[tennisbiz] Re: Line calls and pressure

<x-charset iso-8859-1>Having coached kids as well as adults for over 15 years i have 2 theories on
this..the first is plain cheating...this is fairly obvious when it occurs
and i tell my players to just stop playing with that person...in tournaments
i make the roving judge aware....as a roving judge myself i will stay on or
close to that court to make parents and players aware im on the
situation....the second and what i feel more serious situation for players
is when they are,,,WISHING THE BALL in or out.....they arent cheating so
much as they are caught up in the competition and game ...if a feel a player
is wishing calls in or out i have sat them down and explain they are paying
too much attention to the LINES and not enough attention to that famous
firsts lesson.....KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE BALL!....i explain they are probably
losing more points because they are not focusing on the ball....stroke
mechanics and strategy then they are on close line calls..i expain that
they should play every ball with full strokes and they should only call
balls out if they clearly are .....i tell them no player ever improved their
game by concentrating on winning the close line calls.....unfortunately
tennis is a sport where its very easy to cheat and some players do.....we
have a good laff at our har tru courts watching grown men call balls out at
the baseline that are in by 18 inches because they know due to the surface
traits the oppositon cant tell from his side where they landed....i have
videotaped tournament matches where coaches have clearly let kids cheat and
denied it even when confronted with the tape....

also remember people make honest bad calls due to positioning and sweat in
their eyes....i feel a good rule of thumb is 1 disputed call per set is
reasonable and not something for players parents judges or coaches to get
bent out of shape over

something of major concern should be that foot fault which many players use
wheather intentional or not....a 6 inch consistant foot fault is a
tremendous advantage for the serving player on every served point and this
will come into play on half the points ...thats 10 times as many times as
disputed line calls in my opinion....someone making 3 or 4 bad line calls is
taking no wheres as much of an advantage as the player who takes 30 or 40
serves a set from a foot inside the baseline

 
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Received on Tue May 27 2003 - 07:35:11 CDT