An Interview with the "Other Toni," Antonio Cascales

[arturohernandez]

Cascales has no dogma—no rigid system that everyone must follow. When asked what the core of his teaching philosophy is, he replied, "Hard work and docility." Docility means the player is coachable, malleable.

Being coachable is so terribly important in my view because it means a player can be truly optimised. I also suspect some players have made it despite hardly listening to a word the coach says. I know one fairly high achiever who ignored everyone.

Quantifying the value of coaching and its contribution is actually quite difficult to assess. You have listeners and those who don't listen and both can do well.

As Sampras once said (I am paraphrasing here), If you can hit the ball very close to the lines all the time, no one can beat you.

At some level, ability may just surpass everything. But I get the sense that players who don't listen eventually get stuck. Those who listen or at least seek out a different view are able to overcome obstacles.

Fed learned a drop shot. Novak improved his serve. Rafa improved everything. All to me seem extremely coachable. Not pushovers but willing to try something different even for a while.

[stotty]

Cascales has no dogma—no rigid system that everyone must follow. When asked what the core of his teaching philosophy is, he replied, "Hard work and docility." Docility means the player is coachable, malleable.

Being coachable is so terribly important in my view because it means a player can be truly optimised. I also suspect some players have made it despite hardly listening to a word the coach says. I know one fairly high achiever who ignored everyone.

Quantifying the value of coaching and its contribution is actually quite difficult to assess. You have listeners and those who don't listen and both can do well.

[arturohernandez]

Thanks! Great drill!

[clewit]

Here I am demonstrating one variation of the wall. There are many ways to do it!

[clewit]

Thanks as always for the informative work on the Spanish Tradition. I found your book and articles fascinating. Amazing untold story. Interesting that tennis rose to prominence with Franco. HIs dictatorship left a lot of trauma in Spain. But it also seems to made tennis much more accessible than it was in other places.

In any case, I have been looking for La Pared online and cannot seem to find a video of it.

I know about the X which my daughter did endlessly last summer in Spain. But I am not sure what La Pared is.

Could you post a video?

Thank you very much. Let me see if I can link a good example from my archive. Thanks!

[clewit]

Thanks as always for the informative work on the Spanish Tradition. I found your book and articles fascinating. Amazing untold story. Interesting that tennis rose to prominence with Franco. HIs dictatorship left a lot of trauma in Spain. But it also seems to made tennis much more accessible than it was in other places.

In any case, I have been looking for La Pared online and cannot seem to find a video of it.

I know about the X which my daughter did endlessly last summer in Spain. But I am not sure what La Pared is.

Could you post a video?

Thanks very much. I have a video on my Instagram and YouTube channel of the wall exercise. Let me see if I can link it this weekend.

It’s one of the most fundamental drills in Spain.

Chris

[jthb1021]

Thanks as always for the informative work on the Spanish Tradition. I found your book and articles fascinating. Amazing untold story. Interesting that tennis rose to prominence with Franco. HIs dictatorship left a lot of trauma in Spain. But it also seems to made tennis much more accessible than it was in other places.

In any case, I have been looking for La Pared online and cannot seem to find a video of it.

I know about the X which my daughter did endlessly last summer in Spain. But I am not sure what La Pared is.

Could you post a video?

I love your articles outlining the Spanish System and you cannot argue with their results over the last 30 years. I too couldn't find the La Pared drill, but I did go down an absolute rabbit hole of hand fed and racquet drills of spanish suffering footwork drills on YouTube. Chris would you please share a video or description of that drill?

[arturohernandez]

Thanks as always for the informative work on the Spanish Tradition. I found your book and articles fascinating. Amazing untold story. Interesting that tennis rose to prominence with Franco. HIs dictatorship left a lot of trauma in Spain. But it also seems to made tennis much more accessible than it was in other places.

In any case, I have been looking for La Pared online and cannot seem to find a video of it.

I know about the X which my daughter did endlessly last summer in Spain. But I am not sure what La Pared is.

Could you post a video?

[johnyandell]

Let's discuss Chris Lewit's latest article, "An Interview with the "Other Toni," Antonio Cascales"