When confronted with a losing pattern of play, nearly all competitive tennis players understand that they need to make a change. The point of this short piece is to illustrate that this change must always be undertaken with a strategic foundation and not simply be a different look meant to confuse the opposition.
In this article, I will discuss the merits of two alternative theories for understanding what is happening in a tennis match: Momentum and The Fractal Theory of Tennis. I will show that momentum is an overused cliché. When pared down to the point where it actually generates a testable hypothesis, momentum doesn’t matter more than a little bit.
One of the keys to winning a tennis match is to get your opponent to play worse than her average. The best way to do this is to take away your opponent’s strengths by using intelligent targets and patterns of play. However, there is a second way which is under-appreciated.
In the post-modern world any doubles formation can be justified by the matchups on the court. I will go over a few so that you have a better idea of how and when to use them.