What Else Is There To Say About Robert?

John Yandell

What else is there to say about the life of Robert Lansdorp? In the past 2 months we've put up portraits from two of the best writers in tennis, Barry Buss (Click Here) and Mark Winters (Click Here.)

But Robert had a big impact on Tennisplayer in the early days—a huge positive for us but also (as he acknowledged) for him. So here is that story.

My friend and longtime Tennisplayer contributor Allen Fox made the introduction and shortly thereafter I drove down to southern Cal to do our first interview. Now this was in the days before Siri, and I got fully lost.

I called Robert to apologize and say I'd be 30 minutes late. That was when I heard the bark for the first time, but not the last. I thought he was gonna cancel, but after berating me for awhile for wasting his valuable time he relented. And with better directions from Robert I was on my way.

Music

When I arrived and went to the front door, I could hear music, acoustic guitar and singing—it was nice music, pretty and resonant. Robert didn't open the door til the song was finished. And that's when I found out it was no recording, that was Robert. I was kind of stunned but impressed.

He played a few more times for me over the years as I got to know him. It wasn't like I was tolerating him to flatter him, I liked it. He had true musical talent.

But back to that first meeting. I explained what Tennisplayer was—an effort on the internet to address and understand tennis based on the views of coaches like him and high speed video of top players.

At the time knowledgeable tennis people knew who Robert was, but there was little or no systematic information on how he produced results with Tracy, Lindsay, Pete and many, many others.

I told him that was what I wanted to do. Let him lay out his thoughts however he might want—no constraints and no bullshit editorial pressure.

It Meant Something

I could tell that he could tell that I meant it. From that day forward, I think he thought I was legit. That was quite validating.

I think it meant something to him too. Later his wife Susie told me, "at last some recognition" of Robert's unique talent. In the end it became a complete presentation of how he taught strokes and after that some very interesting interviews.

So we agreed I would come down again, interview him on tape and then video him on his teaching court. We'd start with the Lansdorp forehand.

But before I left he stopped me and said, "Hey I've got this 11 year old Russian kid that's been coming here to work with me, she's pretty good." He asked me if I wanted to film her the next day. Of course I said yes and extended my Southern Cal stay.

And that was what I wrote on the label of the tape box the next day. Lansdorp with Russian Kid. That kid turned out to be the 11 year old Maria Sharapova.

Robert asked me to turn off the audio, but the video itself is pretty amazing. (Click Here to see the whole thing in the interactive Forum.) The clip I shot was about 3 and a half minutes. I counted Maria hitting 73 balls. Think about that if the lesson went on for an hour.

There isn't audio, but in my mind I can still hear Robert shouting when he wanted her to do the Lansdorp classic out front finish. And then "Reverse!" when wanted her to finish on her right side over her head.

So far as I know Robert was the first person to name that finish "The Reverse," although the term is part of standard tennis lingo today. He later told me that Maria's reverse forehand was the key to her first Slam win at Wimbledon over Serena Williams.

But how did Maria get from Bollettieri's where she supposedly trained to Robert's So Cal teaching court?

Robert told me it was because of her father Yuri. Yuri liked the way Lindsay Davenport hit her forehand and got in touch with Robert.

Nick's response was classic. Even though he had nothing to do with the decision and was no doubt against it, he said "I have enlisted Bob Lansdorp to help me in Maria's development."

I am sure Nick knew that Robert hated to be called "Bob" and also knew the truth about why Sharapova was in California. I remember at the time Robert said to me something like "Can you believe that prick?"

Despite working with Robert over many years, I wouldn't say that I knew him well. But that was one of Robert's endearing qualities, he made you feel like you did.

Even when we didn't have an article in the works, he'd call me out of the blue just to talk. He'd stayed close to Yuri, Maria's father, and loved to recount the conversations they had.

And I would reciprocate, calling him. He was always glad to hear from me, until of course I wanted to share some technical insight from my video studies that in any way challenged his thinking.

But after a sharp rebuke he'd go back to friendly. All that time I really enjoyed his sardonic sense of humor.

And he promoted Tennisplayer and not just because of his articles there. "John has a great website that's helped a lot of players" I heard him say once.

And despite what he had written on Tennisplayer, he remained curious about the evolution of the game. When we did the first high speed filming of Nadal, we sat in his living room and was amazed to see how different Nadal's reverse finish was compared to the one he'd taught Maria so long ago.

He made a comment something like, "Well I thought I might learn something." Which brings me to his last interview that a subscriber posted in our Forum. (Click Here.)

The interviewer asked him if he was starting over if he would do anything different. Amazingly he said he would start players with more western grips and teach what he called the downward finish, that is the windshield wiper finish, so different from his out front finish from the old days.

That was Robert—always with something interesting and surprising to say.