In modern tennis players know how to watch the ball. However, doubles offers the unique opportunity, because of a netman, to disrupt the flow of play. See the attachment below.
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.
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.
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.