this training blog of Fed\u2019s activities<\/a>.<\/p>\nFed imported young U.S. player Michael McClune<\/b> to hit with him in Dubai for ten days in February. McClune\u2019s coach, Nick Fustar<\/b>, chronicled the training sessions and the record shows that Federer is in fine fettle. He worked his way through intense two and half hour hitting sessions without appreciably raising his heart rate according to Fustar.<\/p>\n
If Fed’s not suffering from physical problems, the mental wear of being ranked number one for four consecutive years may be getting to him. In the past, Fed could lift his game to another level when he needed it and now he can\u2019t. He\u2019s riding a one speed balloon tire bicycle instead of the ten speed he used to sport.<\/p>\n
Does Fed need a coach? From the heartbroken way he described his breakup with previous coach Tony Roche<\/b>, the company of a new sidekick might lift him mentally. It looks like he might need a boost to get him through the next phase of his career. At the rate he\u2019s going this year, we could see him grinding out his last few slams which should make him think twice the next time he dismisses someone like Murray by calling him a grinder.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s too bad Mats Wilander<\/b> questioned Fed\u2019s manhood after Fed\u2019s loss to Rafael Nadal<\/b> in the 2006 French Open final because Wilander looks like he\u2019s positioning himself to be the next uber-coach. Wilander was sitting in the stands during the match between Paul-Henri Mathieu<\/b> and Andy Roddick<\/b> in Dubai because he\u2019s coaching Mathieu.<\/p>\n
Mathieu is another of those players who was supposed to be the savior of French tennis. It makes me worry about his fellow countryman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga<\/b>. Jo-Willy smashed his way onto the scene with a transcendent run to the Australian final and there are now huge expectations for him and he hasn\u2019t even won a tournament yet. It also makes me appreciate cranky Murray just that much more. Murray is the only hope in the U.K. – they don\u2019t have a Mathieu, Richard Gasquet<\/b>, and a Tsonga – and yet Murray\u2019s pulling if off and he\u2019s doing it at 20 years old by throwing off the British tennis association\u2019s plans for him and choosing his own crew. I believe, for instance, that Wilander is under contract to the French tennis association. Does anyone know for sure?<\/p>\n
A graphic on the pixellated screen showed that Roddick has about 1.7 sec to get his racket on his opponent\u2019s return of serve when he hits one of his humongous serves. That\u2019s less time than counting out \u201cone elephant two elephant\u2026\u201d This came up in John Isner<\/b>\u2019s match yesterday in Las Vegas because Isner hit a 148mph (238kph) serve. That kind of speed makes it hard to serve and volley because the ball gets to the opponent so quickly the server doesn\u2019t have time to get to the net.<\/p>\n
The big servers are usually the bigger, taller guys and they\u2019re not the best movers so it\u2019s harder for them to pick up a well-struck return. That puts all the more pressure on them to serve big and further limits their game. Of course, you don\u2019t expect your opponent to return a huge serve but the top players can return anything just below the upper limits of servedom and that explains, in a nutshell, Fed\u2019s dominance over Roddick.<\/p>\n
On this day, though, our much maligned Mr. Roddick was getting in his quota of big serves and he kept the ball in play long enough for Mathieu to make errors. Roddick played an excellent match and won it in straight sets, 6-3, 6-4. Next up for Roddick is Rafael Nadal<\/b>. If Roddick can play even better from the baseline and throw in a few more aces, he has a chance to beat Mr. Nadal too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few more thoughts about Roger Federer\u2019s first round loss to Andy Murray at Dubai and a look at Andy Roddick\u2019s first trip to the very same locale. I just bought a laptop so I could watch streaming video of tennis matches around the world. After all, it won\u2019t be long before our laptops are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}