Tennis? It's all About the brain

Most tennis players are all too familiar with the difficulty of the mental half of tennis competition. The power of the mind is evident at every level, from Goran Ivanisevic or Jana Novotna at Wimbledon to an eight-year-old afraid to use any of her full strokes in her first tournament. Tennis is a gold mine for sports psychologists, and some players spend several hours each week just doing mental toughness exercises.

Here are five simple techniques you can try right away:

1. The best all-around mental repair tool is the simple phrase, "only the ball." It cures, at least temporarily, most of the big pitfalls. Whether you're upset, angry, nervous, or just distracted, repeat this phrase to block out negative thoughts and return your focus to where it belongs, the ball.

2. Probably the hardest time to concentrate is when you're getting ready to return serve. Your opponent has the ball, so your mind seems to sense that this is an opportunity for a little time off. The next thing you know, your musings about which movie to watch tonight are rudely interrupted by a chunk of rubber and fuzz coming in at 90 m.p.h. A combination of three devices can help keep your mind on the job:

• While your opponent is preparing, try to focus on something undistracting, like your strings. (Strings get readjusted a lot more than needed because of this little trick.)
• As she tosses the ball, try to watch it come out of her hand and say to yourself a long, drawn-out, "baaalll."
• As she hits the serve, say "hit," followed by "bounce," then on your return swing, "hit."

The "baaalll" device seems to work well for most players without much of a downside. The "hit, bounce, hit" phrase is also popular, but for some players it distracts more than it helps.

3. It's possible to become too analytical in the middle of a match, which will keep you from letting your strokes take their natural flow, but you don't want to shut down your analytical abilities, either. If you miss a shot you shouldn't have, you'll dwell on it less if you take a moment to figure out what you did wrong, then say to yourself, "Okay, I won't do that again." It's usually a good idea to repeat the stroke right away with the correct motion. You might very well make the same error the next time the stroke comes up, but just go ahead and apply the same process. Eventually you will get it right, and in the meantime, a little extra optimism won't hurt.

4. Learn versatility. If you have only one playing style, and it's not working, your lack of strategic options also creates a shortage of mental safety valves. A key factor in psychological health in general is feeling empowered to choose different courses of action. If you have a Plan B, C, and D on the tennis court, the failure of Plan A is unlikely to cause despair. Tennis players often lose because at least a part of them secretly gives up. You won't give up while you have something else to try. Learn to play every part of the court and hit every kind of shot with every kind of spin. You'll likely uncover a weakness in a seemingly invicible opponent. Variety makes the game more creative and interesting, too.

5. Look alert, energetic, confident, and happy. Looking so will actually help you be so to a significant extent, and it will keep you from giving encouragement to your opponent. If your opponent is at all prone to choking, your look of ready confidence on the verge of seeming defeat might keep just enough doubt in her mind to make her cave under the pressure of closing out the match.

Books with good chapters on mental toughness:

• Vic Braden's Tennis 2000: Strokes, Strategy, and Psychology for a Lifetime
  
  
• Pat Blaskower's The Art of Doubles: Winning Tennis Strategies
  
  
• If you want a entire book on mental toughness, check out Dr. James Loehr'sMental Toughness Training.

The next Top Generation??

Milos Raonic is, if not quite anonymous, then certainly nothing approaching a household name in the mind of the general public.

The 23-year-old Canadian has only five minor ATP titles to his name in the last three years and only started making deeper runs at the grand slams this year, reaching the French Open quarter-finals and then the Wimbledon semis.

So when he comes out saying stuff like, ”There’s a lot of people hungry in this sport. It’s unfortunate to see him go but there are too many ... licking their chops,” in reference to Rafael Nadal, as he did at the Washington Open on Wednesday, there’s at least a tinge of presumptuousness to it.

Nonetheless, Raonic is the seventh-ranked player in the world, part of a mostly imperceptible rising tide – for now – along the still-impenetrable shores of the Big Four. And he’s not wrong – Nadal is indeed vulnerable, and he’s not the only one.

While Novak Djokovic looks back on the rise, the rest of his brethren at the top of tennis appear increasingly assailable.

His victory at the French Open victory masks an otherwise spotty season for Nadal. First fitness issues probably cost him the Australian Open to Stan Wawrinka. Then he was beaten on clay in both Monte Carlo (by David Ferrer) and Barcelona (by Nicolas Almagro) in the run up to Roland Garros, and was on the ropes in Madrid until Kei Nishikori had to retire.

Now Nadal, coming off a fourth-round Wimbledon loss to Aussie teenager Nick Kyrgios, is injured again ahead of the US Open, with a wrist ailment expected to keep him out of both the Toronto and Cincinnati Masters tournaments.

And if it’s still a little premature to say Andy Murray has peaked and Roger Federer is past the point of no return, then it’s only a little bit so. Meanwhile, Raonic and his pack of “hungry” challengers are gaining ground by the tournament. There are four (five if you count the perpetually injured Juan Martin del Potro) players in the top 15 of the ATP rankings aged 25 or younger – Raonic (No 7), Grigor Dimitrov (9), Nishikori (11) and Ernests Gulbis (13), and between them this year they’ve had a few close calls with the Big Four and even taken a few back their way.

Djokovic, the undisputed top dog of the moment himself, needed two tie-breaks in a four-set win over Dimitrov in the Wimbledon semis, four sets to finish off Gulbis in the French Open semis and two tie-breaks to beat Raonic in the semis at Rome. Nadal lost the first set to Raonic in the Miami quarters before recovering and twice needed a pair of tie-breaks to beat Nishikori (round of 16) and then Dimitrov (quarters) at the Australian Open.

He also, of course, lost to Kyrgios, and was felled by 25-year-old Alexandr Dolgopolov (now world No 17) in the Indian Wells round of 32.

Federer lost to Gulbis in a memorable round of 16 match at Roland Garros and lost to Nishikori in the Miami quarters. And Murray has been beaten by Dimitrov twice this year – in the Wimbledon quarters and Acapulco semis – and lost to Raonic in the Indian Wells round of 16.

That’s not to say the ground has totally shifted yet – the Big Four have won most of their meetings with the Precocious Quartet and, as just one point of example, Federer notched a dominant victory over an erratic Raonic at the Wimbledon semi-finals.

But the levee is looking leaky.

It’s not that Murray, 27, Djokovic, 27, Nadal, 28, or even Federer, 32 (well, maybe Federer) are old. It’s just that the gap they enjoyed with more contemporary challengers like Wawrinka, Ferrer, Tomas Berdych and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, among others, looks smaller with the currently maturing set.

There’s no need to pronounce the death of the Big Four. But if you’re looking for their eventual successors, there’s a decent chance you’ll be able to catch them giving a Nadal or Federer fits in Flushing Meadows in a few weeks.

Top 10 Shortest tennis players ever - PART 1

Tennis is another one of those sports that have stood the test of time, with thousands of players turning professional and wielding the racquet in Grand Slams over the years.

Throughout the documented history of tennis, there have been players who have left an indelible mark on the game, whether through their success, persona or sheer will to win. The ten players listed below also enjoy a unique distinction, of being the shortest players ever to pick up a racquet.

On our journey to compile the most accurate list of shortest tennis players of all time, we came across plenty of inaccuracies and historical evidence to make this a challenging proposition. The criterion for selection was that the player had to have played some sort of professional tennis during his career. This would be fitting to answer the eternal question: Who is the shortest tennis player in the world?

In our quest to prepare a list that would be the final and definitive word on shortest players in tennis, we came up with this:

10) Billie Jean King

Height: 1.63m (5 feet 4.2 inches)

Wimbledon whiz Billie Jean King (R) is glad to lend a hand to a 55-year-old-Bobby Riggs before their “Battle of the Sexes” match

Billie Jean King is a name synonymous with women’s tennis. Winner of 39 Grand Slam titles, including a record 22 Wimbledon singles and doubles titles, King dominated women’s tennis for a long spell. Her continuous protests against gender inequality led to the creation of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), and a “Battle of the Sexes” match against  former men’s champions Bobby Riggs in September 1973, which King won in 3 sets.

And she did all this despite being 5 feet 4.2 inches, a height handicap compared to her peers. Truly staggering.

9) Maureen Connolly

Height: 1.63m (5 feet 4 inches)

Maureen “Little Mo” Connolly of USA, pictured at Wimbledon, where she won the Ladies Singles 3 years running 1952,1953 and 1954, in all winning 12 major titles

Maureen Connolly, nicknamed “Little Mo” on account of her diminutive stature, was the darling of the tennis world in the early 50′s. She was the first woman to win all 4 Grand Slams in the same calendar year (1953) and also the youngest woman to win the prestigious US Championships, when at 16 she claimed the 1951 title.

In an era of serve-and-volleyers, she was a baseline specialist, with tremendous power and accuracy in her groundstrokes. By the age of 19, she had already collected 12 Grand Slam titles, only for her career to end abruptly courtesy a freak horseback riding accident.

“Little Mo” died of cancer at the age of 34, but her short yet successful tennis career gave hope to other players of a similar stature. In Connolly’s case, height was just a number.

8) Angel Gimenez

Height: 1.63m (5 feet 4 inches)

Coach Angel Gimenez (L) with Gabriela Sabatini. Credits Russian Look/IMAGO

A former player but now a coach, Angel Gimenez stands at 1.63m and comes in at no.8 on our list. Gimenez enjoyed limited success as a player, but earned more recognition as a coach.

He has worked with many players, including Gabriela Sabatini, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, Svetlana Kuznetsova and Daniela Hantuchová. He now works at the Academia Sanchez Casal Vicario in Barcelona, Spain.

7) Bryan Morel “Bitsy” Grant

Height: 1.63m (5 feet 4 inches)

At 5 feet 4 inches and 54 kg, Grant did not have an intimidating presence about him, but that did not stop him from taking down bigger and heavier players with faster groundstrokes than him, thus earning him the nickname “Itsy Bitsy the Giant Killer”. He was also the officially recorded smallest American man to win an international tennis championship.

Not everything was smooth sailing for Grant though. Frank Shields, another tennis player of Grant’s era, was infamous for making fun of Grant’s size. Legend has it that an inebriated Shields once held Grant upside down out of his hotel window!

6) Dominika Cibulkova

Height: 1.61m (5 feet 3.5 inches)

Dominika Cibulkova attends The Slazenger Party 2012 at Aqua on June 28, 2012 in London

Hailing from Slovakia, Cibulkova is tennis player known for her hard-hitting groundstrokes and aggressive style of play which led to 3 singles titles. She achieved a career best rank of 12 in July 2009 following a semifinal appearance at the French Open.

At just 1.61m, Cibulkova’s small stature could have proved to be a stumbling block, but she modelled her game around her size and her exceptional lower body strength, coupled with game intelligence, ensured quickness around the court.

Most recently, Cibulkova defeated the then world no.1Victoria Azarenka in straight sets at the 2012 French 

Murray's New sponsor?

Time for changeAndy Murray's long-standing partnership with his clothing sponsor Adidas is unlikely to be renewed at the end of the season, according to sources within the equipment industry, as the Scot goes in search of one last big kit deal to cover the final five years of his career.

Murray, who beat Jerzy Janowicz yesterday in his first match at the China Open, will finish with close to £15 million – including performance-related bonuses – from the five-year contract with Adidas that is due to end in December.

For their next move, though, it seems that Murray’s agents are ¬eyeing niche brands that would base their strategy around him – and which might even offer him equity in the company, as the American nutrition specialists Fuse Science did last year. The example of Tomas Berdych, the Czech player who broke away from the traditional tennis labels to join high-street retailer H&M, could turn out to be a precedent.

There is only a month to go before the deal will have to be struck, which adds another layer to the scrutiny surrounding Murray as he scraps for points at the end of a disappointing season. His struggle to reach the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals – a task which would have become even more difficult had he not turned around a one-set deficit against Janowicz yesterday – takes on extra significance when you consider that failure would weaken his brand at this critical moment.

Murray’s management company, 77, has not given up on the idea of staying in the tennis milieu. But Nike is unlikely to bite: it insists that its players wear no other advertising, and it is only three months since Murray signed a three-year, £4.5 million deal to have Standard Life’s name branded on his right shoulder.

As for Adidas, it seems unwilling to raise its offer this time around. Its new head, the American Eric Liedtke, is all too aware that tennis sales have been falling in the UK despite Murray’s endorsement.

The one thing that could change their minds as the deadline approaches is that Adidas – which values the UK market and has traditionally supported emerging British players through their junior years – could soon be lacking any high-profile seniors if it lets Murray go.

The company recently backed out of an expensive deal with Laura Robson, understood to be worth $1 million a year, allowing Nike to move in at a fraction of the sum when she sustained her season-spoiling wrist injury. Meanwhile representatives for Kyle Edmund, the 19-year-old who promises to be Britain’s next top-100 player, are said to be asking for $250,000 a year to renew his Adidas contract.

On the court in Beijing, Murray showed yesterday why he remains a valuable asset even if his results this year have been patchy. Coming off his first title of the year, which he won after a lengthy battle with Tommy Robredo in Shenzhen on Sunday, he had to fly 1500 miles across China and then go straight out for a difficult opening match against Janowicz.

It is perhaps understandable that his legs were heavy in the opening set, and the Scot was broken three times in succession at the start of the match. But once he warmed up to operating temperature, he was able to fight back from a disappointing first-set tie-break – in which he allowed a 4-1 lead to become a 9-11 deficit – to win in reasonably comfortable style: 6-7, 6-4, 6-2.

Murray’s next opponent, Pablo Cuevas, is a Uruguayan who is clearly at his most comfortable on clay, having won two ATP titles and two Challengers on the red stuff this year.

Meanwhile, Rafael Nadal – whose kit deal with Nike will not be changing any time soon – made his comeback in Beijing after three months out with a wrist injury. There was little sign of rust as the Spaniard struck his forehand with withering pace and accuracy on the way to a crushing 6-4, 6-0 victory against Richard Gasquet of France.

Back at home, the Aegon Champion¬ships at Queen’s Club will have a new tournament director for the third year in a row after Ross Hutchins – the recently retired doubles specialist and survivor of Hodgkin’s lymphoma – was recruited by the ATP to run its player relations department.

Hutchins spent a season as tournament director at Queen’s Club last year after Chris Kermode, the previous incumbent, was appointed as the ATP’s executive chairman. But now he will give way to Stephen Farrow, a lawyer who has long been a strong guiding hand behind the event. “Ross is well respected in the locker room and fully aware of the challenges and opportunities we face,” Kermode said yesterday in a statement.

Nishikori's Role Model ?

In an interview with CNN Hong Kong, Nishikori said that he has always enjoyed playing against Federer. He added that he loves watching the Swiss play during practice sessions and competitive tournaments. "He is the player I respect that most," Nishikori said of Federer. "He has a good serve, great forehand, and backhand, everything is perfect with his game," Nishikori added. Nishikori thinks that Federer has no particular weakness at all.

According to Tennis World, Nishikori used to be Federer's hitting partner during the 2007 Wimbledon Championshiops. He has faced Federer four times in his professional tennis career. Their head-to-head records are tied with 2 wins and 2 losses for both.

Nishikori first played against Federer in the Swiss Indoors Basel tournament in 2011. They met in the finale of the tournament. The Swiss won in two straight sets. Nishikori and Federer's next match took place at the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) World Tour Masters 1000 Event in Madrid. Nishikori defeated Federer, who was the defending champion, in Round 16.

Nishikori played against Federer for the third time at the ATP World Tour Masters hard court event in Miami. He defeated Federer in the quarterfinals. Their last meeting was at the 2014 Gerry Weber tournament in Halle. Federer won and evened their head-to-head record at 2-2.

Nishikori is 44-10 in the current season. He has won three titles in Memphis, Barcelona, and just recently, in Kuala Lumpur. Nishikori defeated Rajeev Ram, Marinko Matosevic, Jarkko Nieminen, and Julien Benneteau to win his third title in Malaysia. According to ATP, Nishikori's victory has earned him 170 points in the Emirates ATP Race To London. Nishikori is reportedly hoping to become the first tennis player from Asia to qualify and compete in the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals in London.

The canadian's rise

The last two times Canadian MIlos Raonic played in Tokyo, he reached the final.

No wonder he looks so relaxed.

The 23-year-old Canadian rolled into the Rakuten Japan Open quarter-finals Thursday afternoon with a 6-4, 6-3 victory over Austrian lefthander Jürgen Melzer, a crafty veteran who had beaten him the only other time they met, in the final of an indoor hard-court tourament in Memphis two years ago.

This time, infinitely more experienced, Raonic had all the answers.

He started out hitting the ball supremely well. He was aggressive, but in control – especially on the backhand side, which was the side Melzer was targeting with, among other weapons, his lefty swinging serve out wide into the ad court.

Raonic's statistics were outstanding: 11 aces and no double-faults, 8-for-10 at the net, two-thirds of points won on his own second serve, and 50 per cent of points won on his opponent's second serve. He had 21 winners to 14 unforced errors. But still, it came down to a few key moments.

The first came with Melzer serving at 4-5 in a tight first set.  Raonic handled a couple of big first serves, hustled to chase down a drop shot, and got a little lucky when Melzer's lob attempt down the line was out by very little. It earned Raonic the first break point of the set, and it was set point, and Raonic won it.

Jurgen Melzer had all the answers the first time he played Milos Raonic, but couldn't find solutions Thursday in …

He jumped out to a quick 3-0 lead in the second, only to have Melzer break him to get right back in it. And then, at 3-4, 30-all, Melzer double faulted. Raonic put away the break he needed with one of his patented world-class inside-out forehands, and served out the match with a 227 km/h ace.

It was a calm, composed performance and Raonic even had fun with the crowd afterwards, as he batted the usual signed tennis balls into the stands for the fans.

His timing was good; about 15 minutes into the next match the rain began to fall in Tokyo, forcing a delay as they closed the retractable roof and dried the court.

When Raonic takes a look at his draw, he'll probably feel even better about things. On Friday, he will face Denis Istomin of Uzbekistan in the quarter-finals. He's 2-0 against him, with both wins coming at the indoor tournament in San Jose that Raonic won twice.

If he wins that, Raonic would play the winner between two unseeded players, Gilles Simon (2-0, with both meetings on clay) and American Steve Johnson (2-0, both outdoors on hard courts this year, with the most recent one a tight 6-7, 6-3, 7-6 victory in Cincinnati).

The only major threat standing between Raonic and the title in his third kick at the Tokyo can may well be U.S. Open finalist Kei Nishikori, the hometown hero who followed Raonic onto the stadium court Thursday to play American Donald Young.

There was a very nice crowd for a Thursday afternoon to see Raonic, the early arrivers for Nishikori's match. The Japanese star's impact on his home-country event cannot be understated; he sold out the 10,000-seat stadium for his second-round match Wednesday night.

Nishikori's big Struggle

Bleary-eyed and delirious, tennis fans across Japan reveled Sunday morning at history in the making. Kei Nishikori, the country’s 24-year-old tennis sensation, had just powered past Novak Djokovic to book a place at a Grand Slam final — a first for a Japanese player, and for a man from Asia.

“Amazing, just amazing; the moment he won, I couldn’t believe it,” said Toshiyuki Hasegawa, who forfeited a night’s sleep to watch a live-stream of the United States Open semifinal, trying to keep the noise down at his Tokyo apartment out of respect for his sleeping neighbors.

But when Nishikori’s victory came, just after 4 a.m., Hasegawa, 39, who runs an independent film festival, could not help turning up the volume. “We’ve just never had a male player at the top levels in tennis,” he said by telephone. “And to think it’s Nishikori who made it this far. He isn’t tall even for a Japanese man.”

Still, Nishikori, who stands 5 feet 10 inches, is now Japan’s biggest sports star, dominating news headlines Sunday. “Nishikori crushes the No. 1 seed, advances to a historic final,” read a Jiji Press news flash. “An unprecedented feat for Japan,” declared the public broadcaster NHK.

Nishikori’s triumph set off a euphoric storm on social media, where Japanese are a big presence. “I woke up to find that Kei Nishikori had changed history,” @knbn14, from Musashino, Japan, wrote on Twitter. “I’m going to name my future child Kei,” wrote @26Cheers, an economics student outside Kobe. “Kei Nishikori, have you become a god?” wrote @gyonikuyasai, a college student in Yokohama.

Nishikori’s stardom in his native Japan is unmatched, even though he has not lived there full time for years. Since he was 14, Nishikori has made Florida his home, training first at Nick Bollettieri’s academy and more recently with a coaching team that includes the former American star Michael Chang.

At the Bollettieri academy, Nishikori was given the nickname Project 45, a reference to an early professional goal: to become the highest-ranked Japanese male player in the Open era, bettering the record of No. 46 set by Shuzo Matsuoka in 1992.

Nishikori surged past that goal four years ago and has never looked back. He is now the face of tennis in Japan at a time when a crop of strong players, like Kimiko Date-Krumm, are starting to wind down their careers.

He was also the first Japanese man to reach a major semifinal since Jiro Sato reached the last of his five semifinals at Wimbledon in 1933.

Ichiro Suzuki, the Yankees’ Japanese star, watched part of Saturday’s match from the clubhouse. “For one, because he came here and made it to the semifinals, we were all reminded that there hadn’t been a guy since 19-whatever,” Suzuki said through an interpreter. “So, obviously, just that alone gives us pride. Also, my wife is from the same place he is from, so that kind of made it extra special for me to watch.”

In Japan, Nishikori has become a sponsor’s darling, hawking Nissin cup noodles, a popular sports jelly drink and athletic attire from the Japanese clothing giant Uniqlo.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, the cheering was perhaps most heated in Matsue, the sleepy capital of Shimane, a largely rural corner of Japan from which Nishikori hails.

About 300 local tennis fans, some of them students at Nishikori’s former tennis school, gathered to watch the match on a big screen set up at a local hotel. A large message board was adorned with messages: “Let’s Go Nishikori!” and “Shoot for World Champion!” Masaki Kashiwai, who coached Nishikori before he left Japan, looked teary-eyed.“I am full of emotion,” he told NHK. “I want him to win one more, and become Grand Slam champion.”

One problem loomed over local Nishikori fans, however. None of Japan’s major networks, which were unprepared for Nishikori’s advance, had planned a live broadcast from the Open. Only one paid satellite broadcasting network, Wowow, beamed his matches in real time.

The predicament has sent Japanese scrambling to find live-streaming sites on the web, or other alternatives. “Congratulations Kei Nishikori on advancing to the finals,” Takatane Kiuchi, a former member of the Japanese Parliament, wrote on Twitter early Sunday. “Now, does anyone know how we can watch?”

If only he were as lucky as Yukari Shimizu, a 23-year-old graduate student from Japan who is studying biochemistry at Columbia University. She and a friend paid about $200 for a ticket hours before Nishikori’s semifinal match.“It was totally worth it,” said Shimizu, an avid player who trained for several summers at the Bollettieri academy. “I got to see him hit those remarkable backhands down the line. I was like, Oh, wow.”

Nishikori’s ascent, she said, was a big win for Japan on the world tennis stage — and also a big win for tennis in Japan. “Japanese TV’s so dominated by baseball and soccer,” Shimizu said. “With tennis, most people have a five-minute attention span. But now he’s raising awareness of the sport, and that’s definitely exciting.”

Correction: September 28, 2014 
An article in some editions on Sept. 7 about the reaction of Japanese fans to Kei Nishikori’s victory over Novak Djokovic in the semifinals of the United States Open misspelled the surname of a coach who worked with Nishikori before he left Japan. He is Masaki Kashiwai, not Kashiwagi.