Zverev and the Results Game

I have been reading about Zverev and his tennis career. Although German, Germany has little interest in him even when he wins big titles. This goes to show Thiem is inaccurate when he claims it's all about effort and results. Zverev is doing well but doesn't receive the hype much as Ostapenko didn't when she won Roland Garros. Trained by his mother, unlike his older brother, Zverev started with an aggressive game fairly early on which didn't seem to give him the desired results. His father wasn't concerned about this. He felt he should stick with his aggressive style. That was the way I approached my tennis game but it has initial drawbacks because you tend to lose to people who cling on because they are good at stringing out points. Nevertheless, like Zverev's father, my mother was unperturbed. She felt that the game would come good in time because it meant I wouldn't be afraid of playing high risk shots when the score line was tight. As we can see with Zverev, she was right! A defensive game gives you better win/loss ratio, initially. Later on, these defensive players can do less well than they should e.g. Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, Jana Novotna, both players I loved to watch. Novotna, an incredibly talented tennis player, only won one singles Grand Slam (Wimbledon) despite reaching number 2 in the world. Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario won 4 Grand Slams and reached number 1 in the world. A terrific career but she was capable of winning far more Grand Slams and dominating the game.

Why is it that the aggressive game doesn't always pay off? I think this is mainly because the aggressive player has a high risk strategy. It's a do or die plan. I had very little patience with playing on the baseline. I expected to come up the court or into the net as soon as possible and put away the ball. Long rallies were not in my armoury. The problem for me was that most matches on the ITF were played on clay which favours patient players with a defensive, baseline game. I wanted to hit out-wide shots or tricky side spin, or slice balls from the back of the court and then rush in on whichever gives me a weak return. I'd play other high risk shots, such as, constantly changing the direction of the ball. This all worked if done suddenly but then the coach works out my strategy, panics and it loses effect. I had one opponent whose coach literally leapt out of her chair and started screaming something at my opponent after I hit an extreme out-wide angled winner on my return of serve. Needless to say, she received no warning from the umpire, and my opponent changed her shot making. So now I had to change my game plan. This is why I don't understand players at the top of the game saying they are just going out there to play their game. That doesn't work! It's not all about your game, you have to respond to your opponent's game and change tactics to win! 

This could be one of the reasons Serena hasn't won her 24th. She has an awesome game but that's not enough! Serena tends not to change with the conditions or with her opponent's change of tactics, or at least not fast enough. This gives her opponent opportunities to dominate the match, become confident and either get back into the match or widen their lead. It's then harder for Serena to contain them and get herself back into the match or maintain her lead.

Essentially, I am a hard court player who is comfortable on grass. I serve hard and flat and power through my groundstrokes but love to hit a surprise shot. Hence, I had a complex game which needed more regular match play at an international level. England has mainly hard courts both outdoors and indoors. Clay is hard to find and grass impossible. Different surfaces suit different games, therefore, lower ranked players need the same choice of surfaces for tournaments as top players, otherwise they can't play their best. 

So I had this idea today. Why don't ITF tournaments, especially those at the lower end, create more opportunities for those stuck on the alternate list, as I was! For instance, it's uneconomical and a waste of time for unranked players to travel to a tournament say, Croatia, and play only one match a week. Why isn't there a parallel (round-robin) tournament for those who have lost early on in the main qualifying rounds and those from the alternate list? It would mean more players could turn up to the tournament than are spaces for in the main event. In this way, unranked and lower ranked players gain much needed international experience and get to know players they'll meet elsewhere as well as improve their ranking faster, if points or fraction points and prize money were awarded in every round! It would motivate players to keep going and persevere despite maybe being talented but having a difficult background. (Rather like, Universal Basic Income would in the non-tennis world.) The budget is there, it's a matter of distribution of wealth. 

This system would also help the tournament because there wouldn't be gaps in the draw since there would be enough alternates on site for last minute substitution. There were times I had to sadly withdraw from a tournament because it was too late to make travel arrangements. If the cut had been larger in scope I would have been notified in time. Sometimes I slipped in at the last minute because someone withdrew from the tournament. Other times I could be in the top 4 or 5 alternates and nothing moved so it was impossible to predict whether one should make unnecessary travel arrangements anyway or just withdraw before being fined for no-show despite being told with only hours to get to the other end of Europe. It also increases overheads if you can't book in advance. So the system advantages those that don't need it.

Zverev seems to have come good. He's just won Madrid, a major tournament but then he's been playing competitive tennis (combining Juniors, ITF, and the Challenger Tour) since 14 including a qualifying round at an ATP event (2011)! Zverev won the Juniors AO which he used to kick start his professional career in 2014. So it looks like he's a wunderkind overnight but it's been 10 years in the making. He struggled on the Pro tour. Azarenka says the same thing in a recent interview with Chris Evert. She found making the transition from Juniors to ITF difficult but luckily Azarenka was on schemes that helped her to transition faster so she didn't have to figure out the win/loss ratio on the ITF's lower level. The players on the ITF are a different breed from those on the WTA. They are a tough nut to crack! Harder still, because the matches weren't televised you had no idea what you were up against until you stepped out on a match court. The lowest end of the ITF still isn't live streamed, as far as I'm aware. The interview also showed how luck and good fortune play a huge part in a success story. The idea that hard work is all that's needed is not the case. You need both parents on board, you need the opportunity to practise without having to pay large sums of money just to do so, you need schemes that give you opportunities and not just isolated ones at that and you need a life that allows you to fully focus and not exhaust you from discrimination! You also need to be paid! It's absurd not to pay a professional player! Even more absurd that a professional player regardless of ranking doesn't receive expenses!

Schwartzman, a 28 year old top 10 Jewish Argentinian player, who has suffered anti-Semitism on the tour, has also talked about how slow going the beginning stages of the ITF tour are and how soul destroying it is because of the win/loss ratio. Telling me! Listening to these stories from both women and men I feel a lot better. 🙂🎾However, these are players who have reached the top of the game but essentially didn't crack the lower end of the ITF, they simply by-passed it. Now that doesn't make me feel better😥