Nicolas Almagro isn’t making as much progress on hard court as we thought he would. What does he need to do?<\/b><\/p>\n
What is up with Nicolas Almagro<\/b>? This is a strongly built guy with a big serve and flat hard shots yet he can\u2019t get it going on outdoor hard court and he\u2019s even worse indoors.<\/p>\n
Almagro lost to Simone Bolelli<\/b> in the first round in this week\u2019s Masters Series event in Madrid. Not only was Bolelli a lucky loser but Almagro went on to lose the second set by the frightening score of 6-1 after losing the first set in a tiebreaker. And that\u2019s the second week in a row he\u2019s done it. Last week in Metz he lost the second set to Eduard Schwank<\/b> 6-2 after losing the first set in a tiebreaker. That was a first round loss too.<\/p>\n
Losing the second set that badly was a weak response to a disappointing but not disastrous event – losing a tiebreaker. Almagro\u2019s first response was to get mad. After missing a shot to go down 15-40 on his serve early in the second set, Almagro smashed his racket on the bottom of his shoe and mangled it. The racket that is, not his foot. Though I imagine it couldn\u2019t have felt good.<\/p>\n
He followed that up by mistaking the Pista Central for rush hour in Barcelona. He was down 0-3 in the second set when he bunted a soft overhead long. Two points later he served the ball before Bolelli was ready. At the very least, smashing a racket implies that you\u2019re stopping and thinking about the situation, but here was Almagro blithely marching forward in a downward spiraling direction. I\u2019d have faked a foot injury or something, anything, to slow the world down a bit and give myself a good talking to. The dead quiet of his home country spectators probably made him feel even worse.<\/p>\n
In times like this, a player has to take the smallest glimpse of hope and pump it up into something encouraging because there\u2019s no stasis in competitive sports. You\u2019re getting better or worse, it\u2019s very seldom that you cruise, and that\u2019s what was disturbing. Almagro is number 17 in the world and he was accepting his thrashing. He wasn\u2019t exactly lying down and saying \u201chit me,\u201d it was more like a grim march with no self-reflection or change in tactics or even despair outside of that smashed racket.<\/p>\n
Somewhere in his psyche Almagro has to find that desperation. Maybe it\u2019s as simple as refusing to look bad in front of spectators or fellow players. Maybe it\u2019s throwing caution to the wind and hitting out until he finds something that works. Anything to change things up \u2013 especially himself. When passion should take over, disappointment followed by a dejected acceptance seems to take over.<\/p>\n
Players do different things when they\u2019re behind. Rafael Nadal<\/b> holds steady and, when a situation presents itself, he jumps right in and takes advantage of it. Other players change their strategy. Things are going badly as it is and no one is as steady as Nadal, so players usually need to do something different. James Blake<\/b> suffers from this problem: he has no backup plan and he bristles at the idea that he should have one. Some players have the opposite problem: they give up their game strategy without giving it significant time to succeed, but that\u2019s rare.<\/p>\n
The truly successful players raise the level of their game but how do they do that? Sorry about going on and on here. I\u2019m still recovering from the death of one of my favorite writers, David Foster Wallace<\/a>. I\u2019ve been reading his essays nonstop and he was known to go on a bit. Don\u2019t worry, though, I won\u2019t resort to the footnotes and addendums on footnotes he was famous for.<\/p>\n
What Wallace did well was to get to the heart of the matter and the heart of the matter here is: What does it mean to raise the level of your game? And how do learn to do it? You have to find a place within you that wants to win more than anything else in the world (okay, with a few exceptions such treasuring your loved ones as much as yourself). If you\u2019re a professional athlete and you can\u2019t find that place inside you, you\u2019re in tough luck because what other profession gives you as much license to be self-absorbed except maybe movie stardom or hedge fund trading.<\/p>\n
It took Pete Sampras<\/b> a few years to figure out that he was willing to be the guy with a target on his back and not the guy who was more willing to live with the pain of ending tournaments with a loss than be the target of the sniping and jealousy that goes with being number one; that winning was important enough to put up with feeling separate from other players rather than being one of the guys, or having the media bug you and dissect you and misquote you and ask if maybe it wasn\u2019t time to retire when you still had a few slams left in you.<\/p>\n
In other words, someone who would rather hide than sit in full view like those people at charity fundraisers who sit on a platform over a bucket of water waiting for someone to hit the target and collapse the platform sending them hurtling into the water. It\u2019s purposely embarrassing to fall in the water and most of us, me included, would rather throw at the target.<\/p>\n
Novak Djokovic<\/b> got a taste of it this year after he won a slam in Australia. Last year he was the darling of the slams with his imitations of Nadal and Andy Roddick<\/b> and any other player with the slightest tic. This year Roddick teased Djokovic about his medical injury timeouts and he didn\u2019t respond well. The crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium booed him mercilessly when he complained about Roddick\u2019s comments after beating Roddick in the quarterfinals at the US Open. Djokovic will survive and win more slams because he\u2019s willing to put himself in that situation. Winning is more important than having everyone in the stadium love you.<\/p>\n