Hey everyone, welcome to the 26th episode of Baseline Intelligence, the podcast designed to make you a better tennis player and a smarter athlete. I'm your host, Jonathan Stokey. On today's episode, I'm going to share some of the clips that I found the most interesting, insightful, and entertaining from the first year of the show. So sit back, relax, and prepare to become a smarter tennis player.
So this episode ends the first year of the podcast, and I'm so glad I started doing it. I've learned so much this year, and I hope you all have as well. I'm going to share some of the things that stood out this year, and I want to start with Craig O'Shaughnessy, who was our guest for the third episode. So you've got a first serve.
a first serve return a second serve a second serve return and then a serve plus one and a return plus one that followed that so if the and the four very very distinct battles that produce wildly different statistics. So if you're serving with a first serve, your job, and I learned this from making highlight reels of videos for players. So the highlight, the typical highlight reel from a player.
starting points with their first serve is that the highlight reel is going to be full of three-shot rallies. So the serve and the length of a rally is predicated by the ball landing in the court, not being struck by the strings. So a three-shot rally is the serve went in, the return went in, and the serve plus one is in. The next shot can be hit, but it has to be an error in order for it to be a three-shot rally or that serve plus one ball is a winner.
So the highlight rule is full of those and it's full of return errors and it's full of the server ending up at the net. The number one time a player will appear at the net is in a three-shot rally. So that's what we're looking for there. So when you're hitting first serves, that's what you're after. The longer the point goes, the halo effect of the serve lasts for two shots. So you get a three-shot rally and a five-shot rally. And essentially...
All odd numbered points can only be won by the server. So if the rally length is 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, the server had to win it. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, the returner had to win it. So essentially behind first serves, you want three shot rallies and you want to be at the net. So there's a lot of offense around that. On second serves, way different.
You're lucky. It's a great day at the office if you win 50% of your second serve points. So the highlight reel is actually what I'm looking for in our second serves is reduce the double faults. That's a big deal. Let's not shoot ourselves in the foot. Zero is not the number we're after, but one or two is fine. But the huge thing is to survive.
the the surplus one so the return is going to be aggressive they're probably coming down the middle of the court at you and what happens the most you know the number one rally length in tennis is a one-shot rally which is a return error but the the second most prolific rally link is three, then it's two. And the two is the serve went in, the return went in, and then there's an error. So behind a second serve, you're looking to survive. You're looking to not make a serve plus one error.
on the flip side on the returning you want to make against the first serve you want to make the first serve return and then almost always you're going to be on defense hitting a backhand and you want to make that ball cross court so that's about surviving but against a second serve you want to attack so you want to you want to really get after the second serve and most importantly you want to hit a return plus one forehand so four different battlefields
each with very different analytics and you've got to kind of switch on and off between them in order to be as successful as you possibly can be. So that's how I've grown to teach it. And the analytics have taught me that, yes, if you're hitting a first serve or a second serve return, you're on offense and you're looking to immediately force errors. If you're hitting a second serve or a first serve return.
You're looking to survive the first four shots. You're looking to extend past that and get into the five through eight range where you can run a successful pattern of play. All the players I work with practice, serve, and return plus one, and I thought Craig's breakdown of this was fantastic. He shared a ton of great information on his episode, and we'll be sure to have him again on the pod next year.
This next clip is from episode 13 with Rick Macy, where we discuss one of his best ball striking tips on ground strokes. Here's a game changer. When they swing the racket, whether they got a Western or semi-Western, Eastern. whether they have a loop, whether they have ATP or WTA, whether when they take the racket back, whether the person's.
you know making a banana a candy cane a ferris wheel letter c oval r rainbow whatever they're doing say basic when they hit the ball when they go to hit the ball after they hit the ball see the back of the strings. If they can see the back of the strings, and this is something I coined like 30 years ago, because we all tell people, keep your head still, okay? And that's the hardest thing to do. Federer does it. Not a lot of pros do this.
Now, so that didn't work. So then I started thinking because the way the brain and the eyes are, the eyes are what we call target orientated. Golf, it's easy, easier because you're stationary. You're just and you stay down. tennis you're moving so the last from my research dr gordon the last four milliseconds the head shifts but you can't really see it now when i tell people to do this and whoever asked this question
they're going to be blown away. If they can see the back of the strings after contact, they're going to say this. I already know what they're going to say. I'm into the ball longer. I'm hitting the center of the racket. I hit it more in front. Then... If that doesn't work, here's what I do. Because sometimes it doesn't work because some people are like freaking out already. So they try to do it right after contact. I have them look backwards at the clubhouse or the back fence. Now.
When they do that, and this isn't because Rick Macy said to do it. This is all based on the students, tens of thousands saying, that's amazing. That's amazing. And then I'm looking at the result. And the balls are going in. They're like a crispy cream. They're much crisper when they hit it. And the people, they're blown away. Now, some guys are going, wait a minute.
especially if like a lawyer, he's going, well, wait a minute. How am I supposed to see where the ball's going? And then I got to go, hey, bro, you asked me, you wanted to hit the ball and stay solid. He's already coming up with a problem. Don't worry about the ball's going.
because it ain't going in the way you're doing it. This was an awesome tip, and I obviously immediately took that to the practice court, and a lot of my players found it super helpful. He's one of the best coaches in the country for a reason, and I'm so thankful he shared that tip with all of us. The third clip today is a cool story from episode 16 with Tom Golikson. He talks about kind of the three simple keys that he gave to Andre Agassi on his run to winning the Olympic gold medal.
I told Agassi, I worked with Agassi at the Olympics in 96 when he won the gold medal in Atlanta. And he wasn't playing particularly well on the hard courts leading up to the Olympics in Atlanta. And I told them three things, very simple things. And a lot of times for our listeners out there, they think, well, when you work with really great players, you must give them this really complicated advice.
But the best coaching advice is always simple. I told Andre three things. Number one, run for every ball. Do not quit on any ball. Number two, compete for every point. Like say, Jonathan, if you and I are playing and I'm up a set and 5-1 and you're serving at 40-love, I could easily take your first serve and hit it in the back fence.
go around and serve out the match at 5-2 in the second set. But compete for every point, mentally stay in there on every point. And thirdly, and probably most importantly, Keep your poise and your composure no matter what happens on the court. So it's easy to do that when you're winning. It's very hard when you're losing or not playing well. to keep your poise and your composure but andre did it very well like in the second round he was down to the now chairman of the atp
Andre Gedenzi, he was down to Andre Gedenzi, 6-2-3 love. Didn't blink. Came back, won the second set pretty tight, and then blew the guy away in the third set in the semis. He was playing Francis Tiafo's coach, the talented South African Wayne Ferreira, who was very good on the hard courts, you know, top 10 player in the world.
Wayne Ferreira served for the match against him in the quarters at 5-4 in the third. He broke, held, and broke to beat Wayne Ferreira 7-5 in the third. Then in the finals, he beat... Sergi Bruguera like 1-1-2. He gave him a complete hardcourt lesson there in the finals, and he walked away with a gold medal.
One of the cool things for me doing this podcast is kind of getting the peek behind the curtain at what some of the best players and coaches are doing and talking about. The three things that he mentions in this clip are super simple to understand and yet can be really difficult to do.
So my advice is start with just one, probably running for every ball. Do that for a couple of weeks. And once you master that and it becomes like blinking or breathing, you can move on to something different, like competing for every point and so on. Switching gears to episode eight with Dr. Mark Kovacs, and he had some really cool things to talk about the serve and how you all can get a little extra power, especially on the first serve.
Yeah. So the service, we know, is one of the more complex human movements out there. It's difficult to do effectively because you're coordinating every part of your body. You've got a ball that you have to hit in flight and you have to use and implement the racket through a pretty large range of motion to get it from your start position behind your head and then up and out into the ball. So there's a lot of these processes.
is to have to go on in half a second to make an effective serve work. And that's why you see so many challenges with people hitting effective serves consistently. But we do know so much more now than we did 10 or 15 years ago about... What's the main driver for power? you know the involvement of the back leg is huge it's a major driver and the more powerful you can have your back leg so for a right-hander that would be their right leg the more you can get explosive through there
And again, it's not only about how strong are you. Like there's people that can lift three, 400 pounds on a squat, for example, that don't serve that big because they don't know how to transfer that force. Because force and power are two different things. Force is how much load can you put on something? So how much can you lift? Power is how quickly can you lift the load that you are using? And that's really what we want in the serve. We want someone to be super powerful.
We're not as concerned how strong they are, but if you train strength the right way, it transfers to power if you do the right way of training. So that's an important thing to recognize. So back leg. is really, really important. Hip rotation is a big one that a lot of people don't train very well, is how mobile are you through the hips and can you rotate into.
that position effectively during the loading of the serve and the best servers do this so well and so efficiently and inefficient servers don't so that's a big one that a lot of people overlook then The other big area is the shoulder, but the backside of the shoulder. Because the objective here is can you get the racket sort of down, you know, behind your head? Can you get your elbow pointing to the sky? And can you get the tip of the racket pointing to your back heel?
Great servers all get that position. It's sort of that racket drop type position where the tip of the racket is pointing down towards the back heel. The elbow is pointing to the sky. A lot of players... don't have the mobility or flexibility to get down there and that's where they lose some power.
And then the last sort of stage is just after contact is the ability to get into what we call long axis rotation, which is shoulder internal rotation and forearm pronation. You hear pronation a lot in the serve. but that's right at the end of the movement. We need to have internal shoulder rotation as well. So you need those sort of three big areas to work efficiently. And as you're working on that, there's little things like...
Ankle range of motion makes a bit of a difference. If they can't dorsiflex or pull their toes to their shins very well and they're very tight through that, you can't actually load into that back leg very effectively. So there's little stuff like that that you would work on once you do the big things. But again, that's sort of once someone's got a really good level and you're just trying to get, say, two or three more miles out of them. Most of those things we talked about earlier.
that'll add five to 10 miles an hour pretty quickly without changing technique. That's just getting the body better. A lot of what Mark talked about was actually new to me and I loved his information about the back leg loading.
I looked up a bunch of his drills online for focusing on that back leg and definitely found it helpful for my own serve as well as the serve of my students. So check out my Instagram page for some of those drills that he came up with and see if that helps you with the pace on your first serve.
Sticking with the serve theme, here's John Isner in episode 20 talking about what he thinks about when he's serving. Well, for me, every serve is a little bit different. I mean, I try to keep my toss exactly the same. at all times so that's that kind of pure kind of like let's say you know if you're looking at the clock line of like 12 30 maybe a little bit one o'clock on my on my toss every single time i know i'm afforded that
I guess the ability to do that was I think I can hit either spot with the exact same toss every single time. So yeah, a lot of my focus is on my toss and making sure that my left arm stays up as long as long as it possibly can. Because in doing that, that allows me to get, you know, a lot more accuracy on my serve at times when I'm missing my first service, probably because.
My left arm is dropping too soon. So that's a focus of mine when I am missing a lot of first serves. My left foot, my front foot, I don't move at all. So I put it. right up on the line. So I'm not cheating myself at all. Some players are inch and a half, two inches behind the line before they hit their serve. I put my left foot right up on that line and I know that it never, ever moves. And so.
And I cock back with my right leg and go from there. So those are the things I focus on. I think I've somewhere along the line, I used to move my left foot a little bit, but I stopped that. Keep that foot completely still. Keep my left arm up. for a long time and just go after it i think we all know we can't really get serve advice from a better server on tour that's for sure
The toss location is something the best coaches I know are all consistent with. It's slightly to the right and out in front of you so you can maximize your swing speed. Try to take... some videos of your serve so you can watch and see if you can match what you're feeling with where that toss actually is in relationship to your body the sixth clip is from michael joyce and he had so many great stories in episode 11.
But one of my favorites was how his dad actually helped him with a tactical adjustment that helped Maria Sharapova beat Hennon in the U.S. Open final. And then he helped me a lot with Maria. I mean, with Maria, it was similar. She played Hennen. I give him a lot of credit. U.S. Open final, Maria was always struggling with Hennen quite a bit. Obviously, everybody knew about her backhand, amazing backhand. But her forehand was still a good shot, whatever. But my dad actually figured out.
He told me, and we were kind of going into that match kind of like not knowing exactly what to do. I mean, she had lost her a couple times. Obviously, I told her when she's pulled off the court, you got to take balls out of the air and blah, blah. But my dad figured out. He's like, listen, if you can get Maria, like she has an amazing one hand backhand, but she never hits it.
on the first one like she doesn't just tee off on the first one because she had pretty big grip changes and he's like if maria you shouldn't have to move her that much but if she can make her change grips a lot and it was funny because i played this kid like in the 10 and under His name was Jamal Hicks, and he had a one-hand backhand.
And my dad used to always say, if you make him hit four and backhand, he'll miss the third or fourth one because of his grip. And so I was thinking, come on, Dad. But I told her, I said, even if you hit through the middle, just...
Be careful giving her two backhands in a row, whatever. And if you watch the match, Maria does it like to a tee. She literally is like forehand, backhand, forehand, backhand. Even through the middle of the court and head in third, fourth ball, Shanky and Maria won that match like three and four.
and then ended up beating her the next like four times doing that. Beat her at Australia like 4-0. You know, obviously it helps to have a player that can do it. I mean, you coach people that can't do that, so she made me look good. But, you know, little things like that I think are huge.
This story is so cool for a lot of reasons. I think it's hilarious that his dad is the one that kind of came up with it and it was kind of something that he used in their junior days. But it was also cool just mainly because it's such a simple tactical adjustment and it made such a huge difference in the outcome.
If you're in a match and things aren't going well, try to think about your opponent and what they like and don't like. And remember, you could just be one small tactical adjustment away from flipping the match. Speaking of flipping matches and momentum, Alistair Haim gave us a fascinating episode late this summer where he talked about the four performance factors in a match, which ones you can change, and which ones you can use to help you in the middle of a match.
I mean, there's a variety of reasons, but yes, essentially that could well be what's happened. I mean, I think there is a, essentially, if we go back to that idea of performances, your performance is made up of four performance factors, tactical. technical, mental, physical. And if we think about what a player can change of those four performance factors in a match.
then you can't change your technique. It's fixed. Sure, you can relax and play a bit more fluid, but that's more of a mental thing. But if you're playing with a semi-western grip or a two-handed backhand, or you've got slightly inside out on the serve, it's unlikely you're going to change that.
in a match, you've got what you've got. Physically, you may get tired you may not rehydrate but you're not going to include improve your vo2 max or get faster over 10 yards you've got what you've got so the things that really affect your performance and create that gap between you and the position or close it are either in the mental area or in the tactical area and if there's been something which is seen as significant and
you know plenty of events coming through in matches which can be seen as significant then that can affect both players where one player sees that bad bounce at a crucial point or that bad line call as detracting from their performance and really get down on themselves and then the other player can see is a boost and start to improve their performance and then that when you get that double change in performance one player
spiralling down and as you know as we talked about before and the other player moving up then that gap in performances really opens up and that's when you hear the phrase momentum has shifted. Make sure to go back and give this episode a listen if you haven't already. I wasn't a big believer in the term momentum, especially in sports, but I thought he explained it in a great way and gave some awesome tips on how to maintain and use momentum to help you win more matches.
Clip number eight is from legendary coach Carlos Goffey. He came on the pod for episode five, and he gives a really cool explanation of his traffic light system for using this score to guide us with our tactics. So I figured, okay, I divided the game into half from 30 all up from the beginning of the game, the front half of the game up to 30 all. I called that the yellow.
points you know the cautionary time of the game that you're trying to get ahead from 30 all to the end of the game the bottom half of the game i call it the red points and then when you're up by two points or more i call it the green points The whole idea was to be able to give these kids an immediate sort of vision.
of what the situation was at any point in the match because we all know that you can be out there at three o'clock pm in the summer and it's three all in the third and and and it's 15 30 and you just don't even know what to do at that point and you just might just go for a huge shot a winner at 15 30 that could have cost the entire match just because you did not make the right shot selection so um with those three lights
three colors you know i could see that the kid could actually grasp one of the three at any moment no matter how tired they were in the middle of the match or no matter how tight they were in the middle of the match And the strategy behind these lights was that when you were on the yellow lights, trying to get ahead in the beginning of the game before 30-all, you always played the next to the last shot.
You never play the last shot of the point. You just keep forcing, forcing, forcing the opponent to try to draw an error from the opposition. When you are in a green situation, up by two points or more. 30 love, 40 love, 45, you can go for the last shot of the point. Either hit a winner or, you know, make an unforced error because you still have.
one or a couple of other points to win the game. But the interesting part about the green light, though, is that it also works when you're down by two points or more because you can anticipate what's coming if the opponent has got a green light. you know he's going to tee off for a winner. So, you know, you've got to step up and basically take that away from the opposition. And then the red lights from 30-0 to the end of the game, you know, that's...
That's really the most important part of tactics, how to play. Great players are great red ball players, as I always said. So what would be then the strategy in those situations? just like the yellow points in the beginning of the game. you're playing the next to the last shot but now you actually add margin for error so what is margin for error obviously you know height of the net a little bit more spin on the ball uh big targets stay away from the lines you know
three feet inside of the court. When you're serving at a red point, don't try to go for a big serve at the back of the line. You know, I often say to kids, you know, if you're playing a big red point, just get that first serve, nice three-quarter first serve in the middle of the box. You know, that can do more damage than you trying to go for a big serve and miss it and then have to push the second. can serve up there.
Carlos shared a bunch of cool stories about his time with Johnny Mac. And a lot of that episode focuses on the 50 minutes between the points. So when you're not actually hitting the ball, how you're competing. And he gave a lot of cool insight there. But the red, yellow, and green light thing is probably the thing that's...
stuck with me the most. Dr. Larry Lauer came on the pod last spring and gave us some really cool tips for dealing with pressure and staying in the present. I think for a lot of players they worry about, am I starting to play bad? am i starting to lose my way like am i going to lose this match and they start jumping ahead too much and so being able to bring it back to the present moment right bring it back to the present moment through again breathing is a great way
to get back into the present moment but also through acceptance or being neutral to the things that happen to us right now i've talked to players like this like it's a one ball one point mentality you know just being able to say like yeah it was just one ball i missed Yeah, it's one ball. Off we go. And if you can do that, then you can start to, I think, be a lot more resilient to those mistakes. So I find also with other players...
Setting smaller goals to help keep that focus more present helps. So let's say, okay, let's just focus on something smaller. that is more in the realm of where we're at right now. Like this game, okay, can we get three first serves and try to break it down a little smaller instead of jumping so far ahead?
you do need to occupy that performer's mind with something and so sometimes giving them a goal that's much more immediate and present is a way to get them competitive but on something they have far more control over so certainly a challenge to say the least and someone with that's like you is a lot easier to work with sometimes but
You know, the reality is that when we have this really high standard about how we want to perform, we can be judging ourselves a lot as the performance goes along. And that certainly is something that you have to learn how to manage. And the last clip, but certainly not the least, my old friend and doubles partner Rajiv Ram was on episode two, and he talked about what he was looking for in a partner and how to be a great performer.
I would want to make sure that they were able to sort of be okay firstly with, well, no, I take that back. I would say the first thing is that I would want to make sure that they were able to be like an energetic, good.
partner as far as somebody other people would want to play with you know they come on they come on the court they bring a lot of positive energy they bring you know, a lot of intensity, a lot of hustle, a lot of fight, a lot of those qualities that are kind of contagious that you feel like you could make somebody else.
You're like when you're on a college team, right? And there's that one guy that you just play better around because he's got that energy. He's got that fire. He's got that fight. Like I would want my player to, to have that. I don't, it comes before, you know, anything tennis wise. I think that is sort of that sort of.
can bring the momentum to your side of the net more so than anything else yeah we actually have a term for it we call it the performer and we talk constantly about you know how we are as performers out there and that's got nothing to do with
It's got everything to do with your presence out there. What do you look like? What do you look like to the opponent? What do you look like to your partner? What do you look like to the people watching? Are you performing the best that you can? Because I think that at some point when you talk about trying to win...
biggest tournaments in the world everybody can play right so it's like those are the kinds of things that sort of tip the scale and make it so where you give yourself the best chance possible doesn't always work out obviously but it gives yourself the best chance possible I'm so incredibly proud of Rajiv and all he's accomplished. We talked about him making the jump from four in the world to number one.
and he did everything he said he wanted to this year which is really cool it's amazing how he's peaking at age 38 and i can't wait to see what he does in 2023 All right, that wraps up year one of the podcast. I want to thank everyone out there for taking time to listen and spend some time with me every few weeks. I've learned a lot. Hopefully you've learned something every week and have been entertained by some of the best coaches and players in the world.
If you have any topics or guests you'd like to see in 2023, feel free to DM me on my Instagram page. It's at Stokey Tennis, and I'll be sure to get back to you. I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday season. We'll be back in two weeks to kick off 2023. I want to thank you all for listening. I know there are a lot of podcasts out there, and I'm grateful you chose to join me today.
I'm motivated to evolve and improve, so please subscribe if you enjoyed the episode and leave a comment or review so we can keep getting better every week. For more, check out my Instagram, at Stokey Tennis, for clips from these podcasts, as well as general drills and tips to help your tennis game. Thanks for listening. I hope you just improved attendance without even hitting a ball.