My Summer in Italy 2009
(And What You Can Learn From It)

Scott Murphy

Ciao!

There's no other way to put it...my tennis experiences in Italy this summer were nothing short of incredible. And I think there are some important lessons all players can learn from my experiences, in particular, working closely with a high level Italian junior with world class potential.

I'm forever amazed by the doors that tennis can open and now I find myself spending my summers in the beautiful region of Tuscany, teaching and playing this great game, meeting interesting people from all over the world, eating incredible food and visiting some of the world's most beautiful and historic cities

As I wrote in the first article on my Italian experience, (Click Here) the time I spent last summer in the Tuscan city of Quarrata inspired me to start a tennis academy. My great friend and partner in Quarrata, Roberto Trovi, his wife Daniella and the municipality sports director Franco Burchietti have worked long and hard to make that dream a reality. Initially we were aiming for 2009, but now for 2010, we have secured a wonderful club, the Casalguidi Tennis Club. (Click Here.)

Want to join me there next summer? Read on and maybe I can convince you to do that - - particularly if you already have a trip planned to Europe and/or Italy. You can also Click Here to find out more.

So this summer, instead of a full blown academy, I worked intensively with Roberto's talented daughter, Chiara Trovi (pronounced Key - ara), who I feel has the potential to become one of the best women's players in Italy. I also had the pleasure of teaching a handful of other wonderful people from around the world. The most amazing thing, as I wrote in the first article, is that this entire connection started with an email to Tennisplayer.net from Roberto asking about strings...

Arrival!

My wife, Cynthia, and I arrived in Italy in early June and took up residence in the hillside town of Montemagno at the Poggio Desto Bed and Breakfast. Our apartment had a spectacular view of the Tuscan plain all the way from Pistoia to Florence with Prato in between. Poggio Desto also features a beautiful swimming pool that was much appreciated at the end of a long hot, humid day on the court.

Driving up the hill to Poggio Desto there are numerous vineyards and olive groves and off in the distance you can see the towns of Forrotolli and Lucciano. You pass in and out of Montemagno before you know it and just on its outskirts there's a deserted soccer field that every day I dreamed of turning into a tennis facility as the view alone was reason enough.

One of the nice things about spending more time in Italy this summer was that we really came to feel like part of the landscape. We spent some part of every day in Quarrata's main piazza because the Quore Ristorante there had WiFi. Since it's in the center of town there's always activity in the piazza from the huge farmer's market on Saturdays to the Wednesday night gatherings that feature dance contests, fashion shows, live bands, volleyball tournaments (they actually bring sand in) and lots of socializing, particularly around the Garten Three Gelateria.

If you ever go to Quarrata the gelato at Garten Three is a must...it's incredible. And let's face it, the food in Italy is incredible. Almost every day of our stay we were treated to a delicious homemade lunch or a dinner by the Trovis.

But then there were the restaurants. A wonderful spot is Punto Pizza, just off the main piazza. Then there is Le Anfore, located midway between Quarrata and Casalquidi on the main thoroughfare. And finally there was Il Messicano (not sure about the name since the food was definitely Italian.)

Our all time favorite though was the Podere Villa Fredda restaurant just outside of Quarrata where we stayed in 2008. In my humble opinion, they serve the most remarkable panna cotta on the face of the earth.

We also became regular shoppers at two Italian equivalents of Costco, the Coop in Agliana and the Iper Coop in Montecatini. We would go strictly for food items and a day doesn't go by that I don't yearn for some Mueller yogurt, Coop pear nectar, Coop pizza slices and pastries, among other things.

If you drive much in Europe, one thing you come to appreciate is the roundabouts. Flowing around the circle you just keep going or change directions, and I think about them every time I'm stuck at a stoplight here in the US. Directions though can be a bit of an adventure. The road signage can be tricky and I've managed to get lost a few times, even with a GPS. That woman's nice voice on the GPS (the same one you hear on the tube in London) will tell you to turn left in 300 meters, but then you have to figure out which of the next four left turns is at 300 meters.

We had some "adventures" that included going through the same toll booth multiple times. You also have to be on the lookout for bike riders. Bike riding is revered in Italy but that doesn't change the fact that we saw plenty of close calls as cars go right into oncoming traffic to get around 3 or 4 bikers riding abreast.

If driving is not your thing, taking the train is the way to go. Cynth and I took the train from Montale to Florence for a day and since the station is right in the heart of the city you can pretty much walk to all the main attractions. Another cool thing to do is take the fast train out of Florence to Rome. If you so desire you can leave in the morning, spend a day in Rome and be back in Florence by the evening.

And As For Tennis

Tennis in Italy is alive and well and this summer my work with Chiara gave me the opportunity to really understand its inner workings. In Italy you have four categories. The numbers work in reverse order from the states. So the lower the number, the higher level the player. Level 1 is very exclusive. It's only ATP and WTA players and includes only the top 20 Italian men and top 10 Italian women ranked in the top 500. (By the way Italy now has four men and six women in the top 100).

Below Level 1 there are multiple sub - divisions. All other ATP or WTA players are in the upper echelon of Level 2. The actual categories look like this:

4NC (NC stands for not classified) is the entry level classification. This would be the equivalent of 3.0 or below on the American NTRP system. An 5.5 NTRP rating would be the equivalent of the top of the Italian Level 3, say a 3.1. So you can see there are a few more levels there in what we think of as club tennis. In the American system, we have we have 7 levels between NTRP 2.5 and NTRP 5.5. The Italian system has 11 levels over roughly the same range.

To move your rating up in any category you gain points by winning matches and or tournaments. If you win a match against a player of equal ranking you get 50 points, 100 points for beating someone a step higher and 150 points for 2 steps and above. You get 30 for a win over someone a step lower, 20 for two steps lower and 0 for a win more than two steps below.

If you win a tournament you get bonus points equivalent to the highest ranked player in the draw whether you actually play them or not. The rating year is from November 1 to October 31 with an update at the end of May. But there is a twist. Whatever your rating in May, you're positioned one division back (for instance, if your ranking is 4.1, you will positioned as a 4.2). You decrease one step per year if you don't reach a minimum number of points during the season.

The different kinds of tournaments are much like here in the US in that there are the juniors (12's, 14's, 16's 18's). The category tournaments are also similar to our NTRP and Open tournaments. All of this became very meaningful to me as I followed Chiara's progress through the course of four tournaments this summer.

Chiara started November 1, 2008 with a 4.1 rating. This was due to a broken ankle and then a wrist injury the year before. But then she went on a tear and by May, 2009 she had the points to be rated 3.3 (so actually 3.4 due to rating rules). As you read this she now has the points to be rated 3.1 or one step down from category 2.

I have worked with hundreds of junior players in the many years I've been a teaching pro and Chiara is without a doubt one of, if not the most special. She gives coaches her undivided attention. She operates with a quiet determination that says I'll do this until I get it, and once I do I'll do it as many times as it takes to truly cement it.

I've never worked with anyone so quick to learn and then successfully incorporate new information into a match. And, oh yeah, did I mention that Chiara can absolutely rocket the ball. In addition to working on her technical game, we also did work on her footwork and shot readiness, including many of the drills I outlined in my previous articles. (Click Here.)

When I first met her a year ago, despite her obvious physical talent she was in a rut with regard to her training and development. Her two handed groundstrokes were monstrous for a girl not quite 14 but she needed more diversity and a lot of work on her serve. Her father Roberto was aware of this but my input was the final push they both needed to undertake change.

Previously, in the fall of 2008 Chiara had started to train at the Bisenzio Club in Prato about twenty minutes away from Quarrata and this was the start of a major turnaround for her. Like many of the clubs in Italy, Tennis Club Bisenzio is located somewhere you'd least expect it...right in the middle of town. Cynthia and I got a kick out of the fact that an apartment building separates its four courts.

The club is directed by Stefano Bonechi, one of those guys you can't help but like the moment you meet him. The same can be said of the two top pros there, Claudio Tagliafraschi and Stefano Nencini. My previous experiences with teaching pros in Italy had left me scratching my head, so these two were like a breath of fresh air. They truly devote themselves to the juniors in their program and they don't want you there if you're not ready to give 110%. They're also both very strong players and communicators so they're quick to earn the respect of the people they work with.

It's not uncommon for Claudio to drive hundreds of miles in a day as he travels from tournament to tournament in support of his players. That's so different from most American pros who may never see their players play a tournament match.

This was the environment Chiara needed to jump start her game and when I watched her again after not seeing her for a year, her improvement was remarkable. When I arrived I met with Claudio and Stefano to discuss how Chiara's interests would be best served since Roberto had decided I would work with her one on one for a period of six weeks. It turns out Claudio and Stefano take a break from formal training for most of the summer, so the timing was perfect. I appreciated that we all agreed this was an opportunity for Chiara's continued improvement.

My base of operations this year was Tennis Club Casalguidi. Everyone at the club, including its president Paolo Franchi, his wife Cynthia, groundskeepers Alfredo and Fabrizio and all its members were gracious, friendly and helpful from day one. It just felt great to be there.

Cynthia and I made many new friends and were humbled by the warm reception we received at a big club dinner towards the end of our stay. Paolo seated us at a table where virtually everyone spoke English including Marco Salemme, who I now consider a good friend and from whom I learned a great deal more about the area in which I was working. Like many of the clubs in Tuscany, TC Casalguidi has two red clay courts and a covered synthetic grass court that doubles as a mini soccer field to provide added income for the club. I spent the majority of my time on the covered court to avoid the sun and afternoon wind and because I preferred its truer bounce.

Chiara and I would start her workouts in the morning and their duration would depend on whether or not she had a tournament match that day. Depending on the number of courts a club has and because of the nature of clay court tennis, it can be very difficult to pin down the actual match start time. On more than a few occasions we'd arrive for a 6:00 p.m. match and Chiara wouldn't take the court until 2 hours later.

Chiara's matches ran that gamut from very brief to hard fought marathons. Her reputation for overpowering groundstrokes has grown. So there is now an older faction of women tournament players who realize there's no way they can beat her if they try to trade shots, so they'll slow the play way down by moon balling her.

The first tournament we went to with Chiara was a level three at the Tennis Club Racchetta 99 in Florence. She plowed through her first three opponents, all of whom played her straight up but couldn't withstand the firepower. In the semis however, she met a player who at one time had been rated 2.4 but was now in her forties and had adapted her game to contend with younger, bigger hitters.

In the warm up she was trading shots with Chiara but once the match started she hit literally hundreds of topspin lobs that were easily 25 feet over the net. I marveled that she could do this so consistently off Chiara's high velocity shots. It was an emotional roller coaster, but after literally four hours of battling, Chiara's youth and will power prevailed and she won in three sets. She then went on to win the tournament.

But it was the moonball type of match that would provide much of the incentive for our workouts. Our practices included taking loftier balls on the rise, and also learning how to give the same ball back. We also worked extensively on recognizing when to transition forward to back up her big groundstrokes with swinging volleys or traditional volleys. We worked for hours on slice backhands, drop shots, overheads as well as her serve.

At a handful of Chiara's workouts we were very fortunate to have Elisa Spampani join us. Elisa is a couple of years older than Chiara but they'd become good friends through their tennis connection. Elisa always has as smile on her face and she was excited about being able to practice her English with us and work with an American tennis pro.

She's an outstanding tennis player coached mainly by her teaching pro brother at the club in Montale where she's from. In addition to big ground strokes, Elisa has a nice slice backhand and is very comfortable closing the net and volleying and I would use this to further convince Chiara of the value of developing these aspects. Cynthia and I would marvel at the exchanges these two would have on the red clay, seemingly immune to the erratic bounces that would unnerve the two of us.

I have played the vast majority of my tennis on the hard courts of California so playing on clay the past three years has shown me its many advantages, and helped me understand how a clay courter approaches the game.

It's not a secret that clay courters tend to have very strong groundstrokes, and to rely on patience, footwork and physical endurance. The limitations I feel are that there's usually less focus on the serve and the net game, and this was certainly the case in the women's matches I watched. For me, the bottom line is that the more shots you know how to hit the more options you have and that's an advantage no matter what surface you play on. And of course for any player aspiring to play the tour this will mean large numbers, if not a majority of matches on hard courts.

Chiara understood this but she was winning most of her matches anyway and people were really taking note of her surge in the ratings. This, understandably, meant a lot to her and therefore created a dilemma. She knew the changes we were making would ultimately make her a better all around player, and this would be essential as she started to go up against the level two players. But since it was unfamiliar territory she also knew there could be some rough times ahead as she worked at incorporating them.

The key for Chiara was to try things a little bit at a time, particularly if she had big leads on opponents. My approach was to compliment her attempts at changes but not insist that she make them. Chiara is very competitive and I figured that regardless of the level of her competition she'd want the tools at her disposal to be able to win any type of match.

In a junior tournament at the Polisportiva Giglio Club in Castelfiorentino she played a phenomenal first round match against a very tough opponent with a similar game and won it in three blistering sets. In the next round she played a girl who after losing to Chiara many times had decided to change tactics and throw her the kitchen sink--slice, moonballs, lobs, drop shots. It worked and Chiara lost in straight sets, but now she was starting to experiment.

Her new serve was looking very good. In the past her first serve had been huge but her serving percentates were around 30%. The second serve was less than half the speed of the first and always to the forehand. Now her first serve percentage was going up and she was moving the ball around more to set up plays off of the return. She was also starting to hit the second serve more fearlessly.

Her next tournament was a level three at her own Bisenzio Club and Chiara powered her way to the final where she faced a woman who is a teaching pro and has quite a reputation for being crafty and abrasive. She turned out to be a better version of the moonballer Chiara played in Florence. She was in great shape, covered the court extremely well and lobbed the ball until you wanted to scream. At one point the decidedly pro-Chiara crowd started to groan and boo as one lob after another went up.

On this night Chiara lacked the patience to deal with this tactic and lost in straight sets but the good news was she had shown signs of understanding that to beat a player like this she needed to expand her game. She'd snuck in after drilling some deep angled groundstrokes and hit some swinging volley winners off of a couple of moonball replies. What this woman said to her after the match might be her undoing the next time they play. As they shook hands she said, "You cannot beat me...I am like a wall!" If that's not incentive I don't know what is.

Next up was Chiara's first ever open tournament at the Tennis Club Italia in Forte dei Marme on the Mediterranean. She won two qualifying and two main draw matches, one of which was highly contentious because her opponent seemed to think every ball Chiara called out was in. The referee agreed with every one of Chiara's calls and finally threatened to disqualify her opponent if she summoned him again.

At the start of this match Chiara's opponent tried to go toe to toe with her but was getting barbecued in the exchanges. Towards the end of the first set as she came by the fence to pick up a ball I heard her coach say something in Italian to her and from there on out it was moonball city. Between that and the many disputed calls it turned into a three hour battle, but Chiara pulled it out.

Her next opponent was a teaching pro and had been rated as high as 2.4. She was in her late twenties and had a very solid game. This was the match I'd been hoping for...six weeks in the making. Chiara was serving huge and mixing up her shots with slice backhands, drop shots, swinging volleys and higher arching topspin, along with her usual hard flat drives off both sides. She lost the first set 6-2 but the games were close.

I wasn't sure how Chiara would respond in the second but she came out firing and won it 6-1. In the third she went up a quick break and called a sideline shot out on game point to consolidate it. Her opponent questioned the call and Chiara was overruled when the ref was summoned. She wound up losing that game and the match 3-6 in the third.

She learned a valuable lesson there. She had let the overrule distract her and it probably cost her the match. Of course I would have loved to have seen her win that match but as the time drew near for my departure back to the states, I was very pleased with the progress Chiara had made in a relatively short time frame. She's currently back at Bisenzio training with a girl who has a 2.3 rating and in the very capable hands of Claudio and Stefano.

Chiara's dream is to play professional tennis and I personally think she'll get there. She has to learn to control her emotions when she hits bad patches during matches but she has a surplus of what I call "Rafa-ism." To me this is an inner fire that drives her to give 110% on every ball. She has four more years of high school, but I'd love to see her play Division 1 college tennis in the US, at least a year for a year. In any event, remember the name Chiara Trovi because this girl's going places in the tennis world. You heard it first on Tennisplayer.net.

Universal Lessons

Chiara may be exceptional, but her experiences hold lessons that apply for all levels of players. First dedication and hard work are the foundation for improvement. Second, you have to have the courage to expand your game outside your comfort zone by improving your weaknesses, adding shots and becoming a complete player. Even if it has a short term adverse effect on results.

Third, in competitive tennis every player faces some rough situations that are unpleasant emotionally, from obnoxious opponents to playing conditions, to issues over calls. You have to learn to accept all this and find a way to stay positive and even become inspired if you really want to be the player you are capable of becoming.

Other Students

In between my time training Chiara this summer I worked with some other terrific people. The first was Vejdi Ural from Istanbul, Turkey. Vejdi had emailed me a number of time through Tennisplayer so I knew this was a guy who'd been bitten by the tennis bug and was on a mission to become a solid player. Working with Vejdi was a gas. He'd recently been to Wimbledon for two weeks and had packed the images of all the great players he'd seen into his head.

The way that translated into his own game created a bit of a mess initially, but once we established what would work for him he was on his way. We averaged about four hours a day for a week and by week's end we were both very pleased with what he'd accomplished.

One day as I was finishing up a lesson with Vejdi I heard the guy about to take the court speaking English and jumped at the opportunity to converse with him. Partick O'Brien is from London and has a summer house in San Boronto in the hills above Quarrata. He's a terrific guy and very into tennis.

He'd tried unsuccessfully to get the permits needed to build a court at the house in San Boronto so as luck would have it he was playing at TC Casalguidi. Over the course of a week and a half I worked with Patrick, his son Finn and some of Finn's pals who were visiting from the UK. Next summer, in addition to continuing our workouts in Casalguidi, Cynth and I are looking forward to playing with Patrick at the Queens Club in London, where he is a member.

Enzo Schiano was referred to me by a great friend from Lake Tahoe, Paul Niwano whom I'd met and played a lot of tennis with over the years when I directed the Nike Tahoe Tennis Camp. Enzo lives just outside of Florence but went to college in the US and spent a number of years working in the Silicon Valley. We worked for a full week on his volleys and backhand and he was a quick study. His incentive was to try and give Paul a run for his money the next time they played.

And then there was my oldest Italian friend, Marco. I first met Marco Mottadelli through emails he sent to John Yandell about my articles. We developed an extended correspondence over the years about tennis and many other topics. This guy has a passion for tennis that may actually equal my own.

I'd be lying if I said that his friendship and repeated invitations didn't play a critical part in my decision to first go to Italy in 2007. Cynthia and I ended up spending a truly wonderful week in Monza with Marco and his wife Franca. In fact we became great friends with his entire family.

This year Marco showed up in Tuscany to visit us and as usual we really enjoyed hitting the ball together, catching up, and sharing some beer. I have a feeling that is all going to happen again in 2010.

For the summer of 2010 I will be back in Tuscany so please keep an eye out either at my website or Tennisplayer.net for all the information you will need to train with me there. I'd love to see you and I guarantee you'll have a great time on and off the court. I'm sure there will be more adventures and learning experiences to report.

Arrivederci ed io speri di vederlo in Italia! Or, in other words, Goodbye for now and I hope to see you in Italy next summer.