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Sep/15

24

Champions Offer Advice To Rafael Nadal

rafangkWith his once mighty game and confidence flagging, the formerly invincible Rafael Nadal is enduring through the worst slump of his career, dropping out of the ATP top five this year. Nadal, the fourteen-time major champion, has always prided himself on refining his game and finding new ideas and tactics to constantly evolve and improve. But today, Nadal seems to have stagnated into a mediocre version of himself. One of the beauties of tennis, is that change can happen in an instant – advice, inspiration and counsel can generate from absolutely any source – for example, the American of the 70’s Jeff Borowiak once said he was losing a match at Wimbledon – until an astute ballkid had the gumption to suggest he should go to net more. Borowiak heeded the helpful advice from the youngster and eventually he won the match. So for this feature, I asked several prominent champions if they could offer the 29-year-old Nadal any advice or suggestions about how to regain his missing mojo —

Peter Fleming: “He’s just lost his confidence, that’s all. He just needs to go out and have fun again and just let it go. And hopefully things will come back to him.”

Manuel Santana: “Rafa is a champion all the way. As a champion, he’s going to make better what’s happened to him. He’s such a good player. I see many people around here saying he’s finished, finished, finished. He’s not finished. He’s going to win at least one more time Paris. The players don’t understand that Rafa is not finished. He’s only 29. The master (Roger Federer) is 34 [smiles]. My advice to Rafa to break this slump? Right now his second serve is a little weak. He certainly knows that he has to make more first serves. He’s a champion. And he’s going to be a champion for many more years.”

Rennae Stubbs: “It’s hard to tell someone that great what to do. I do think he knows what he has to do. When you don’t have that confidence and you’re losing matches and the balls are getting short on the court and obviously, the forehand… you just gotta keep working hard. You have to just try and win that one match that can change things around for you. And maybe that one match is here. He stated that he’s feeling really good and he’s almost back to his best. If that’s the case, then it’s hard to tell somebody as great as him what to do. I think he knows what he has to do. For me, he has to just win one of those really big matches against one of those big players again. And his confidence will be bac like that.”

Guy Forget: “It’s hard to give advice to someone who’s won so many matches. He’s been one of the best ambassadors we’ve ever had in our sport. So I trust him 100 percent to find the right solution. I think he’s had some physical issues in the last year, year and a half, that probably changed his way of practicing and of training. He had to do a little less. I think by doing that, he maybe lost a bit of speed, which is normal. And if any of the top guys – whether it’s Roger or Rafa or Novak – that are good in defense – lose a little bit of their speed, then you can lose a bit of your confidence. And it’s all linked together. As soon as you start to be physically fit again, you can train more, you can be faster, then you play better and have more confidence. It builds up. I think as soon as Rafa will be physically fit again, he’ll get up to where he was. I don’t think there’s any need for him to change the way he plays. Of course, he can serve a little bigger. But Rafa has been unbelievable the past six, seven years to always improve his game, to always find new things from the way things worked earlier. He’s such a true champion that I wouldn’t dare giving him advice [smiles].”

Corrado Barrazzuti: “A big champion like that, it’s very difficult for me to help Nadal. For me, it’s very difficult to give advice to Nadal. Because he’s a big champion, he’s won all that there is to win in the world. What I can say… I really don’t know [laughs]. I don’t think that he needs much advice. Nadal is a big champion. And he’s gonna make a lot of victories still in the career I think.”

Feliciano Lopez: “Advice from me to him? I think it should be the opposite [smiles]. Well, all those players, they go through tough moments. I remember Roger, two or three years ago, he wasn’t playing his best. He was able to come back stronger. I think now with Rafa, I thin he’s going to do the same. It’s not easy to be top of the hill every year. So he’s not playing his best. But he’s going to be okay. He’s not at the end of his career.”

Mark Woodforde: “It’s tough to break away from something that’s held up for years and years since he was a youngster. Being primarily a defensive player, his movement has always been supreme. I think he’s with a bit of a confidence lapse, his movement being compromised, so he doesn’t recover out of the corners as well. In the past, he’s been able to adapt to playing on hard courts in New York and grass on Wimbledon by flattening out his ground play and getting closer to the baseline. And a willingness to move forward. I think it’s easier said than done, but for longevity in his career, I think that’s maybe something he needs to look into – is just trying to shorten up some of the points, otherwise, if he continues on hovering so deep behind the court playing these elongated points, it’s tough to see him playing for another five years.”

Tom Gullickson: “Obviously, a guy with his credentials, I’m sure there’s no panic or there certainly shouldn’t be any panic. I think kind of just getting back to fundamentals a little bit and if I were him I’d kinda review tapes of when I was playing my best tennis – on all surfaces, not just clay – when he won Wimbledon, when he won US Open. I would virtually take out those tapes and study what I was doing then and compare it to what’s happening now. And just think of continuing to get better all the time. I think his game has leveled off, stagnated a little bit, while the other guys up at the top are getting better. And it’s kind of interesting to watch Federer kind of re-create himself under Edberg’s influence and obviously going to the 97 instead of the 90 and I think he’s serving better, the backhand is better. He rediscovered the joy of winning points at the net, which I think, for me, as a coach with a formerly aggressive player, I love the fact that Federer is kind of setting the trend of You can win at the net. I think these guys, Djokovic, are finishing more points at the net.”

“I think when Nadal played his best tennis on hard court and on grass, his court positioning was very good and he was playing more inside the court. When he loses confidence, his natural instinct, he tends to fall back behind the baseline sometimes, and wait for the ball to settle, wait for it to reach its peak, rather than taking the ball on the rise. When he’s inside the court playing aggressive with his forehand and then finishing points at the net – all those things go together. Better court positioning makes taking the ball early at the top of the bounce a lot easier. And because of that your transition game is going to get better, because you’re a lot closer to the net. You don’t have far to go to get in good position to make a volley. And close the point with a volley. These would be my suggestions.”

Henri Leconte: “I think he has to start working on his game to play maybe shorter points, because he wants to… I don’t think he can play the same way he did a long time ago, you know, from the baseline and stay back and make winners. I think he should try to change a little bit his game like Roger did, to shorten points, to play better, go for the shots. That’s what he has to do.”

Scoop’s latest book Facing Nadal is available at amazon for $9.99BookCoverImage

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24 comments

  • Moskova Moskova · September 24, 2015 at 2:57 pm

    cool book cover scoop !

    my advice for rafa – whom i like just as much as FED and is probably the main chink in the armour of FED’s GOAT status is….

    to go back to your old training regime.

  • Moskova Moskova · September 24, 2015 at 3:32 pm

    fair enough LOL 😉

  • Scoop Malinowski · September 25, 2015 at 12:41 pm

    I wish I could ask Pete Sampras for his take on Rafa, as a guy the pundits wrote off as finished, Pete had the last laugh when he won US Open at 31, wonder if he believes Rafa can still win majors?

  • Andrew Miller · September 26, 2015 at 12:05 pm

    Yeah he has a shot of coming back – not like he’s fallen that far. He’s fallen that far for Nadal. If Isner was at Nadal’s ranking we’d be celebrating him as the U.S.’ first top 7 player since Roddick (Fish got to #9). He hasn’t fallen to Agassi’s lowly #121 when he was playing challengers.

    No crying for Rafa Nadal on my part. He’s had an awesome career and having a few issues in his 11th year as a tennis pro is normal. Ten years of dominance more or less since just before the 2005 Miami tournament – pretty unbelievable. His results on grass have been lackluster since 2011. He couldn’t keep up the French Open winning forever even if that seemed like a lock.

    Anyways, like any champ you can’t count him out. But you can’t count on him to win another one either, that’s just not the way the game works.

    I think the more surprising results are the next generation’s failure to take advantage of any of this. Raonic, Nishikori etc – even Kyrgios. They get an opportunity and they just blow it.

  • Dan Markowitz · September 26, 2015 at 12:16 pm

    Well, it’s not like the other Big 3, Andrew, are opening the window. The fact is the Next Generation doesn’t have any great players in it and Nishikori is the only one who’s even very good. Raonic and Dimitrov are only good and Tomic and Harry are mediocre.

    And Nadal has played horribly this year, getting creamed by Djoko at the French and losing to Fognini, FLo, and Kei. Heck, he even almost lost to Hewitt in the JMac exhibition he played. At Wimby he loses to Dustin, please!

  • Over Rated · September 26, 2015 at 1:28 pm

    Harry ain’t mediocre Daniel; he’s a challenger level player. I doubt he’ll ever sustain mediocre for any length of time.

  • Scoop Malinowski · September 26, 2015 at 5:07 pm

    I really think Rafa can solve his issues by playing Fed – he will rise to the occasion – even tho Fed is better than Rafa now Rafa knows how to beat Fed and will get into that groove of bashing the Fed BH — but this time it will be tougher than ever to do because Fed is at his best right now but when they play – perhaps in Basel – that matchup will be the make or break for Rafa, if he can raise his game to beat Fed he can spark back to his old self — imo

  • Scoop Malinowski · September 26, 2015 at 5:12 pm

    Brown’s win over Rafa was amazing and it was the second time he slayed Rafa — remember Brown also beat Hewitt at Wimble — Rafa is vulnerable now his confidence is not high- low confidence translates into losses bad losses and poor play on the key points – regain the lost confidence with a big win and then it’s a whole new ballgame —

  • Scoop Malinowski · September 26, 2015 at 5:15 pm

    Over Rated, Harrison already has gotten to top 45 in the world, that showed he is a solid ATP player — maybe the WCs helped get him that ranking but he also had to win a lot of matches – I would not write off Harrison as a journeymen just yet, like everyone did to Fish, Harrison just finaled a Chally and he’s alive in the semis this week on Colummbus — looks like Harry is turning his season around right now —

  • Andrew Miller · September 26, 2015 at 5:45 pm

    Dan, I’d agree that Nishokori has shown the ability to keep up with the bigs for stretches and that Raonic and Dimitrov, despite beating some of the big four in Raonic’s case, haven’t. Dimitrov’s year after getting to #9 last year has been bad (even if his ranking is a solid #19).

    That’s true that the big three, or four, haven’t given much space. But how has Wawrinka grabbed two slams in the last 8, 25% of all slams? It’s not as if the other big time players were on vacation during those tournaments.

    Some of it could be that they simply aren’t as good. I like that argument, but Raonic usually doesn’t lose by much in his matches, at least last year. Generally I’ve found Raonic’s movement to be just a bit more awkward as he’s a big dude and he doesn’t move like a small guy either – he moves like a big guy.

    Frankly I’ve been disappointed that generation “next” hasn’t done much outside of the Nishikori-Cilic final at the 2014 U.S. Open. Maybe there’s a lack of courage like what other players showed in the past ten years – Tsonga, Soderling, etc. Those guys are pretty strong players who club the ball and move pretty well. You could call Wawrinka a strong player that clubs the ball and moves well also.

    Bottom line is those players aren’t likely to have much of a chance. Federer probably has another top 5 year in him in 2016 (meets his goal of the 2016 Olympic games)- he’ll be in a similar role as Agassi played in 2005 when they met in the U.S. Open final, a legend-veteran still playing top-shelf ball. Nadal I think has more in the tank. Djokovic is probably aiming for a grand slam next year. And Murray would certainly like to re-assert himself now that he’s tied with Wawrinka in the slam count of two a piece.

    That doesn’t leave much space for new players, but I don’t remember Hewitt or Safin asking for permission – or Cilic or Del Potro for that matter. It will be a shock if Nishikori or Raonic get a slam next year or any year. You never know though – Wawrinka could turn an ankle, Federer could find his backhand flailing, Nadal could stay in his malaise and Djokovic could take his foot off the pedal.

    Problem is relying on one of those players to have a mis-step is a terrible way to compete for a slam. The players that have gotten slams in this “slam lockout” era have grabbed their opportunities, like Del Potro who played the match of his life to win the 2009 US Open (in a year when you kind of thought Federer would cap a three slam year again). Or Cilic, or Wawrinka – or even Andy Murray with his two slam wins. Nadal’s won by squaring up against the reality he’d have to beat Federer for most slams.

    I like seeing the excellence of Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, Murray – even Wawrinka. But to have such a lock-hold on the slams is really quite unbelievable.

  • Andrew Miller · September 26, 2015 at 6:00 pm

    As for Harrison, anywhere you can get matches and develop some momentum would be good for him. His game looked better from October of 2014 through March 2015, I think he had put in some quality time with Grant Connell.

    I haven’t seen his game lately. At least he beat Kozlov and got him back for the Sacramento upset. That was a pride match and it’s good Harrison took it seriously. Since losing to Andy Ram in the 1st round of the US Open, he’s won eight of the last 9 matches and is in the finals of Columbus with a win on Smyczek, including a third set 6-1 smack-down.

    Anywhere you can fill up the confidence tank…even if it’s a public park, works.

  • Scoop Malinowski · September 26, 2015 at 6:46 pm

    These new balls players would be winning majors if Fed Rafa Andy and Djok were not superhuman, but they are superhuman and thus it’s just about impossible to win a major these days, Raonic Kei Dimitrov should have all won majors by now, except it’s a superhuman era right now and that’s cost them their dreams and it cost them fulfilling their potential — btw Dimitrov hired Franco Davin as his coach, good for Super G but not good for the prospects of Delpotro coming back to his former glory days —

  • Scoop Malinowski · September 26, 2015 at 6:49 pm

    Andrew, Harrison did not beat Kozlov recently, and Harrison lost to Rajeev Ram at US Open not Andy Ram, yes Harry is filling up the confidence tanks, any kind of win at any level can be the stimulus of sparking the confidence engine, even mixed as Harold has come to believe — great to see Harrison rebounding from the US Open disaster, he actually played well there but Ram was simply on fire, I saw the match on court six at night, good win over Smyczek, very good win —

  • Harold · September 26, 2015 at 8:59 pm

    Harold has not come to believe Mixed wins have anything to do with Singles, even on the Challenger level. Another thing, calling most of these guys and Rennae Stubbs(I only have one question for her) for their thoughts on Nadal, most of the them are doubs specialists, and never won anything compared to Nadal on the Singles level. I know Woody and Fleming had some success on the Singles side, but they can only dream about Nadal’s results.Outside of Leconte and Forget, who had the most success of this group.

    Harry’s results in these low level challengers wont even get him into qualies on the Asian swing, unless Nike pulls some strings. He is a Minor league player. What happened to his hyped brother? The Harry household must be doom and gloom.

  • Michael · September 27, 2015 at 3:12 am

    @Scoop, “he [Harry] actually played well there but Ram was simply on fire, I saw the match on court six at night,”

    Really ? I’m surprised I did not see you because it was a very small crowd. It would be funny though if we both had to testify as to what we saw that night. Eye witness testimony is overrated, I guess.

    I saw the whole match. Harry played poor to me. So did “on fire” Ram who couldn’t get his serve in (his alleged big and only weapon) when it mattered to save his life. I lost count of the number of blown set points and later match points. I said at the time based on his awful play and without checking the draw that Ram would lose to whomever he met in R2 which, of course, he did.

    I sold all my Harry stock back in 2010 when it peaked after he beat (a heat weakened) Luby out on court 10.

  • Scoop Malinowski · September 27, 2015 at 8:08 am

    Harry has the set point in the first set, crucial point, then lost the second set on a break (probably disappointed at losing the first), then just couldn’t shake Ram’s pattern of big serving and surprisingly strong baseline quick striking, the third set he put up a gallant fight at the end, saving several match points with his best play of the match but it wasn’t enough — Harrison also was annoyed by that episode in first set TB with the fans pouring into the bleacher with the chair ump and the security guard disagreeing on how to handle it — Harrison slightly lost it then, which was after he botched his set point — just a nightmare match for Harry, we’ve all had our fair share of nightmare matches, where things just don’t go our way — and we blow our chances — I consider that match to be that kind of match for Harrison, he could have easily won it too — if he wins that set point in first set, I think his spirit for the rest of the match would have been totally different and he would have won, first sets are often very very VERY important – that first set was crucial —

  • Andrew Miller · September 27, 2015 at 2:09 pm

    Big difference between not winning a set and “could have easily won the match”.

    Harrison beat Kozlov in Winnetka in late summer. That counts in the “pulling rank” department – every player knows their last match result against an opponent. So even if it’s summer I think that counts as “recently” and I doubt that either player forgot Sacramento last year, where Kozlov’s steady play rattled Harrison, who had been expected to take that match in straights.

    I can’t count out any young player especially one with, frankly, as much experience as Harrison at a young age. Look no further than Kudla, who had really fallen out of the top 100 and made a nice rebound this year to the top 80. He’s a good comparison because he’s around the same age as Harrison and beat him twice this summer – which could be the difference between their rankings (Kudla beats Harrison, gets career-best ATP semifinal in Atlanta, beats him in Montreal at a Masters).

    I don’t count him out because a lot of players are finding their groove around age 25, unless they are super-stars like Djokovic, Murray, Federer, Nadal, Agassi, Sampras, Becker etc. By now it’s obvious that players aren’t going to make their mark until around age 24, 25, 26. They will still be in their prime years and will have the experience of a veteran and several elite years left.

  • Andrew Miller · September 27, 2015 at 4:18 pm

    Novikov d. Harrison in 3 sets, 2nd week in a row. Novikov’s year hasn’t been amazing, but the last two weeks should be encouraging. Two challenger finals, two wins on Harrison. play.

  • Andrew Miller · September 27, 2015 at 6:09 pm

    Thought Tennis-Prose may appreciate this excerpt from Tignor’s tennis.com piece on Pennetta. I think a lot of players could learn from this.

    “From my sightings of Flavia around the tour, she certainly appeared to be devoted to the court. Two years ago in Eastbourne, walking through the facility early in the morning, I saw her out hitting on an otherwise empty set of courts. This was during a down period in her career, and at 31 her best years seemed to be behind her. Pennetta grew frustrated as she practiced, bouncing her racquet on the grass and threatening to smash it into a wooden scoreboard at the back. She was trying, and repeatedly failing, to hit a target that her coach had placed in the far corner of the court. Finally, Flavia found her range with her forehand, and began to find the target. For the last 10 minutes of her session, she couldn’t miss it. This, it seemed to me, was the profesional’s secret to making it look so easy during a match: Making it so hard in practice.”

  • Andrew Miller · September 27, 2015 at 6:29 pm

    Something I didn’t know – not only was Fish treated for heart problems, but Oudin and Ginepri. No wonder Ginepri never got back to his 2005 US Open semifinal playing: there was no way.

    “But as fate would have it, while considering her options Oudin bumped into Robby Ginepri, the 2005 US Open semifinalist who revealed he had been treated successfully for arrhythmia by a cardiac specialist called Dr. Jacob Blatt, with an excellent reputation for performing catheter ablations. “

  • Scoop Malinowski · September 28, 2015 at 10:34 am

    Somehow I missed that Harry beat Kozlove this summer – good rebound efforts by Harry after playing well and losing to Ram at US Open, despite what michael says Harry was playing well at US Open and his follow up finals in two Challengers proves it — Novikov is making his breakout it appears –Regarding Pennetta I saw her practice at US Open on the small court by the food court and not one single person was watching her late afternoon, a completely forgotten-ignored future major champ – her US Open win at her age is a remarkable achievement and should inspire a lot of veteran players like Hantuchova, Peng, Lisicki, Cibulkova, mattek sands, Safarova etc —

  • Andrew Miller · September 28, 2015 at 12:15 pm

    Agree on Pennetta – surprised her win didn’t get much play even among the big tennis writers. Glad some folks noticed how good she is. Here at Tennis Prose she was discussed with some regularity, and then Steve Tignor at Tennis dot com and Tennis Magazine, who I think with his writing basically gave her the standing ovation she deserved.

    As for Novikov – I saw some clips of him hitting and he has a very clean game. I also looked up a few clips of Harrison-Kokkinakis Cincinatti 2015 match and Harrison’s forehand looks a little cleaner – shorter backswing. He was also playing on the baseline, which surprised me. I wonder if his coach had him tighten up his game in the Spring and start re-working his forehand and movement. His backhand looked good with a nice follow through and his forehand wasn’t as sloppy as far as I could tell – short backswing a little like Agassi.

    Not “like Agassi”. Resembling Agassi’s forehand more than it had. Point is his game looked “more polished” than it had been (sometimes jarring). His backhand looked “less mechanical”.

  • Michael · September 28, 2015 at 5:20 pm

    “despite what michael says Harry was playing well at US Open”

    If that was his “playing well” then he has absolutely no chance of making a career on the ATP tour.

    Ram wasn’t much better so I’m not exclusively picking on Harry.

    @scoop “Regarding Pennetta I saw her practice at US Open on the small court by the food court and not one single person was watching her late afternoon,”

    Me thinks you are plagiarizing my threads from another tennis board but changing it slightly. Where I wrote I was the only one for a time watching her out on 16 one morning. You moved it to 12 (I presume is the “small court by the food court) and changed the time of day.

    More seriously, like many players she goes to one of the smaller, more out of the way courts. And like a lot of players she couldn’t get arrested at the USO. Some players just never interest the crowd (or the media).

    DelPo comes back the defending Champ in 2010 and is practicing on Armstrong not exactly a small court and there were quite a few “who is that” from the crowd. No real interest in the guy. Contrast to Dimitrov who as late as the start of USO 2014 had never won a single main draw match at USO but was pulling huge crowds at his practices.

    Maybe it comes down to having a good PR person.

  • Scoop Malinowski · September 28, 2015 at 7:55 pm

    Pennetta at practice simply does not draw a crowd at all – actually I remember seeing her hit a few times with nobody or very few eyes watching, she’s just not a very dynamic or flamboyant practice player — Delpo needs to date Sharapova or Serena, then that will double or triple his practice court crowds 🙂

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