Biofile Tommy Paul Interview

Anyone who says that doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I watched Paul play both his matches in the Qualis. He lost in 2 Nd round to player Brooksby Jenson beat in 3rd round. Paul has foot speed, but no weapons. He’s a slightly bigger version of Noah Rubin.

As for who’s better than who, I’ll let them duke it out. Saw Opelka, Fritz, Tiafoe play. The Opelka fan on TP is right, he has a huge serve as well as a decent baseline game. That helped players like Karlovic and Opelka has a similar kind of desire.

Fritz has the big results this year. That’s just fact, Fritz won tournaments or made finals. It’s a big step.

I’d be glad to see Paul rocket up the rankings. Wish he’d work with Higueras too, like Ginepri did to Max the game.

Andrew Miller, its a bit of a stretch to compare ‘fandom’ support of Nadal and even Medvedev with lesser known guys. Nadal and Medvedev are super elite talents who rocketed through futures and challengers despite no one being in the stands. Medvedev won several matches at the Open with the crowd against him. I know the latest thing is calling for support of lesser knowns. The new ITF rule changes, the facebook site to change the rules, Noah Rubin’s behind the racquet stuff. But its not going to change a thing. The top few guys will get all the fame and lots of the money, then another 100 will make a decent living in tennis. The rest are cannon fodder. Harsh but true. If Noah Rubin quits tennis, if Paul gives up the grind, just like Deiton Baughman did after getting to 340…there will be 2000 more guys who will take their place….and whose parents will foot the bills for them to ‘go pro’. We hire hitters for our elite juniors and get freakin amazing players for $35/hour, guys who have been top 300. Tennis economics are brutal. So another few people being fans of Tommy Paul will not give him more weapons or change his tennis fate at all. Sure a bit of crowd support could juice Nadal and give him energy to fight through a 5 setter against another elite player….but thats totally different than a couple old ladies yelling go Tommy at a challengers in South Dakota or a few guys liking him on instagram. Tennis will always be about the top 10-20 players and elite talent is what makes them because super hard work is the minimum entry point to the top 500.

Jon King is certainly right about the economics of modern tennis and fandom…it isn’t even the top 10-20 players that drive ticket sales, but 1-5, which is a perpetual challenge for lower tier tournaments that aren’t drawing on an intense local fan base.

However, this will always be the case if tennis is being marketed as entertainment, which makes it similar to other individual sports or indeed just about every artistic endeavor in a global marketplace. These tend to be virtual winner-take all phenomena. Like Highlander, “there can only be one!” which means that the perceived best flute player or tenor or classical guitarist in the world is a phenomenon while the tenth best struggles for recognition.

However, if a sport is authentically part of a local, national, or regional culture being a fan of a lesser-known player is completely natural.

In fact, most of the world’s best players emerge from such cultures—in all sports, not just tennis. If you pinpoint where the parents of today’s top 100 men’s players were born, you’ll find a cluster with a 200 mile radius centered somewhere in the middle of Europe (roughly near Federer’s birthplace) that encompasses most of Germany, northern Italy, northern Spain, much of Eastern Europe, and the former Balkans.

In each of those places there is a longstanding tradition of town versus town tennis rivalries along with dozens of low purse money tournaments that lead naturally into the full slate of lower tier ATP events.

Pursuing tennis is a kind of apprenticeship and tradecraft, and if you’ve played for your town against its neighbor you’ve experienced a kind of pressure that makes the pro tour look manageable. And the local heroes of these crucibles earn a kind of organic fandom that is different from rooting for someone, almost at random, who isn’t going to be #1 or even top 50 in the world.

This is true of hockey in Canada, golf in South Korea, fiddle playing in Cape Breton, distance running in Kenya, and hundreds of other niche cultures that end up with an outsized influence when such sporting or artistic pursuits go global. (The closest analogy in the US is probably basketball, in which New York playground legends like Earl “The Goat” Manigault and Herman “the Helicopter” Knowings had street cred that matched that of NBA players.)

And while it is impossible to replicate these kind of cultures entirely (which, parenthetically, is why Jurgen Klinsmann failed as coach of the US men’s national soccer team, and just decided in effect to select Germans with American passports) the kind of Oracle series that Larry Ellison is now funding in the US is on the right track, It would be even better if it coincided with a revival of the low money pro tournaments that used to exist in California and elsewhere in greater numbers. And which, in turn, could piggyback on USTA events that not only matched players of similar abilities but club versus club and town versus town at all levels, so that the survivors of these pyramids were already bringing a built-in fan base with them.

In any case, what I’m trying to do here is to sketch out a scenario in which a “low-ranked” player wasn’t having to draw fans who are, in effect, pitying his predicament (as Rubin’s show leads to), but celebrating his genuinely remarkable accomplishments. This can take place when sports or art isn’t viewed as a triumph in a global meritocracy but as an individual fulfillment of an organic cultural tradition.

Just in passing, if I’m not the Opelka enthusiast referred to earlier I’ve been on his bandwagon for many, many years, as past comments on this site suggest. It is incredibly hard to change one’s game but Reilly has done so over time, along with every one of the young American players. Tiafoe had genuinely unorthodox strokes, especially his serve, and he’s modified them to good effect even to reach the top 40, and while I’m also a doubter that he’ll get to the very top he hasn’t been on autopilot by any means. Fritz’s backhand is better, still not good enough. Isner practically built an entire ground game from scratch in order to reach his top ranking, and I know that the top young Americans are trying to emulate him.

The challenger that Paul won last week in New Haven was closer in quality to a 250 and I’m not going to sleep on a guy that took a set from Thiem on clay, even on an off day…Paul has a big forehand in addition to speed and decent size and court sense…after Opelka I’d rank him the most likely to win a Master’s or 500 level event of the younger Americans.

Reading Leif’s comments is an education.

I think Tommy Paul has a bright future and is the best young American outside of Fritz. I think Tiafoe has stalled and won’t amount to more than a top-20 career and maybe one Slam semifinal if he hits the jackpot. His game just isn’t developing. Not sold on Opelka either.

I go on record as saying Fritz will make a Slam final and Tommy Paul will make a QF.

Glad to see Paul doing well. Just watched the highlights of his match with Giron in New Haven, which were pretty extensive. Giron had a better looking game, NCAA champ! But Paul was the much better player, hitting more unpredictable shots, a harder ball, with greater consistency and more emotion. Giron made mistake after mistake from the backcourt, and could from my eye use either a few days at the backboard or many hours on the ball machine to firm up that wing.

Yeah I like Paul. His game needs work for sure, but he is playing well. He could use more strategies, but he has some good combos that work well and that are hard to see as an opponent. So far I like the Paul game best of the younger U.S. men’s players.

Jeff, I see things the opposite. Opelka has an elite weapon in his serve, Tiafoe has tons of pure talent so is always a danger. Paul has no weapons besides being a pretty fast guy, so his upside is quite limited.

Yes, Jon, I don’t know the full dimensions of this deal with Dunlop, but it seems that Callum is getting the racquets sent to him, Fed Ex, because his UTR ranking is a 10 which I’m told by the Dunlop rep is high for a 13 year old. I know that “discounted” packages for juniors often are high as Babolat, the racquet my son has used since he picked up a racquet at age 2, has also sponsored Callum, but I buy his racquets from a local tennis shop as I get a better rate than Babolat’s discounted one.

The Dunlop deal sounds kosher because my wife and I met the rep in Ft. Lauderdale this summer during the 14’s National Clay Courts. It’s three free racquets etc., but I know from having hit with Dunlop’s in the past, it’s a very different racquet than the Babolat so I don’t think my son will like it. The trip to IMG is intriguing; I’m told it’s free and we just have to get Callum to Florida for it. It’s supposed to be right before Eddie Herr and so it’ll be stocked with some of the best junior players in the world. We’ll see; he probably can’t go to that either as it’s during a school week and we head to Chicago the week after for National Indoors.

The dilemma I have with Callum is scholarships at training facilities. We’ve had one at McEnroe’s up to this year and then they gave him less of one for this year even though he just reached the Round of 32 in the Hard Court Nationals, one of only 8 13 year old’s in the country to do so. But we’re really moving on because we’ve found a coach who’s working with the very best teenage boys in our area and who Callum likes. We will have to pay a full rate even though another training facility is offering Callum a full scholarship, but then you have to weigh whether that facility and coach is going to help Callum as much as the place and coach he likes and will be motivated to train at.

How did Ginepri make a US Open semifinal? Ginepri was probably the least touted of the Fish-Roddick-Blake-Dent-Ginepri etc. He had a complete game – that was it!

And, under Higueras, training and desire.

So, question the heart of these guys. The question isn’t what’s your weapon – if that were the question Karlovic would be hall of fame, because he has the best serve in history.

I’d question what’s in their heart and go from there. Medvedev isn’t “more skilled” – many players hit a beautiful ball. Just like Cirstea isn’t more skilled than GenieB. And GenieB isn’t (that much) less skilled than some top thirty players.

Medvedev conjured up will and determination in the US Open final. The two set comeback was all heart and desire. Magnificent playing, but what’s the source of it? Nadal was shocked because he’s not used to seeing his own heart and desire reflecting back on him from someone not named Djokovic. Yet that’s what he saw and it scared him.

So I don’t put it past other players to use the same tools that are readily available. I will always support a player that puts it all out there and finds more in the tank.

I think Paul has some inner fire. I hope he does well. Winning a Challenger after his disappointing US Open qualies and the tournament stupidity is a way of saying, “I won’t need any wildcards soon.” I hope he pushes himself for Australian direct entry.

Can’t vouch for Tiafoe’s buddy. But that’s on the player. Apparently he also did a whirlwind trip from NC (Winston Salem) to NYC a Sunday before the ATP event to do a GQ issue, which his agent recommended. Tiafoe lucked out as his first two opponents retired in their matches, so the GQ gambit paid off, literally.

As of now and I say this respectfully, the players are making bad choices when they opt for fanfare over working on their game. It shows: Tiafoe’s ranking as of now rests on a few decent results this summer, but if you look more closely at a result such as Winston Salem you see that Hurkasz, Tiafoe’s first real match that tournament, tagged Tiafoe 6-1 in the third set. This is after winning the second set tiebreak 7-1 Hurkasz. US Open, Tiafoe lucks out again as Karlovic retires down two sets. Then he gets Zverev, who hasn’t got the hang of these slam things, in the fifth set. And despite bravado, Tiafoe still falls in round two and Zverev ends up in round four, looks around, and sees only De Minaur, Medvedev, Berretini around his age and says, “I beat Tiafoe, Tsitsipas isn’t here, Fritz isn’t here…I’m doing well…”

Bottom line: not a great summer for Tiafoe. In fact, he didn’t get to a QF until Winston Salem, where he won by player retirements and then got beaten badly when it counted by Hurkasz.

This is the basis for firing a weak coach. Or for adding to the coaching staff. Tiafoe has plenty of income to do this with an estimated $2million US per year.

If the player is complacent then they look at the summer and their ATP rank and say I’m top fifty and I was in GQ, I pushed Zverev, last year’s ATP finals champion to five sets and could have beaten him…

If objective it’s why did Zverev win? How are opponents picking apart my game? What new strategies do I add? What’s my schedule like and who should I work with to shore up a few things? Should I reach out to (X player) to train?

Tiafoe is fun. He could be a Pat Rafter type of player that opponents fear at net and then work on his baseline game so that they feel they have no options.

Just that no matter how one looks at it Tiafoe’s results this summer where US players make their money and save their year on hardcourts, Tiafoe’s summer was bad.

Got to think that was a joke Scoop. Even if Tiafoe meant it, I don’t think he’d say or text this to Harry, a guy’s who touchy about black folks to say the least. Tennis players are always joking about things, especially about race which is usually a loaded subject in the white/Asian/Indian/and very very few blacks world of male pro tennis or junior tennis.

Jon,

That’s pretty cool you teach your daughter. I still get on the court and work on a few things with my son, but I can’t give him a good hit for the most part these days. You don’t work in practice partners with your daughter? Funny thing is, yesterday I’m playing a three person one on one on one basketball pickup game with my son and his friend. And because I’m 6-2 (really more like 6 now) and I played a little college ball, and Callum and his friend are more like 5-5, I destroyed both of them. But Callum who’s so competitive walked off the court near the end and wouldn’t let me savor the victory, saying to his friend, ” I can beat my dad in tennis 6-0, 6-1.”

Even though he’s my own son and I see every match he plays, I still don’t realize how ultra-competitive he is when it comes to sports.

Harrison: sub 300 ranking. Guess that lawsuit stuff is working out really well for these guys.

Malivai Washington great interview July 11, 2016 by Tim Casey, on men’s tennis today and his historic Wimbledon run 20 years ago. Such good points on why he made the Wimbledon final against Krajicek and how he won his semifinal on Todd Martin.

Basically: Washington wanted the other player to earn the match when he was down 1-5 in the fifth set. He decided he would make the other player prove he deserved to be in the final. That was amazing, and it’s what Medvedev did in the final on Sunday versus Nadal, making Nadal “win it”.

Mal Washington was a special player. One guy I’d look for at tournaments. Also Rostsgno because he could SV. Ivanisevic because of the service motion and his backhand if you can believe it.

Washington hit so hard. He was similar in some ways to Agassi, just not as consistent.

No one talks Mal Washington. He was really good. He’s also proof that the 1990s tennis was very healthy and strong.

Dan, it is interesting that your son has a new coach. Am looking forward to the next installment of his tennis story.

Yes, we’re hoping for a big year. What I like about this new coach so far, and I won’t say his name yet until our relationship hopefully deepens, is that he’s got the knowledge, the enthusiasm and he knows how to make it fun for the teens without sugar-coating it.

He told Callum, “You’re winning a lot right now, but the goal is not to win these tournaments when you’re 13. The goal is to develop your game. Always make progress. You’re winning a lot right now because you’re a good competitor. At the next level, your technique, strategy and work ethic all have to improve for you to continue working. I’ve got a waiting list of kids for lessons so if you don’t work hard, I’m going to kick you out.”

Callum needs to hear that. At McEnroe’s, in my opinion, they let the juniors get away with too much: bad behavior; goofing around and not treating each other respect at times. It’s an interesting dynamic because I’ve always looked for the program or pro that has the best players in it. I want Callum practicing day in and day out with the best players for the most part.

But this coach says, “If the focus is always ‘better competition,’ then lots of times there’s better results in the short term, but the long term suffers. It’s partially why you see so many young high-ranked promising juniors go nowhere in the pros.”

Dan, your son’s coach sounds like he is giving excellent advice.

Jon, your comparison of the kids at the academy and those at the local park is interesting. I bet those kids at the park, even the ones who did not become good players, really wanted to be there, and that made all the difference.

My day at one of the world’s most serious academies: “Hit Harder!!!”

That was it. Hit Harder. Nice guy too. Definitely a former challenger player.

Andreescu, youngest slam champ in 13 years on women’s side. That kind of mark gets kids attention.

Tennis I think was pretty darn big in the states in the late 80s and early 90s. Chang’s win at the French caught people’s attention here and of course the sport was already popular because of McEnroe and Connors and other bad boy tennis icons, as well as Borg because he was an icon of sorts. I think.

Hartt, that competitive spirit we saw back in 2014 kind of died. I often wonder what keeps players excited. For Nadal, Djokovic, Federer it’s clear – it’s the competition and I think also the absolute joy from winning at tennis highest level. They cry every time they win a slam.

For Kyrgios, I think he likes beating the top players at tournaments where he can beat them (even as he beat Nadal at Wimbledon a while back now), and I think his likes the stature he has in Australia. But with De Minaur about to establish himself as Australia’s top player, and sometimes he is Australia’s top male player (Barry is the top player of course!) Kyrgios finds he can no longer coast. He can slack but not that much.

Here in the states, I think Capriati got back on her feet because she was motivated by the Williams sisters. In 1998 Capriati finished the year outside the top hundred. A year later she was top 25, then kept moving up and, as 12th seed, won the Australian in 2001 (Wikipedia!). It’s really shocking, she went six years withour winning a title (1993-1999) and then couldn’t get enough of winning soon thereafter. At the 2000 Australian, first semifinal since 1991 at any slam. Which is crazy, because that means her epic 1991 semifinal with Seles was her last slam semifinal until her recovery (she would do pretty well, just never threaten for slams).

My point is Capriati saw the rise of these young talented players that began winning the biggest tournaments. I don’t know but I think that lit a fire under her. I wasn’t sure if Capriati could do it – in part because I thought the women’s game had evolved and that Capriati all of the sudden didn’t seem as formidable. Other players hit nearly as hard or harder in the Williams. Her serve was still good but other players could do the same thing.

But what did I know? The Capriati serve was cooking again and even she seemed slow her footwork remained excellent.

I look at other players and always think, you know, never underestimate someone’s heart when they commit themselves to something.

The problem with what I’m saying here is that Capriati isn’t a normal player. She’s was a lot stronger than most players will ever be on tour. Her serve today would still cause opponents problems and I don’t doubt that she’d be top five because of her game and competitive nature if her heart was in it. Given how strong her technique was and her competitiveness and overall game, she needed a trainer and a positive coach and matches, and her chances went way up that she’d go deep at tournaments. If anything she wouldn’t stay outside a triple digit ranking for long.

The Toronto Star had an editorial cartoon showing a little girl watching Bianca on TV, kissing the USO trophy. The little girl says that she can do that too.

Bianca had a long interview on a popular sports program. One of the hosts mentioned the cartoon, and showed a photo of his 7-year-old daughter watching Bianca on TV, just like the girl in the cartoon. Her father said she’d never shown any interest in tennis before, but was excited to see Bianca in the final.

It’s impossible to overestimate the impact Bianca will have on Canadian tennis. with people watching it or playing it.

They gave Bianca a gift basket that included a T shirt with Coco’s face on it and a couple gifts for Coco. Of course she was at the studio with Bianca’s parents.