Talent, athleticism and competitive spirit will provide the foundation, but it’s tactics and guile that help a player use those qualities to win.
ROBERT DAVIS helps put the pieces of the strategy puzzle together.
No sooner were the draws for the 2014 US Open complete than the scramble for any and all information on first round opponents began. In the gym and in the locker room, players huddled together discussing strengths and weaknesses of this player or that. Coaches awaiting transport back to their hotels asked what worked and what did not work last time.
But there was relative calm for veteran coaches like Roger Rasheed, David McPherson, Sven Groeneveld and Patrick Mouratoglou, who were all on site with highly seeded players. With each of these coaches having invested countless hours collecting data on each possible opponent of their players, there was simply no need to panic.
Such elite coaches operate like CEOs of Fortune 500 companies who demand complex S.W.O.T analyses before each new business deal.
As both a player and coach, Brad Gilbert earned the respect of the tennis industry for his skills in scouting and preparing a rock solid game plan. His book, Winning Ugly, remains one of the best-selling tennis books of all time. It’s a treasure trove of anecdotes that stresses the importance of scouting, strategy and tactics. Gilbert illustrates over and over a simple strategy he used as a player and coach: “what do I want to make happen? And
what do I want to prevent from happening?” Then he would come up with the tactics.