Skill and Determination

I was once told, by an aspiring Ph.D. candidate, that there are two kinds of people who finish Ph.Ds. Those that love their topic so much that it doesn't seem like work at all, and those that work to get it done, no matter what. And most people fall in the second group. There are certainly many people who don't finish that are smart enough to finish. But due to lack of focus, or worrying about things that aren't important, they don't finish up. Some of that is the fault of the advisor who should carry some burden of pushing the student to success, but without the student motivating themselves, it can lead to problems in the future.

So now that I've hooked you with something that's not about tennis. I'm going to talk tennis.

Don't bail yet.

Many of the same things that can be said about Ph.D's actually apply to tennis players, and competitive athletes of all sort.

I was watching a match this morning, albeit briefly, between Rafael Nadal and Thomaz Bellucci. For a while, Bellucci, a lefty from Brazil, looked like he was controlling points against Nadal. He was efficiently holding serve. But then, so was Nadal. At 5-6 down, Bellucci was up 40-15. 40-15 eventually became deuce. Then ad to Nadal and back to deuce a few times before an error meant set 1 to Nadal.

And then?

Sets 2 and 3 easily to Nadal.

Nadal looked like he was in trouble, and yet held in the points enough. Once Bellucci lost the first set, I'm sure Nadal gained confidence and Bellucci lost confidence. Bellucci certainly appeared to hit shots that were pressuring Nadal.

The point is, many pros have the kind of strokes that, if sustained, can give the top pros a lot of trouble. Wayne Odesnik, who qualified through some odd tournament that put two of the top Jewish-American players against each other, has won two rounds by simply going for his shots. He's given more experienced players, Guillermo Canas and Hyung-Taik Lee, the heave-ho. Now he faces one of the favorites in Novak Djokovic, and is expected to bow out. However, he's likely to take his attitude and hard hitting strokes and try to knock out Djokovic.

It's true that players like Nadal hit the ball, on average, better than their opponents. It's also true that Nadal can concentrate better on big points, and avoid silly errors that bedevil lesser players. Part of this sport is mental toughness, which translates to being able to hit a tough shot under pressure. This means solid technique. I don't know if it's fair to say that "belief in your shots" is really what's happening, whether good technique leads to confidence and confidence leads to good technique.

But people seem to believe that mistakes are made due to lapses in concentration rather than in deficiencies due to technique.

Last night, Shrini and I ran into this problem as we were playing doubles, and unable to play as well as we wanted, opting for safer shots instead. I'm sure technique is part of our problem. We lack enough skill to hit the shots well under duress. Part of it is also confidence. Once we think we can't, we lighten up, and then we're in trouble.

People say that Hingis didn't hit much harder than her opponents, but she did hit smarter. She developed strokes, like the drop shot, like coming into net, like wrong-footing, that made her less powerful strokes more effective.

There's skill. There's determination. It's good to have both.