So here is something new! We introduce Tennisnerd Academy, a feature I will do together with tennis coaches and brothers Nik and Vijay Siwach who used to run their own academy in Germany and are now based in Malta. What tennis stroke or situation do you struggle with? Please comment and let us know! The idea behind Tennisnerd academy is to give multiple solutions to common tennis problems. But we …
Clay courts are a bit of a divider in the tennis world. We all know what Rafael Nadal thinks, but guys like Nick Kyrgios repeatedly bash the surface. If we look at it with it from the UK’s standpoint, Clay Court Services’ Peter Sutton explains how clay courts can help British tennis. It is obvious if you look at the world rankings that clay courts play a role in producing …
The playing careers for tennis players are often short, with the average age of retirement around 27 years old. On top of that, average earnings are not as high as you would expect, reportedly around $300,000 career prize earnings, with many players earning less. What does life look like after retirement? Andy Murray Unlikely To Experience Financial Issues It is the news of Andy Murray’s retirement that got me …
I am happy to publish a guest post from Cyrus Sethna and Nihal Daswani who were participants at the Australian Open “AO to AI Hackathon”. It deals with how data affects and can affect tennis in the future. The 80’s saw arguably some of the best years of tennis on record. Be it the epic Borg-McEnroe final at Wimbledon, the Edberg-Becker rivalry, the countless battles between Navratilova & Evert, or …
The forehand is usually our most reliable wing and where we finish most of our points. This is not always the case of course, but a general rule. For many players the backhand is a huge weakness, how can we overcome this? Well, the obvious solution is to keep working on the backhand and that’s the strategy I’m trying to work on personally. Since my backhand has always been fairly …
I think it always make sense to work on your technique, but sometimes there are such big issues in your game that you need to change an entire stroke. Federer has not been in need of any dramatic changes, but constantly makes small tweaks to his game and has emerged in 2017 with a one-handed backhand that someone defeats belief. Just evidence what can happen if you’re focused on becoming a better …
For a while it seemed on the verge of extinction. The game was moving towards faster and faster baseline rallies and the two-hander is an easier shot to take on the rise. Then Federer came, dominated and now we are in a situation where the one-handed backhanded seems to be thriving. Just looking at this year’s Indian Wells with Stan the Man Wawrinka beating Dominic Thiem, Pablo Cuevas and his classic …
The Aussie younglings have kicked up a lot of fuzz in recent years. Kokkinakis has been the least prone to end up in the media, but Kyrgios helped him during his own match against Wawrinka last year when he announced to the microphones around the court that his friend, Kokkinakis, had been banging Wawrinka’s current girlfriend. Kyrgios comment was an illustration of how “hot” is head gets at times. Sometimes …
I just had to start writing about this, but I might not finish it tonight and with this post. It’s simply a topic at the heart of our game. What’s in the head of a tennis player? We all know that the deciding factor in most tennis matches is the mental ability. Confidence. How you deal with setbacks. How much you want it. How nervous you are. How you handle …
This is definitely a topic that is always up for debate. Everyone has their favourite era and when the GOAT discussion starts, one era is always weaker than the other etc. I grew up with Edberg and Becker as heroes, enjoyed Agassi’s unorthodox style, snoozed through Sampras dominance, regained interest in tennis thanks to Federer, and really got hooked during his dominant years, now I’m a devotee but I’m missing …
