re: Official French Open Discussion Thread

I grew up playing tennis with Ryan's dad and hit/played once or twice with Ryan before he moved out of Shreveport around age 11. I follow him religiously and think his serve, volley, forehand and movement are all world class (all sufficient to be a top 5 or 10 player).

Since he was a very young child, those who know a little tennis around here have always been of the opinion that his backhand would hold him back. He has never released the racket head -- rolling the left hand over the right on the two- hander. Instead, it is more like a sound putting stroke with no breakdown of the wrist. It is therefore hard to generate mush racket speed or topspin. He hardly ever hits an effective penetrating down the line two hander. The limited motion of the stroke dictates a cross court shot where the torso pulls to simulate a release. His down the line attempts tend to migrate towards the center of the court letting his opponents back into points and failing to keep them more honest in their positioning.

He has developed a much better slice back hand which can be effective. He was using it to great effect against Simon until crunch time when he forgot all about taking pace off the ball as a wise strategy against Simon and simply started trying to out hit him - just what a counter puncher like Simon wants.

This long term technical flaw pales in comparison to his mentality which is the only thing holding him out of the top 20.

When it comes to crunch time, Ryan's court positioning suffers. He moves further back in the court and tries to simply retrieve and be consistent. At this level, the winners are those that can still play with controlled aggression at crunch time like Djok did today. Ryan wants it so bad that he cannot treat those two impostors, triumph and disaster, just the same.

To compound the problem, when the retrieving defender thing fails, he knee jerks into a go for broke, unforced error machine and then gets steam rolled by the better players.

To get where he wants to go, he needs to commit more to forward positioning including serve and volley about 20% of the time - especially kick serves to the add court - his is as good as any out there. The slice backhand also needs to develop into an approach shot to put pressure on his opponent.

He has to learn to forget the last point and understand that forward movement/approaching the net sometimes results in getting passed. He will sometimes never go forward once his opponent rips a pass off a quality approach. As McEnroe proved, it's the cumulative stress that is put on an opponent that is important. If he doesn't come in more, good players will break down that backhand or keep him out there until his head imploded. Take more chances on return games so that we get more breaks with less effort. Use the serve, volley, forehand and energy to make sure you hold serve.

I know. Tl;dr