Tennis Prose




Jan/15

21

Tennis Advice From Johan Kriek

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One of the best benefits of Facebook is when Johan Kriek offers some free advice and tips. When he posts on tennis, it’s like reading gold…

I hammer away at my juniors that if they can cut their unforced errors in half from year to year as we develop their strokes and their games, they will begin to win not more matches, but tournaments! Unforced errors are just plain STUPID! You have to have the mechanics in your strokes to be able to play your “middle tennis/rally speed/” in order to compete! Your mindset has to be settled and know what is YOUR rally speed. FYI….a rally shot is that shot, no matter if it is a slice or a topspin that you can make 9 out of 10 times to the area of the court you aim at! If you cannot make a ball to that spot at a 90-100% success rate, go back to the court, set up a ball machine ( preferably a Playmate that can be configured for drills and speed of balls and spin and can serve!) and set up the drills with thousands of combinations and start drilling, thousands of balls a week should finally set up your muscle memory to gain the consistency…then go see a shrink in how to think on the court like when to hit rally shots and when to hit bigger…..Frank Giampolo, Jim Loehr, Alan Fox and if you are not afraid of a cranky South-African, come and see me…but I have no credentials like Giampolo….I do it by “feel” and no bs….

That’s about the best advice any young player can learn from IMO.

You want more from Johan? Okay, here’s what the former two time Aussie Open champ and ATP #7 has to say about what he’s seen so far at this year’s action in Melbourne…

Ok, I am sleep deprived big time due to the Oz Open and I am watching tennis until way past 2am every night…I am an addict, cannot change that…for tennis and the always around the corner stuff in tennis. But I am going to make some observations. I watched a number of women’s matches and I am astonished at the level of incompetence between the ears! What is going on? I see the same old s*** year in and year out from some of these top women…who are their coaches? Serena should be on the beach with a margarita and a little umbrella straw and she is strolling through her tennis matches. No wonder she dominates all of the WTA players, I mean ALL of them. Some of these top women have so many unforced errors and then to top it off their serves (except for Serena) mean only to start the point, not inflict pain or at least be able to think two shots ahead…..I just don’t get it! I do however see a couple of “newbies” some young and some older who are going to push the top more and more…..Sharapova, 51 unforced errors, double faults etc. Same old stuff!!
shaking my head…this is only the beginning of the season….scary to see Lisicki, Kerber, Ivanovic, Stephens, Jankovic and so many others not be able to improve at all…..not IMHO…
Look at how the top men are being pushed week after week…..no easy matches…ok maybe Djokovic has had an easy few rounds, but Roger battled 4 sets, Nadal battled deep into a fifth against a qualifier…..men’s tennis is “deep” in quality… always had it…
On the WTA tour there is Serena Williams and then there is the rest…..maybe she should step up and find a replacement for herself somewhere in the world to save the WTA from embarrassment. No amount of “whitewash” blabber on TV by the “experts” is going to solve this trend. We know what we see…..the tennis public is not that stupid. Okay let the volleys of hate mail begin 🙂

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2 comments

  • Andrew Miller · January 21, 2015 at 6:18 pm

    Kriek seems spot on for the most part – unfair on the women’s players. Why not take a shot at the IPTL?

  • Scoop Malinowski · January 21, 2015 at 8:11 pm

    Gotta respect the way Kriek tells it like he sees it. Womens tennis is primarily rock em sock em robots bashing it out from the baseline. I can see how some people love it and old schoolers like Kriek don’t fully appreciate it. I like certain matches, certain players, newcomers like Diyas, Davis, Mladenovic, Bouchard, Garcia, Giorgi, Muguruza, Townsend, etc. And the vets like Kvitova, Radwanska, Wozniacki, Williams, Ana, Peng Shuai, Larcher De Brito.

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