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Post Info TOPIC: Andy appoints Lendl as Coach


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RE: Andy appoints Lendl as Coach


Yes, yes, yes .... but don't you find it so tiring, being Captain Sensible all the time?

Of course one makes one's own luck. As someone (often attributed to Gary player, but Sam Goldwyn seems to have been the original) once said: "The harder I work, the luckier I get."

What I was querying was this. A guy gets almost to the top playing as a mainly defensive counterpuncher. He has the misfortune - unlike an inferior counter-puncher Lleyton Hewitt - to be a contemporary of maybe the 3 best players in the history of the game. 

So if he has got where he is through being a defensive counter-puncher, what makes you think that being more aggressive will make him a better player? To me, it seems more likely that it will make him a worse player.

And I still don't get what Lendl brings. The guy played tennis in a different era. He's been out of the game for nearly 20 years. But then again, I've always been puzzled by what coaches actually do, so maybe Andy just likes him, and would like someone along to pass the time of day with.



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I must admit I don't 'get' Lendl as a coach either. But if it works then it's great and good choice Andy.

I'm not a great advocate of assuming that sportsmen & women go on to be great coaches in their own sport. Any more than they go on to be great commentators...

But benefit of the doubt and all that.



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Ratty wrote:
What I was querying was this. A guy gets almostto the top playing as a mainly defensive counterpuncher. He has the misfortune - unlike an inferior counter-puncher Lleyton Hewitt - to be a contemporary of maybe the 3 best players in the history of the game. 

So if he has got where he is through being a defensive counter-puncher, what makes you think that being more aggressive will make him a better player? To me, it seems more likely that it will make him a worse player.


 

From my point of view, and I suspect that I speak for at least 2 or 3 other regulars on this site, I just don't think that being a good counter puncher will be enough for him to win Grand Slams. So while playing more aggresively might be a bit of risk I think it is one he has to take if he wants to take the final step. Furthermore I don't think it would be that big a risk, no one is advocating all out aggression, what we want is what he did in the first set and a bit against Nadal at Wimbledon last year.

Of course if he is happy being world number 4, winning 2 Masters Series events a year and falling just short in Grand Slams then he can just carry on doing what has done for the last few years. He will still have had a really good career that most players would have loved to have. I just happen to think he is capable of more and that it will be a tragedy if he doesn't win at least 3 or 4 slams.



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Ratty wrote:

So if he has got where he is through being a defensive counter-puncher, what makes you think that being more aggressive will make him a better player? To me, it seems more likely that it will make him a worse player.


 

I didn't actually make any comment on that specifically, more just generally about considering ways to improve.

But if you're interested ( smile ) in truth I thought for a very long time that Andy was getting on perfectly well with his general style and for a while argued against the suggestion that he really needed to become more attacking. He was getting high in the rankings that way, which is largely why I wasn't concerned.

As it is, I think most people would say in the last year or two that he has actually become rather more attacking,  basically good controlled agression, as compared to two or three years ago when he was generally much more passive. 

The last year brought his best overall Slam resuts.  I think there is a good arguement that the generally more aggresive play he has shown has helped him bring that to Slams and that has helped him there.     

However, having watched him enough in major matches, particularly Slam defeats, I do now think that there is a weight of evidence that at crucial points he reverts to being too passive for the situation ( unlike Djokovic who seems to seize his opportunities more ).  I do think there is something in him that makes him revert too often, say at a crucial  break point, to looking for an opponent making an error rather than taking a chance to really impose himself on the point.  At times this unnecessary passiveness extents over a period.

I think many of us will recall at Wimbledon when he did probably overforce on an important point ( well actually just overhit one ball ) against Nadal, but he appeared to many to be playing the right way.  Missing that one ball seemed to bring real self dount as to his strategy and confusion can breed mistakes, which seemed to be what subsequently happened. To me, what Andy needs is to me more sure of his strategy in the most important matches, and I do think that is the controlled ( not over ) aggresion that he has displayed successfully in the last year or so,  He also needs to have faith in his strategy and certainly not be put off it by say one errant shot.

Like everyone else, I don't know if the Lendl appointment will work or not.  But I can see that a guy who has been there and done it and can pass on what helped him strategy wise and indeed maybe mentally wise could well be a real help.



-- Edited by indiana on Sunday 1st of January 2012 10:05:30 PM

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Taken on board, thank you. 

BUT - as a personal speculation - what has stopped Andy winning a GS is that there were THREE better players in his way.

Now, I think that Fed may now be too old to win seven best-of-five matches in a row - his last GS title was the Aussie Open in 2009. And I also think that Nadal may have lost his mojo permanently.

So that would leave only ONE major obstacle in Andy's way. And surely Djokovic can't win everything?

But of course, if Andy does win a GS in the next couple of years, the usual human desire to find stories and patterns will undoubtedly attribute his success to (i) his genius decision to appoint Lendl as his coach, and/or (ii) his new aggressive gameplan.

But I will know the real reason - chance and circumstance!

smile 

PS - as further "proof" of my hypothesis that Andy was just unlucky on the timing of his career, I think the last players to make meteoric and sustained rises up the rankings were Nadal, Djokovic and Andy himself - and the most recent (Andy) was six years ago.  



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Do you seriously think that most of us here are not unaware that it hasn't been exactly the best time for Andy to have broken through ?

All I was essentially saying was that im my opinion there are still things that Andy needs to look at how he plays in Slams.  In my view being a bit more aggressive has made him more consistent in Slams, so that already to me is positive change.  But I do think that he still goes away from that and becomes too passive at important times, and this is very much to his detriment.  If you don't think there are things he could improve on, and indeed don't think he has made some improvements in the last year or two, rather than sit happy with a game that was winning him some Masters and getting him very highly ranked, then I just simply disagree with you.

I think he needs to examine remaining issues and bringing in Lendl might help.  There are of course no guarantees.  But some changes to his strategy /  mindset may help to improve the odds more in his favour.

Sorry, I am a bit repeating myself, but I'm not sure you've entirely got where I was coming from.

Anyway, if Fed and / or Nadal becomes less of a major factor, I again think folk might just notice that, take it in the the round that that will clearly help his chances, and not just jump to the conclusions that you suggest.  I'm sorry you think folks' general reasoning powers are so poor. 

Chance and circumstance play a part, a particularly big part when you're in the Federer / Nadal / Djokovic era, but you can still take steps to improve yourself.  It seems that you would prefer him to just carry on as is and wait till there should be less competition around at the highest level.  I just simply disagree with that.  Also, whilst you could be right about Nadal you could also be quite wrong, and even Fed could quite easily have a couple of very good years left in him.

In my view you've taken this chance theory and just gone with it too strongly, particularly when related to sport, and particularly here when I think there are improvements that can be made to Andy's game. Hey, apart from strategy I've never talked about Andy so long without mentioning his serve  smile

To quote that introduction by Daniel Kahneman :

"A recurrent theme of this book is that luck plays a large role in every story of success; it is almost always easy to identify a small change in the story that would have turned a remarkable achievement into a mediocre outcome"

Seems reasonable, I might even say obvious. Andy's whole life to date will have included many junctions where different paths could have been taken and I am sure some possibilities would not have left him anything like as good a player as he is now, so to me it's not just Fed / Nadal / Djokovic, it's the whole story.  I don't actually find that quote particularly illuminating or profound. He is where is, the good and the bad luck playing a "large role",  but I don't see how on earth that precludes him from taking further steps to try and maximise his chances, having reached this point in his career.

Anyway apologies I haven't made reference to any great works myself, but I do think it can be too easy to point to some words and / or theory and let them to some extent override other truths which are clear to the unread.  For instance, Andy's Slam defeats have more to them than "simple bad luck" whatever you might be reading into this "Occam's Razor".

Common sense  -  moi   smile



-- Edited by indiana on Monday 2nd of January 2012 12:31:02 PM

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I've been trying to resist the temptation to take the bait here ... and now I've managed to resist for long enough that Indiana has already said just about everything I would have said about this issue, and quite a lot more besides!

In essence then, yes there's a huge amount of chance involved (if proof of that were needed, just remember that Thomas Johansson won the AO once!) and there's a high chance that if Andy does win a slam, people will try to give the credit it for it to some perceived change that happened just before he won when that is far from the whole reason and perhaps not even the reason at all, but to give yourself the best chance of ending up on the right size of the luck, you have to try to do anything legal that you possibly can to gain any edge you possibly can ... just ask Dave Brailsford / Mark Cavendish / any of the other successful riders from British cycling - they swear by that approach and it hasn't done them much harm in recent years!

OEM has a really good interview with Lendl in the Thunderer today btw - huge enthusiasm for the challenge ahead comes across.

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steven wrote:

OEM has a really good interview with Lendl in the Thunderer today btw - huge enthusiasm for the challenge ahead comes across.


Oh dear, I suspect I'm now being contrary just for the sake of it, but ...

... what useful information can one really gather from an interview reported in a newspaper? After all, I think all of us could probably sketch out most of Harman's piece without even reading it (I haven't).    

You see, Neil has a job, which is to help fill a newspaper with entertaining writing. He won't be doing his job if he writes a boring story, however true it might be. For example, he might have found Ivan to be VERY DULL INDEED. But unless he puts some sort of interesting spin on Ivan's dullness, his salary won't be paid for much longer. And of course, if he's rude about Ivan, that is going to cause him serious "access" problems so long as Ivan is Andy's coach. 

So, the only rational thing for Neil to do is to write a really positive piece, with lots of puff about Ivan's enthusiasm for (ahem) "the challenge ahead". Which it sounds like he's done. 

But what - of interest and usefulness - this tells us, is likely to be diddly squat.

Sorry, honestly!

smile

 



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Ratty wrote:

Oh dear, I suspect I'm now being contrary just for the sake of it,

 


 Yes - that's about the only thing you have said that I agree with! Maybe you feel you have to live up to the GOW image?



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I might, if I knew what the GOW was!

I did nearly burst with pride upon being voted the most controversial poster a couple of years back, though...

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I could have sworn you used the expression yourself a while ago. . . Grumpy Old Woman. My apologies if you are a Grumpy Old Man, but I thought I remembered you saying you were female. I may well be mixing you up with someone else!

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I hadn't clue either about GOW and had googled and found God of War ( related to a game apparently, I'm no gamer ).  Seemed quite appropriate.

Or Goddess of War  wink



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I'm not quite sure why a lively - but I hope always polite, and often apologetic - questioning of assumptions should be regarded as grumpy, warlike, or trolling.

But so it goes....

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'I'm not quite sure why a lively - but I hope always polite, and often apologetic - questioning of assumptions should be regarded as grumpy, warlike, or trolling.'



Nor do I Ratty

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Thank you Julia.

(At long last....

......a friend!!!)

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