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Replicating Gretzky's magic?

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  • Replicating Gretzky's magic?

    The ultimate innovator in sports was Gretzky. None better. His father established set rules for how the game should be played mentally, and his thinking man's approach to the game has never been replicated. He used to draw a picture of a hockey rink, and Wayne would watch the match, and draw everywhere Gordie Howe would go on the ice in relation to the puck. It was no accident the kid became the smartest player ever to play the game with the brain development his father pioneered.

    Two members here have planted bugs in my ear, and we private message a lot!

    The gist of what they tell me is todays players are not master every skill (slice, drop, volley, forehand, backhand, one hander, low ball, high ball ect). Their right, and it takes to much time, and people always want to be entertained these days, unlike the older Federer, Sampras, Williams era where VCR's weren't overly interesting or addictive. That'll take time, however, I have a young athlete that loves to try everything, and enjoys the intellectual challenge of variety. Some kids are mindless, the one's that aren't are a rare blessing.

    My first thing, I will encourage the eager beaver to use EVERY grip, and master every shot, all angles by trying EVERYTHING and learning what will work and what won't work. I get it, it's important, however, force feeding someone into a certain grip just ain't my style. Let em sort it out on their own for years, and have fun with it! And let them try everything, they might learn in a certain situation a certain grip works rather well with their specific body - style, however, that is athlete driven and not coach driven as it's situational feel. What Rafa did worked well for Rafa, and interestingly enough I once read Pam Shriver was asking uncle Toni about the grips, and he wasn't sure about a lot of things!

    However, their is a big hole here! So, let me explain what it is, and where my starter plan is at right now.

    And, I keep hearing the same thing from the two members here, build an all-court game. Okay. Got it. However, I see every pro hitting the balls to the kids from the center of the court, and, or the middle of the baseline. Is this why kids don't have all-around game. Their becoming superb players in hitting the ball from two spots on the court! ZERO variety. Not much field vision being developed either.

    It strikes me as an tennis dummie outsider as insane. So, I created a grid to solve this issue.

    It's real basic. Each part of the court has a number. In practice we'll do a grid check-off, practice the ball from 1 to 65, or 9 to 47, ect ect. I envision giving a young athlete experience hitting balls to every block, and gaining experience, without leaving any holes in their shot development. You can also move them back to a certain block running the pro's traditionally go back to, and not overextend or overwork the athlete with pointless over-movement or over-extension.

    I hate mindless movement. If you move them mindlessly in practice, it'll happen in a game. I'd like to do a ball drop drill where specific blocks are run (commonality), and boom, you've got a game skill based on some actual scientific data of the positions a player is moving. Let me tell ya, it ain't to tough to place tape on the court so the athlete gets to where they need to get to, and as well focus the timing of it, so it matches match timing! Anyways, this is the basics of NFL field speed, and receivers coaches are ingenious in this area.

    Now, what I can do as well is track every pro play with pattern with this number set, and set it up in two areas, ball is hit from here to here (1 to 64), and feet go from here to her (8 to 9), and so on and so forth, and even throw in spin - pace and all the rest.

    It'd be a good idea to map out all of the points in this matter onto cards, for study, and of course to replicate in a practice setting continually.
    Chess has it right, they map out these games into a grid (which is what chess is, a grid), and they study ten's of thousands of games, engage in pattern recognition, set their own rules and train it all into a certain area of the brain. No could practice and duplicate actual pro points, figure out common patterns (practice smarter by working on the key patterns, or setting new patterns which aren't being used).

    See my image, it's crude, but I will get it down pat, and when I do, we will truly be developing an all-court game.

    Anyways my buddy from the tennis court is out of a job so I can have him map this all out for me, locate the greatest points in tennis history, map out all the great matches, and enter it into a computer program or something that'll sort through the raw data.

    Easy enough for me to do as programming language and code is my thing!
    So, advise on how I put this all-togther in a kid friendly way?

    I could just make cards like chess people do. However what about a game of pong where I can throw the numbers into the machine, and show patterns at their most basic element without noise?

    Clearly, I will have to study this one out, and make a computer model, or simple game like candy crush that's addictive, and able to set this up for me as cards may not hold and athletes interest. Studying a video game may open up different neural pathways when it'll be carried over to a tennis court, so I'll have to quiz a few of my buddies who've spent more hours on this learning research than me!

    The Polger sisters abviously figured out how to map out neurology and train the right areas of the brain, so that kind of stuff I'm on the right track somewhat, and getting there, and it's important.

    So, my question is, how do I make this work, and what are you doing to pattern recognition your athletes like the Great One (Gretzky) did?
    Last edited by hockeyscout; 03-15-2014, 04:22 AM.

  • #2
    Zones of the Court

    Interesting point you bring up. A very good pro from the Northern California area, Mark Fairchilds, has developed the concept of the six zones of the tennis court. Zone 1 is from the net to halfway between the net and the service line, Zone 2 is from the end of Zone 1 to the service line, Zone 3 is from the end of Zone 2 to halfway between the service line and the baseline, Zone 4 is from the end of Zone 3 to the baseline, Zone 5 is from the baseline to halfway between the baseline and the back fence and Zone 6 is from the end of Zone 5 to the fence. He teaches the strategy of the game from the perspective of what Zone you are in and what Zone your opponent is in. Just as an example, he talks about a point he saw played at the U.S. Open where Andy Murray was in Zone 6 and his opponent hit an approach shot that was very deep - it bounced an inch or two inside the baseline on Murray's side of the court. Murray passed the opponent easily. The TV commentator said what a great approach shot it was because it bounced so deep and what a remarkable passing shot Murray hit. But Mark's point was that it was not a good approach shot because Murray was in Zone 6 so by the time the approach got to Murray it came down right into his strike zone and with the spin you can get from today's strings you can hit good passing shots from that far back (Zone 6). He said hitting a short low approach shot that would have made Murray play the shot from say Zone 4 would have been more effective. There is a DVD of a Specialty Course that Mark gave on the Zones as they apply to Doubles (he also covers singles for about 1/2 hour in the presentation) - the link is below. I have found the Zone concept quite helpful in my teaching.


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    • #3
      I might also add that Mark points out that most junior players make many mistakes from Zones 3 and 4 as they do not practice from those Zones nearly as much as they should.

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      • #4
        Interesting. Zones is close to what I want, and if I run it into a computer program I can also chart it into zones (six or so).

        You know, from what I can see tennis has never really had a Billy Beane Money-Player? I wonder if Billy would have had things like grips for instance broken down into situation play, wins - loses and stats.

        NFL teams right now use optical tracing data with field side camera's which record real time movement, and multi dimensional movements of the ball. Every NBA team right now has solved rebounds to a science, and are aware of the non linear relationship between the shooting locale, and it's end impact on rebounding rates. In other words, it's statistical situation data.

        As I have said before the Australian's are miles ahead with their Olympic program (the Chinese as well, however, it's so hard getting a read on what is happening there but I think it's nutrition based).

        Their is an Australian company called Catapult Sports and they've got some great compilation data on movement. If your interested in something like lets say client load which includes (speed, decelleration, step length, planting pressure, low - mid - high intensity movements, hell whatever etc) while running at any speed (6-8-10-12-14-16-18) you can see this, monitor it, and properly adjust you're workouts.

        It's all about discovering advanced metrics. Then you'll discover the algorithms which will tell you a lot. Integration of all this data will be key in learning how to unlock a better end performance. Science is taking a massive leap forward in player development, and it's starting to filter down to the developmental ranks.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by EdWeiss View Post
          I might also add that Mark points out that most junior players make many mistakes from Zones 3 and 4 as they do not practice from those Zones nearly as much as they should.
          Excellence

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          • #6
            Thanks hockeyscout, now I can read your longer posts...

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            • #7
              I echo EdWeiss in his description of Mark Fairchilds 6 zones concept. I've listened to Mark speak and had the pleasure to play some doubles with him. He's been teaching this idea for years and when you listen to him break it down it does come together quite nicely.

              If you teach a student from the baseline only or from the net only then what about all the area between. Certainly if you don't practice from all areas of the court it's improbable to have an "all court" game. Half volleys, mid court balls, deep overheads, swinging volleys from no-mans land all need to be practiced if grooming for an "all court" game. But that is just my logical side speaking

              Kyle LaCroix USPTA
              Boca Raton

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              • #8
                Six zones. To small. I'm thinking of setting it up into at least 16 - 32 area's on each side of the court.

                I'm having a hell of a time tracking stats from tennis.

                Anyone know of any money-ball type sites out there?

                Here's something interesting:

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