I did an article in the Cambridge News on David Rice recently as he's left Gosling to train with a coach at a village tennis club near Cambridge. I hope it makes for some interesting reading.
Ditto to Shhh - a really interesting read.... and if Hamid is to thank for the difference in Dave's game this year at Surbiton from last year when I saw him live once (and on livestream more than once) then he's doing a great job !
Dave has great skills but has often looked lost on the court (unlike Ed Corrie, say, who looks as though he knows exactly what to do, what his gameplan is, but can't always achieve it, or just has certain limitations).
and interesting asides about Gosling too - and the state of coaching in general (which I think the press, for instance, are remarkably lenient about, given the stick they give the players).
It's a nice puff piece, I like what Hejazi has to say and I certainly hope the changes he has made will benefit Dave. However, you could just as easily write a puff piece about a player who was training at a village club and is now training at Gosling. That player would no doubt talk about the wonderful facilities and great coaches and the improvements they are making because of it.
Not a bad court that, but more Cambridge suburbs than a village, big rugby club and the footie club play in the football pyramid so hardly the sticks. For David it's probably the right thing to do hes resourced training that is bespoke to his needs, gone for austerity and generated some hunger. Ryan Storrie from just down the road probably needs something different and Aljaz liked Gosling so much he pushed on into the top 100 and became British. I don't think we should bin the tennis centre for some more courts at Shelford but he makes a good point of training to fit in with his working environment. Nice story thanks for posting and good luck to David.
Fair points, RJA and Oakland but I'd like to pick up on a couple of things.
The point about David's change of coaches is that you would expect someone who has gone from a village club to state of the art facilities to rave about their new environment. To leave that behind to work with a coach in a far more basic set up is surprising imo and goes against what we would expect to be the best situation for our players. David's predicament shows that it doesn't matter how good the facilities are, how many coaches you have, if what's on offer doesn't suit an individual, it's more than likely not going to work out.
Oakland you're right about Shelford being a kind of 'suburb' of Cambridge but it is still a *village* club in that it has no indoor facilities, no bubble for the winter, a relatively small clubhouse and four hard courts. That's it. It's a great club and the area is fortunate to have a team of coaches that cover Shelford and other smaller clubs but, as Hamid says in the article, it's not the kind of environment one would expect to find a top British player. Which underlines the point that it's not about how fancy the facilities are, but how well the coaching set-up fits an individual.
For some the big centres may be best, for others a more low key set-up might suit them better. This is a hugely important balance to strike imo, and I'm surprised more hasn't been done to get it right.
This is one of several recent articles that has me questioning why our players, particularly the women, are spending so much time in the gym. I think there is a severe danger that players who are developing a strong musculature as a result of gym work are going to end up with shoulders that destroy their own elbows.
Wouldn't David have got some type of deal at Gosling in terms of coaching cost due to the LTA grants awarded to HPCs? Now it must be costing him more money unless Hamid is coaching him for free?
