my address and they can send me some of their excess.
In my opinion the reason that the older players were tougher is that they had no choice. In those days the game was little and talented juniors were not potential celebrities. There were few coaches, no psychologists or trainers and if we had a problem we had to solve it ourselves. The players hung out together and no one was interested in listening to our problems (other than our mothers and even they weren’t that interested). The other players were busy solving their own problems and looked down on you if you complained too much or had too many excuses. Since we had no alternatives we were forced to take responsibility for our own results. Moreover, we knew that the best way to get respect from the other guys was to keep our mouths shut, work on our games, compete hard, and win. This was obvious and simple.
The coaches in the pre-Open Era were tough! In those early days, before pop psychologists had changed the zeitgeist, coaches and trainers tended to be tougher and less understanding. I played tennis at UCLA for legendary coach J.D. Morgan who later became the school’s Athletic Director and built it into the athletic powerhouse that it is today. J.D. told us that if we lost but tried as hard as we could he would not be upset with us. What we learned, however, was that when we lost J.D. was always of the opinion that we had not tried as hard as we could and that a good ass-kicking was in order. It was a simple system, and we were powerfully motivated to put out extraordinary efforts. No one was in a hurry to face J.D. after losing a match.
And the UCLA training room was not a haven of sympathy either. Go in there and you were confronted with Larry Carter, Ducky Drake’s assistant and a firm believer that all tennis players were candy-asses. I went in once with a sore back and Larry threw me into a steaming whirlpool that covered me up to my neck. Larry was busy tending to a room full of injured football players and I think he forgot about me. At one point I called out to him to ask how much longer I should stay in (since my body temperature was probably approaching 110 degrees). “SHUT UP!” was his response. After about forty minutes he remembered me and said I could get out. By this time I was so weak that I couldn’t stand up by myself and had to be lifted out bodily. Needless to say, if I got an injury after that it had to be pretty bad before I went to the trainer.
Today it is different. Top talents are valuable commodities, and there are plenty of people ready to listen to their problems. At the important junior events there are parents, agents, coaches, trainers, psychologists and friends. Sympathetic ears abound, and it is only too tempting to lean on others for support. From the sore arm, to the miss-firing backhand, to the windy conditions, to the slippery courts, to the cheating opponent or poor schedule – all are subjects for consideration, discussion, sympathy and advice. Players rarely hear such expressions as, “Stop whining,” “Figure it out yourself.” or “You are lucky to be here at all.” (Unless, of course, they are being coached by Robert Lansdorp, who is a throw-back, great coach and as rough as Larry Carter.)
This situation persists because coaches, agents, and psychologists are replaceable. Great players are not. Moreover, many promising players attend tennis academies, of which there are plenty, and most academies are in business to make a profit. It is not profitable to be too tough on the customers. And if these youngsters make it high in the pro ranks they accumulate an entourage, the members of which who say unpleasant things quickly learn the truth of the expression, “nobody is indispensable.” Their positions are eagerly filled by others with a more amenable turn of phrase. All in all, it is not easy, these days, to produce strong, self-reliant people.
The harsher “good old days” are long gone and in many ways, fortunately so. But in these softer days the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. A person’s character tends to rise to the level that it has to. Difficult circumstances produce tough people with tools to meet challenges. It is an annealing process that can be unpleasant, but that is often, in the long run, beneficial. (like a couple of years in the marines) Few of us will seek out harsh circumstances if gentler and more pleasant alternatives are available, so it’s hard to imagine what will motivate change. (In times gone by, our blessing and curse were that we had no alternatives.)
The bottleneck in producing champions is mental rather than physical. Physical talents such as hand-eye coordination, foot-speed and fast reflexes are relatively cheap commodities. Any university tennis team has at least a player or two that can equal the pros in these areas, but mental weaknesses keep them from reaching the pro level. Of course the game is ultimately physical, but the champion’s mentality is what turns the reasonable or good athlete into the great performer.
By “champion’s mentality” I don’t simply mean the nerves to play one’s best in crucial situations. I am referring to more subtle attributes like: taking ultimate responsibility for performance, high motivation over a long period of time, ability to perceive and cure weaknesses, judgment in shot selection, practicality and goal orientation. Chris Evert, for example, was hardly the best athlete on the women’s tour, but her incredible mind turned her into the best performer. Champions get more out of their practice sessions than ordinary people. Champions are more perceptive in understanding and fixing their problems. They have an unusual clarity of mind in learning from mistakes and making adjustments. They tend to be strong, self-reliant people, and they do not generally get that way from being coddled and spoon-fed when they have problems.
With all of this in mind I would like to offer the following general thoughts regarding player development:
1. Building character is more important than building strokes.
2. Because of their powerful minds, most champions play a dominant role in their own developments, equal to or greater than that of their coaches.
3. Less coaching is preferable to too much, which has probably weakened and ruined more champions than it has helped.
4. Players should play more than they drill.
5. Tennis authorities should have confidence in the players’ own ability to meet and conquer adversity. They will rise to the occasion if they have to. Complaints and excuses, even valid ones, should be dismissed with as little fanfare as possible and without a great deal of sympathy. (which is seductively attractive but tends to weaken people)
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