{"id":1028,"date":"2009-07-28T20:31:05","date_gmt":"2009-07-29T04:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/?p=1027"},"modified":"2009-07-28T20:31:05","modified_gmt":"2009-07-29T04:31:05","slug":"benni-beckers-long-hard-trip-back-to-the-top-fifty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/benni-beckers-long-hard-trip-back-to-the-top-fifty\/","title":{"rendered":"Benni Becker\u2019s Long Hard Trip Back to the Top Fifty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Benjamin Becker started off his ATP career with a bang by reaching the fourth round at the U.S. Open and ending Andre Agassi\u2019s career in the process. After dropping out of the top 100 he\u2019s back in the top 50. What happened along the way?<\/b><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/view.picapp.com\/default.aspx?term=benjamin becker&#038;iid=5630187\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.picapp.com\/ftp\/Images\/e\/2\/0\/9\/LA_Tennis_Open_3b18.jpg?adImageId=2033163&#038;imageId=5630187\" width=\"380\" height=\"253\"  border=\"0\" alt=\"LA Tennis Open Day 2\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.pis.picapp.com\/IamProd\/PicAppPIS\/JavaScript\/PisV4.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>In 2006\/2007, <b>Benjamin Becker<\/b> reached the fourth round at the U.S. Open and got to the semifinals and a final in three other events. In 2008 he had only three quarterfinals and by early 2009 he was down to a ranking of 135. Then in April of this year, he got on a roll that started with three challenger titles in four weeks and ended in June with his first ATP title at s\u2019Hertogenbosch.<\/p>\n<p>In Los Angeles today, I asked him how that all went down. Let\u2019s start with April and work our way backwards.<\/p>\n<p>Number one, he changed his coach just before the Miami event at the end of March. Ah yes, the coach bump. Happens all the time on the ATP tour.<\/p>\n<p><b>Andy Roddick<\/b>\u2019s results bump up every time he hires a new coach. After hiring <b>Brad Gilbert<\/b> he won his only slam and got to number one. After hiring <b>Jimmy Connors<\/b> he won the Cincinnati Masters and got to the final at the U.S. Open. After hiring <b>Larry Stefanki<\/b> he came within a hair of winning Wimbledon. Not long after hiring a new coach last year, <b>Juan Martin Del Potro<\/b> won four tournaments in a row.<\/p>\n<p>Why does this happen? Is it like a new romance? A new relationship? Is everything hunky dory because you haven\u2019t known each other long enough to develop conflicts? Am I being too cynical?<\/p>\n<p>The secret may lie in listening. Benni had actually been coaching himself since the Paris event last year and who knows, maybe he just wanted to save some money, but this is the reason he gave:<\/p>\n<p><i> Before the coach takes care of the tactics but I wanted to do it myself because I feel like if I do it, I\u2019ll also do it on the court and learn from it better than if someone tells you do to it and you\u2019re nodding but you don\u2019t really hear.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>For sure a player listens to himself, but what about his longtime coach? Maybe the old coach\u2019s voice becomes background noise while the new coach\u2019s voice is saying something new and exciting enough to actually pay attention to, just as we sometimes dismiss the ramblings of our longtime boss while we hang on every word of a new boss to make sure we know what we\u2019re suppose to be doing.<\/p>\n<p>Why did Benni fall down the rankings? In a word, pressure. Winning a few big matches can come easily, repeating it means wrestling with expectations that weren\u2019t there be before:<\/p>\n<p><i>Before I had nothing to lose. I never expected to be that high in the rankings and all of a sudden I find myself in the top 50 and I started thinking about it and I started to defend it and then you don\u2019t play as well.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>You don\u2019t play as well and your ranking drops and you put more pressure on yourself and you get more and more unhappy and then, one day, you\u2019ve dropped out of the magic top 100. Instead of playing to win, you play to keep your ranking. You play to hold on to what you have instead of taking the risks that might lose you a match here and there but are necessary if you want to beat higher ranked players. On top of that, you still have to travel from country to country and continent to continent only to lose in the first round more often than not.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s all too much and by the time Bangkok rolled around last September, Benni couldn\u2019t do it anymore. It wasn\u2019t working. It wasn\u2019t even making sense. But he\u2019s a smart guy &#8211; don\u2019t underestimate the value of a college education, or, more specifically, the maturity that a college education gives you time to develop \u2013 and he made an adjustment:<\/p>\n<p><i>If I want to do this I have to have fun too. So I\u2019m trying to have fun. Trying to do things that maybe don\u2019t help my tennis but make me happy. Because players who are happy, they enjoy themselves and they\u2019re doing better.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t ask him what those things might be. Maybe I should have. And it may or may not be enough. Benni lost in two tiebreakers to <b>John Isner<\/b> today thereby losing in the first round. But I\u2019ve been interviewing Benni since he started winning challengers in 2005 and I\u2019ve always been impressed with his smarts. I don\u2019t know how high he\u2019ll go in the rankings but I\u2019m pretty sure he\u2019s resourceful enough to find a way to stay in that magic top 100 and that would make for a pretty good career.<\/p>\n<p>twitter.com\/nrota<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Benjamin Becker started off his ATP career with a bang by reaching the fourth round at the U.S. Open and ending Andre Agassi\u2019s career in the process. After dropping out of the top 100 he\u2019s back in the top 50. What happened along the way? In 2006\/2007, Benjamin Becker reached the fourth round at the [&hellip;]<\/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-1028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}