Daily Speculations

Andre Agassi's Game: U.S. Open 2003

Victor Niederhoffer: As the only thing I know much about is racket sports, I thought a partial meal for a life time might be in order. Most impressive is how he bounces with quick step between points. Looks forward to each point. Has reservoir of energy.

His serve is a basket of physical principles. A small guy, without much power, is able to blast them with high accuracy at 120 miles an hour. The key is the bending and swiveling of the knees, enabling the lower body to combine with a beautiful pivot of the hips in an upward explosion designed to catch the tossed ball at the top of its small arc before it has descended. The result: maximum output with minimum input. A truly impressive application of good coaching and modern physics applied by coaches and trainers to a useful task.

The hitting of everything on the short hop with little backswing gave me many unpleasant memories of playing Sharif Khan, the only player besides Mike Desaulniers to adopt a similar game. (The first to memorialize the importance of hitting on the half volley was Rene Lacoste, in the best book on tennis ever written.) The angles are much sharper and harder to retrieve from up front, and the time to get back for the opponent is much smaller, and the ability to work off the maximum speed of the opponent combine for a much more powerful shot.

Agassi seems to be a much better sport than he was before. Gave the opponent a do-over when the ref made a questionable call at 4-3 in first set. Didn't show arrogance when winning. Was relatively humble when winning with genuine appreciation of the crowd , and nice four-sided bows.

The two-handed backhand is relatively strong for service returns and movement forward and back but leaves him weak when moving horizontally. Also at net, where his game is relatively weak with flimsy non-percentage angles. 

The importance of confidence in the game was manifested by how quickly the tide turned after he squeaked by the first set. It was all smiles, and glances of quiet satisfaction with his rooting gallery to my immediate left. All of a sudden the points ended much quicker and it looked like two different classes of  players. The short backswing gives fewer chances for error. So like myself Agassi must lose a very small percentage of games he should have won.

One hated to see Vinceguerra's terrible weak slice backhand on that fast service. Agassi knew that al he had to do was play it there and an error would ensue. Sort of like the inevitability of the tide once the point began. It was interesting in this connection to note the adaptation which Vinceguerra developed to overcome it, i.e.,running around the backhand , necessitating ever sharper angles when he did hit the forehand, which would inevitably lead to his defeat. For want of a nail, a war was lost.

A Note on the Wife: Perhaps one could have mentioned that his wife has phenomenal legs (I  have 11 years of tennis watching invested in Wimbledon living) and as my Dad who is in town pointed out, Graff knows what it takes to be top of a sport and perhaps this was indeed Mr. Sampras's Achilles heel: a Hollywood wife. – MC

From Peter R. Gardiner: I would only add the following observations:

1) He is always very close - horizontally - to the ball, both requiring the noted precision and speed of footwork, and affording the maximum, undiluted power from the crank of the hips, his upper torso swinging round like the blades of a helicopter to produce maximum racquet speed with the shortest of backswings, the back board-straight, and axle-like.

2) The opening of the chest during the service toss, and the continued upreach of the left (tossing) arm allows for contact with the ball at the highest possible point above ground; otherwise, with arm drooping, head, shoulders, contact altitude, service velocity, angle, and percentage fall in lockstep.

From Mike Desaulniers: Yeah, no hip-hop showboating or swagger makes it so much more pleasant to watch.  It always seems suspicious when someone has to make a big fuss about how good they are (exception being Muhammad Ali, who was just so funny that you had to believe he didn't quite take it seriously himself).

I was taking a Bolletieri clinic at the Flamingo Park public courts last week, and some middle-aged pro told me that Steffi Graf ran around 85% of her backhands, and that all the men are increasingly doing the same for the sake of increased power.  Disinclined as I am to all that counting, now I find myself thinking, "Well, how many backhands DO these guys actually hit?"  Maybe I'll try it.  

>>Most impressive is how he bounces with quick step between points. Looks forward to each point. Has reservoir of energy."

The game gives him joy, so he is fierce.  When I came out to your place a few weeks ago, I genuinely did not expect to see you so ferocious. Thanks for another lesson.

(Mike Desaulniers and Victor Niederhoffer are past world champions of squash.)