re: Tennis 2019 -- The Unofficial Non-GS Thread

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That one is on my list

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I only brought it up because the drive from here is about 3.5 hours. I'm assuming if it's on your list it must be a decent spot. Is it better for beginners to go elsewhere, or does it not matter?

My sister and I might spend a night there after our Indian Wells trip. I haven't done any ski research.

Isner/Opelka and Schnur/Querrey are your Long Island semis.

Thiem rallied on Cuevas in Buenos Aires. Schwartz and Ramos-Vinolas up now. The other half will have Cecchinato and Pella in the semis. What have I done with my life that I'm watching this?

I've watched a bunch of 250 level tournaments on tennis channel. it's still tennis

Legend



I like the court surface.

First thought when I saw that thread was Kyrgios but it was already posted. I’ll try to do a comparison of him and Grigor later.

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I'm assuming if it's on your list it must be a decent spot.

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I actually was confusing it with Big Sky...but after looking at it, it looks like a decent spot. Not massively huge, but pretty good elevation, so the terrain is probably dependably good.

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Is it better for beginners to go elsewhere, or does it not matter?

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Any place will be fine for beginners. Even the resorts that are known for their degree of difficulty will have more than enough beginner terrain.

Figured I would type this out before I got lazy and put it off for good. There’s no central theme or point to what I’m about to write. It’s a mess of thoughts with no real direction.

I’ll start with analyzing the question as it’s written.

“Athletes with the physical talent to be elite that lacked killer instinct”

First things first, what exactly is physical talent? Well, in major American sports this usually refers to things like size, speed, strength, jumping ability, etc.

Right off the bat we have a problem. In the history of tennis, there’s very little connection between those traits and the super elite players. In fact, it’s almost detrimental to be too tall, too big, or too strong. Speed is of course important, but almost every non-servebot in the sport moves well.

In a way, it’s akin to asking which chess players had the physical talent to be elite but lacked killer instinct. Makes no sense. And when the question doesn’t make sense, it’s kind of tough to answer it correctly.

On top of that, what exactly is killer instinct? We know that Rafa, Novak, and Roger have it to some extent, although they show it in different ways. We can assume that someone like Zverev doesn’t have it, but do we know for sure?

To put it another way, let’s hypothetically say that Zverev has all of the physical tools AND a killer instinct, yet still can’t win grand slams. Then what? Well, then we can try to pinpoint what else is missing. But, my point is that the original question can be sort of pointless.

To take this in another direction, how do we begin to establish what is physical talent in regard to tennis? Is it as simple as shotmaking? Our instincts tell us that certain players are more talented than others, but how often is this the truth?

For example... Kyrgios has more serving talent than Raonic. Is this a fact? Why do we think this? Because it just looks more effortless? Because Kyrgios is a known slacker and the fact that he can serve at a level on par with Milos automatically means that he has put in less work and was born with more serving potential?

Here’s another way of asking the same question. From birth, if I dedicated the same number of hours to tennis as Roger Federer, would I be on his level? We would also have to assume that I had the same coaching, had access to all the same tournaments, played a similar level of opponents, etc. Honestly, I don’t know the answer.

It’s not about me, either. I’m only using myself in the example because I’m 1 inch shorter, 1 year older, and about the same size as Federer, so it makes for a decent comparison.

People have a tendency to think the top players were just born to play tennis. But that’s sort of a disservice to the fact that they have dedicated their entire life to the sport, and that’s a huge part of what separates them from the rest of the pack.

You can go in so many directions with this topic, but I’ll have to stop for now.

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Here’s another way of asking the same question. From birth, if I dedicated the same number of hours to tennis as Roger Federer, would I be on his level? We would also have to assume that I had the same coaching, had access to all the same tournaments, played a similar level of opponents, etc. Honestly, I don’t know the answer.

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One consideration is that every "great" had to stay healthy along the way. How many kids had the same talent/time that Fed did, but had setbacks that never let them reach the same potential.

While talent is certainly an interesting topic, I still think that time is the greater factor. I suppose you could say that talent could be success/practice time. Can kid A that has hit half the tennis balls as kid B get the win? Then I'd say that they were born with more talent. But I would guess that rarely happens after a certain level.


A couple of years ago I was trying to make a push with my golf game. Finally I thought about how when I was making my largest strides with my tennis game in high school I was putting in 15-20 hours a week (during the school year), but somehow I got the idea that I was supposed to get better at golf because I was going to the range for 30 minutes a week. Ha.

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Tennys and Opelka this afternoon.

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Up with the Volunteer State.
Down with servebots.

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For example... Kyrgios has more serving talent than Raonic. Is this a fact? Why do we think this?

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INteresting point. I suppose one would have to begrudgingly give Raonic the benefit of the doubt on being a natural server. One can't simply practice their way to a serve like that by being "professional".

Take it from me, a guy who played god knows how many hours of tennis growing up, and to this day can do little more than just start the point without being on the defensive.