Greatest Tournament in the World - Wimbledon

[jayakris]

.. but Shahar lost the semi at the Luxilon Cup in Miami in march in straight sets to Vaidisova, whom Neha beat in straight sets the next day to take the title .. If transitivity holds (normally not the case in sports), Neha will beat her tomorrow..

Jay

[BSharma]

In his daily notes, Jay has written about organizing a grass court season in India. I whole-heartedly agree with it, however, we cannot blame it alone for the losses of our junior players on grass recently. Most tennis playing nations do not have a grass court season any more and very few grass courts are available for their tennis players to do serious practice sessions. Yet these tennis players are beating the Indian junior players. Let us not use the lack of grass court season in India as an excuse for the failure of the junior players. I do not want this to be a blaming session but let the coaches and the players find the real deficiencies and correct them so the winning ways can start once again.

I am hopeful that our talented junior players will rise once again.

[jayakris]

Basically I have always felt that the shot-making skills displayed by many Indians comes a bit from grasscourt-type coaching, if not playing on grasscourts. With a few exceptions here and there (Tushar at FO), our players have not shown that they can stand up and grind out wins from the back-court like many of the foreigners can. We still have not been producing players who can beat the world-class top-40 players at their own game with just great serves, power and stamina. Rather than try to ape the rest of the world's tennis blindly and do just that, my feeling is that we should produce players who play a slightly different brand of tennis. Need to have nearly as good skills from baseline and in power/serve as the good ones from abroad, which comes only from a lot of exposure and play on clay/hard surfaces and good coaching, but we should try to look for an extra edge from what our grasscourt pedigree gives us. This is my line of thinking.

If we are trying to produce Nadals, Gasquets and Roddicks in India, I think we probably don't stand much of a chance because we do not have the system to identify kids early enough, put them on proper diets and training programs and coaching for that kinds of tennis. We should evolve our own strategy of producing players who can play their own style and win by mixing things in and using our well-known mental skills, hand-eye corrdination etc. Getting some coaching on grasscourts is essential for this.

The players who beat the Indians on grass this years are not all playing grass tennis or anything. Many are simply playing what they know, I assume. Many of our guys' losses were against good players ranked around where they are. I am not saying that the other kids have grass experience; I am just saying that we could have done better if our kids had a leg-up with some grass court play and at least some minial grasscourt coaching from coaches in India (who really do know that stuff quite well).

Only a subtle push in that direction is all I am asking for. I am very gald that our system has moved more towards the "modern tennis" direction. That is what I have been asking for in my notes for years - so no complaints. But we should also be smart and not hit extremes in doing just that. Grass shouldn't be dropped from OUR schemes. Our kids NEED that little edge in shot-making (as simple as hitting the volleys or drops accurately when appropriate), because I don't see us having an advantage in the near future in power, speed etc, though we have made strides there too.

Jay

[gvhvhg]

lets talk a little bit about the mens singles...how bout olkd murghiwalla?!? actually makin serious contention this time? i think he may be able to beat roddick on grass in the semis...and reach the final....only to fall at the hands of the lord....roger federer...there are four men out of the final eight who are legitimate contenders in my view....in order....federer, hewitt, henman, roddick.....federer is federer....hewitts playin some amzing tennis right now...btr than ive ever seen him play....hneman havin his bst yr by far...and with the crowd...who knows?....roddick....i dno if he is ready yet for the wimbledon crown...

womens


sharapova!!!

haha--bhangra thats awesome

[PKBasu]

Karan lost to a Kiwi, who was presumably brought up on grass courts. Divij and Tushar lost tight three-set matches. So perhaps we shouldn't despair too much. The reason I am particularly upset is that our players no longer have the edge on grass courts, which is very surprising given their good doubles ability (which suggests volleying and skill at the net). The missing ingredient is the singles experience on grass to know when to come in behind the second serve and when not to (assuming, ofcourse, that you will always come in behind your own first serve) and also when to come to the net if the other guy is staying back, etc. When I learned to play tennis as a 10-year-old, I never had any coaching (which still shows in my game ), but the one thing I was told was that I must come in after the serve. (For a youngster with poor reach this is especially difficult advice to follow, as Sampras often alluded to, but eventually it works well for a serve-volleyer -- especially on grass and occasionally on hardcourts).

[potato]

Final four will likely be Federer vs Grosjean and Roddick vs Henman. Federer will defeat Roddick in the final.

I have to say, though, I'm thrilled for the Croatians at this tournament, both young and old.

[nkoth]

Oh well...

[R2] Shahar Peer (ISR)[4] def. Neha Uberoi (USA) 6-3 6-2

-neil

[jayakris]

That ends all of the hopes in singles for us. Depressing.

Jay

[PKBasu]

Hell. But the draw was ridiculously unfair to Neha, as indeed it is to Tushar/Divij (the FO semifinalists) who play the topseeds in R1.

[PKBasu]

Sanity prevails in one important corner of the hallowed lawns. On Court 1, Leander Paes/Martina Navratilova are up 61 53 and serving for the match.
On neighbouring court 2, Newcombe/Roche (the greatest doubles pair in the 1968-75 period) are down 26 23 to the interesting pairing of Stan Smith (their contemporary) and the much younger Guillermo Vilas.

[PKBasu]

Neha is through to R2 in doubles.
The Bryans have dropped the first set to Gimelstob/Humphries -- and their playing on the Centre Court!
LP/Martina of course won 61 63.

[jayakris]

[R1] Ryoko Fuda (JPN)/ Neha Uberoi (USA) d. Natasha Khan (GBR)/ Laura Peterzan (GBR), 63 60

LP-MN won 61 63 .. Piece of cake. Tushar-Divij down 3-5 in the first to the top seeds.

Jay

[jayakris]

Here is excerpt from Nirmal Sekhar's article in The Hindu about our juniors yesterday (emphasis mine)

India's Karan Rastogi, seeded 12 in the boys' singles championship, was beaten in straight sets in the first round by the 18-year old New Zealander G.D.Jones who won 6-4, 6-4. Rastogi, 17, ranked more than 20 places above his opponent, started on the wrong foot, losing his very first service game and had few chances in a match in which his forehand took leave of him and he was never quite as aggressive as he needed to be.

Jones, for his part, played steady tennis from the back of the court, venturing up only on the odd occasion as he wrapped up the first set without fuss and broke Rastogi's serve in the fifth game of the second set. If a pair of forehand errors cost Rastogi that service game, then when he had two chances to break Jones's serve in the eighth game, once again the errant forehand spelt disaster. Finally, Jones served out the match in the 10th game in which the boy from Mumbai made three successive unforced forehand errors.

Later in the afternoon, Tushar Liberhan was beaten in the first round too. The Indian lost 7-6 (5), 6-7 (2), 1-6 to Viktor Troicki of Serbia. Liberhan had the match in his grasp, leading by a set and serving for the match at 5-2 in the second. He might not sleep well at all tonight.The procession continued with Divij Sharan losing 1-6, 6-3, 1-6 to Chu-Huan Yi from Chinese Taipei.

Bhushan: this is what I was talking about. The other guys are not really playing any big grass tennis or anything. In that case, our kids need to be able to use our traditional strengths and win it. That ability seems all gone.

Jay

[gvhvhg]

Final four will likely be Federer vs Grosjean and Roddick vs Henman. Federer will defeat Roddick in the final.

potato: With Roddicks win at the Us open aside, Murghiwalla has had some recent success against roddick..and on grass...with the crowd behind him...i see him getting to the final...but then the federer express is far too good...

[BSharma]

Jay wrote:

Bhushan: this is what I was talking about. The other guys are not really playing any big grass tennis or anything. In that case, our kids need to be able to use our traditional strengths and win it. That ability seems all gone.

Here are some discussion points:

1. Grass court tennis in 2004 is different than what it used to be. Gone are the days of pure serve and volley players like Pete Sampras, Patrick Rafter, Pat Cash, etc. These are the days of Federer, Roddick, Hewitt, etc who play from the baseline even on grass court, have good ground strokes to keep the serve and volleyers from getting to the net, punish the players who camp at the net with outstanding passing shots, and are not afraid to come to the net to make a volley when it is needed. Even Federer said sometime back that he used to play a serve and volley game at Wimbledon and then realised that he should play his normal game from the baseline, and then started winning at Wimbledon. Prakash is trying to go the route of a serve and volley player but with limited tools his progress will be limited.

The point is that to do well on grass now requires a great serve, outstanding ground strokes, and ability to volley well. Does this sound like a recipe for fast hard courts?

2. Let us look at the Indian players who did well in singles on grass: Ramanathan Krishnan, Premjit Lal, Jaideep Mukherjea, Vijay Amritraj, Ramesh Krishnan, Leander Paes. (I am only using players from the era when athleticism started playing a bigger role in tennis). What is common about these players and different from the current crop of junior players from India? These players won Junior Slam titles or were finalists, and were better players as juniors than any present day junior players. Even if the present junior players play on grass court for a month or two will not make them win titles; they may win a round or two more on grass than what they win nowadays. Is winning a round or two their ultimate goal?

3. The junior players coming up in India nowadays will not match the athleticism or the physique of players like Roddick, Federer, Hewitt, etc, and these deficiencies will prevent them from winning Grand Slam titles. Once in a while India will produce a player like Leander who will have some other qualities far superior to others e.g., sharp reflexes, quickness of hands, a big heart, etc and will be able to overcome deficiencies in other areas of the game.

The point I am making is that to succeed at top level tennis, India will have to identify athletic, motivated, hard working sub-junior players and with the help of their parents, good coaches and support system groom them into winners. Until then we will have to wait for a Leander or a Vijay or a Ramesh once every ten years or so.

Let us not kid ourselves that "our traditional strengths will win it." Those who won with "our traditional strengths" had other qualities too which helped them to win.

The present day junior players are doing a great job with their limited resources and inherent abilities, and I am not trying to prove that they are not good.