Mark Carruthers Article: Be Careful of Commentators

[John Carpenter]

Mark Carruthers has one of the more fascinating tennis blogs on the internet. Besides still having big game (he recently made the Finals of the Singapore Open) he is just outright hilarious in his nearly daily updates. Check out his website http://www.noworriestennis.com. The Letter to Rafa (look in the archive if it's not on the front page) is pure sublime and just outright hilarious. Here is one I agree with totally. FYI, you can't trust announcers at all to know what the players are doing, even former great players, as those who have read my history of tennis know that even Sampras, once hired by Tennis Magazine to explain how he hit his forehand, then writes he can't explain how he hit his forehand. It just happened "naturally." Carruthers grew up as New Zealand's mutiple junior champion and played all over the world before deciding he did not want to be accused of padding the pro records of Hewitt, "Gonzo" and Nalbandian who were beating him in the juniors regularly. Mark notes Gonzo had that incredible forehand even as a 14 to 15 year old.....ouch! Mark is a graduate of the Sanchez-Casal Coaching Academy and as soon as MTMCA started up, quickly became certified in Modern Tennis Methodology by Oscar Wegner. He became Head Pro at the exclusive Inn ad Manitou Tennis Resort in Canada and has taught in Florida, Austria, and Hong Kong but currently teaches in Singapore where he still writes his weekly hilarious column.

By Mark Carruthers

Be careful of commentators

Since I live in Singapore, I get Star Sports coverage of Wimbledon.

... No complaints with this since it usually comes with a large dose of Boris Becker, Tim Henman, Vijay Amritraj and Vijay Amritraj's enviable head of hair.

It would be great if someone gave Boris the occasional triple espresso to wake him up, but usually, I don't have too many complaints. However, after Andy Roddick's match last night, Vijay said something that made me wonder whether Star Sports has been using a body double over the last few years.

The 'Octopussy' star said how much he loves Roddick's slice backhand and how Jimmy Connors was the one who helped equip Roddick with this shot. Umm, excuse me if I'm mistaken here, but I'm something like 107% sure Jimbo was the one who was trying to get Andy to dump the slice and take a more aggressive approach with his backhand rather than scampering around 6 feet behind the baseline floating slices.

So what's my point?

Simple, beware of what you hear from some of these commentators. Yes, guys like Vijay, Boom Boom and Henman were great players, but great players don't always make great commentators.

The prime example here is technique.

Many top players acheived their technical prowess despite what their coaches told them and not because of it. For example, I was reading an article written by Peter Bodo on tennis.com a few months ago in which he wrote how Nick Bollettieri wanted his Russian pupil, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova to take her racket back earlier when she was running for a forehand.

Wow!

Watch Roger Federer, Andy Murray or anyone who is any good and you will see that the one thing these players don't do, is take the racket back early - under any circumstances.

All these players - as Oscar Wegner points out - track the ball with the racket out in front. They work to find the ball and then once they do, they unleash. Yet you will rarely turn on the tennis and not hear some ex-player extolling the virtues of taking the racket back early.

What bollocks.

This and being told to hit "through 4 balls" - as some coaches like to say - are two huge impairments to better baseline play. The problem, is since these players were such legends, people are likely to listen to anything they say.

This isn't always the best course of action.

So, next time you sit down to watch the pro's, trust your eyes and not your ears. Watch how they track the ball, wait for it and then hit way across the ball.

If you can implement this into your groundies, you'll have the same feeling as the big boys.

[mcarruthers]

Thanks for the plug John.

Just to clear one thing up, getting trampled on by the likes of Hewitt, Nalbandian and Gonzo - his forehand was as big when he was 14 and 15 as it is now - on the junior circuit convinced me that unless I wanted to bankrupt my parents, going pro would not be the smartest choice.

[Mesmo]

At the last US Open Martina claimed that the players are better today because of the strings. UH ? They are using gut with nylon ,old as the hills. Jimmy Conners after watching Solderling hitting didnt know how they could stay consistent hitting that hard. Answer : find the ball,wait and explode liftIng the ball.
Almost all the anouncers hail the players for hitting early, they believe you could never hit to early.e Better have steel wrists and elbows.

[Mesmo]

This guy is really funny but it is sad at the same time,

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