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Doubles Only Tennis Podcast
The only tennis podcast with a focus on doubles. We believe doubles should be more popular and get more coverage than it does, so we’re fixing that. Our goal is to help you become a better player with pro doubles tips and expert strategy. We interview ATP & WTA tour doubles players and top tennis coaches to help you improve your game.
Doubles Only Tennis Podcast
Bruce Lipka Interview: World #1 Doubles Coach, Mindset for Improvement, & How to Play the Net
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Bruce Lipka is the coach of WTA #1 doubles player, Erin Routliffe. He has coached over twenty top 100 ATP and WTA players, won USPTA Tour Coach of the Year three times, and now is the head men's coach at Penn State.
Erin has improved immensely under Bruce's coaching, and it's something I've personally noticed since watching Erin over the past few years. In our discussion, we talk about her improvement, as well as specific drills that you can use.
Bruce has been the Director of Tennis at Woodmont Country Club in Maryland for the past 25 years where he worked with club players. His principles-based thinking provides a proven improvement process for players at every level.
- How Erin has gone from outside the top 50 to world #1.
- The best drills to improve your net game.
- Why Bruce offered a one-hour tennis lesson for $1,500.
- Exactly how Bruce and Erin structure practices.
- Drills for club-level players.
- and more...
He also answered many of your questions from Instagram and Twitter towards the end.
Bruce is one of the top coaches I've had on the podcast and I expect this episode to be a big hit for players and fans. You might listen twice to absorb all this doubles knowledge.
See the shownotes for this episode here: https://www.thetennistribe.com/bruce-lipka-interview/
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Player Development and Coaching Insights
Speaker 1Bruce Lipka is the head men's tennis coach at Penn State University. He was recently the director of tennis at Woodmont Country Club in Maryland and he coaches a number of pro-level players, including Aaron Routliff, the new world number one doubles player on the WTA Tour, who I've had on the podcast a few times and I've known Bruce for about a year or two now. We've been trying to set up this interview and it exceeded my expectations. This is a really great conversation for not only Pro Doubles fans but also club-level players who are looking to improve their mindset, improve their practice, level players who are looking to improve their mindset, improve their practice. We dive deep into what Erin has done to improve herself and Bruce does a really great job of distilling those principles into actionable advice for us as club level players. Obviously, he's worked at a country club for the last couple of decades, so he knows what it takes to improve, whether you're a 2-5 beginner, a 4-0 intermediate player or the number one doubles player in the world.
Speaker 1Obviously, bruce shares some different drills with us, some specific things that he works on with Aaron. We also talk about his time at Wimbledon, where Aaron and Gabby Dabrowski made the finals. We talk about what his role is on their team, how he works with Aaron and then works with Aaron and Gabby, and then Gabby's coach, dan Kiernan, who I've also had on the podcast, how they all kind of work together as a team. You're going to get some strategy insights for club players as well. I ask him how to beat teams that push, how to teach confidence at the net, and then I get to some of your questions from Instagram and Twitter, including some different volley and net play drills how his recent hiring at Penn State is going to affect his coaching ability on the pro tour.
Speaker 1If we have a weak second serve, should we play two back? How should we handle if our partner does have a weak second serve? What practice looks like for Aaron individually, and then also for practices when Aaron and Gabby are working together. And then, obviously, we do some rapid fire questions at the end and talk about how to make doubles more popular. So you're going to get a ton out of this. This is a really fun conversation. Bruce has a ton of energy and is super, super passionate about the sport and was very generous with his time. So, without further delay, enjoy this conversation with Coach Bruce Lipka. Hey everybody, welcome to the show Today we have Coach Bruce Lipka on, the coach of the Penn State men's tennis team and also, more importantly at least for us, the coach of new world number one, aaron Routliff. Bruce welcome.
Speaker 2Thank you Appreciate it. Thanks for having me on and thanks to anybody listening.
Speaker 1So, yeah, we've been trying to set this up for a little while now. I think I first met you maybe a couple of years ago at one of the tournaments I'm not sure where exactly and I know you just got back from Wimbledon, which we'll talk about here in a second, but I wanted to start with just Aaron's overall progress. So last year I interviewed Aaron it was probably a year and a half ago, I think it was maybe during the offseason, before 2023. I met her in person, I think, for the first time at the ATX Open in 2023. And she was ranked around 40 to 50 at the time, I believe, and she ended up winning that tournament with Adila Suchiati, yeah. And then I saw her again at the WTA finals after they had won the US Open, and just the amount of progress in that one year, from what I could tell, was just really immense. She had become such a better player from February to November. What do you attribute that to?
Speaker 2Well, first of all, coaches don't make players. Players make players. So someone has to put in the work. You can give them all the knowledge you want, but the big misunderstanding, I think, is most people think that if they acquire the right knowledge they can be a better player. But it's not about knowledge as a tennis player. A tennis player is about you know choreography, almost the ability to move a certain way under pressure, the ability to play the right shot at the right time. Understanding that when I volley I'm supposed to do this Doesn't do you any good, unless when the ball comes and it's four on in the tiebreaker, you do this.
Speaker 2So, you have to put the work in. There's no shortcuts, there's no tricks. To understand Aaron, you got to go back to when I first met her. I first met Erin in 2020, and she had just been working in a tanning salon and it was just coming out of COVID and she hadn't been playing tennis much and we met in Prague. She was playing doubles with Ingrid Neal in Prague and I went with Ingrid to the tournament. She was playing doubles with Ingrid Neal in Prague and I went with Ingrid to the tournament and Erin you could see, you know there was something there.
Speaker 2So we spent the next few years trying to convince her. She believed in her heart, always what she was capable of doing and she'd proven it in her life many times. There was just something about the way to communicate with her, the way to get on board together, and she made a huge commitment. We start watching film all the time and she watches the film more than I do. She's always studying. She's always looking how to get better. What can you do to improve? She started working much harder going to the gym, you know. Warming up before matches more cooling down after matches. Going through tactics, you know it became much more tactical about how to play tennis, not how to hit the ball. Everyone was always about how to hit the ball. But as she learned, she always has been a good tennis player. But, as I'm sure you understand Will, every time a player moves from level to level to level, it's kind of like time to get used to that level. Now it moves faster, it's more consistent, it's more accurate. So she kept developing the skills that she needed to support herself as the levels raised.
Speaker 2You know, when she and Adila won Austin, she was kind of without a partner and she was floating around out there in the tennis sphere. And after she and Adila won, she said to Adila you know, would you like to play for the rest? And after she and Adila won, she said to Adila you know, would you like to play for the rest of the year? And Adila said, well, she's playing with Kato and they had had a good start on the year and they hope to make year end championship. So they're going to stick together.
Speaker 2So Aaron continued with no partner, fast forward to Wimbledon 2023 and Aaron's up a set 5-2, tiebreaker, serving, loses, loses, the whole match. And afterwards we had a very emotional conversation where she was distraught had lost first round, many tournaments in a row didn't have a partner, didn't have a path forward. We had some real heart-to-heart discussions and we came to the conclusion that you know what I was preaching was her job was to become the best partner she could be for whoever it is. Don't have to be the best server, don't have to be the best returner, have to be the best partner. And what are the variables that make you a great partner? Well, there's the tennis part of it, there's the emotional side of it, there's the support side of it. And she made a commitment to become a great partner for whoever it was. And then, of course, from a bench next to court, seven at Wimbledon first round loss and a breakdown to literally one year later, exactly she's the number one ranked player in the world, and that's all her, that's all the work that she put in.
Building Strong Partnerships in Tennis
Speaker 2You know the kudos and credit go to her that she became coachable, and I think many tennis players are not coachable. They're just not, and it's not their fault. You know, as a junior, you play and there is no coaching in a match, so you learn to do everything on your own. Then you go to college and maybe you have a college coach who's more of a manager than a coach and all they know in the match is to tell you like right now, let's go right now. But there's not real coaching, not like a basketball coach or a football coach or any other sport like that, because they've been coached their whole lives, those athletes.
Speaker 2So the credit goes to her that she became coachable and she took, one by one, skill that needed developing, one by one tactic that needed to be developed, and we've worked through them and at the end of every tournament we'd look back and say, okay, what's one thing we can grow and get better at, and she would commit to it and she would do it, and she would come here and we would train here and we do a ton of work on the ball machine. We do a ton of work with basic things at basic speeds until she masters them, and then we layer one habit on top of the next, one movement on top of the next, movement on top of the next, and she's done the work. So I mean and I think that she's just getting started yeah, I don't think she's anywhere near her capabilities well, amazing, um.
Speaker 1So there's a lot that stuck out to me there. I think two things I want to highlight. Number one is there's just so many ingredients that go into becoming the best player that you can. So you talked about skills and technique, but also tactics and then also just being a good partner, and that was the second thing that stood out to me, that it sounds like this conversation after Wimbledon last year had a really big impact, and I don't think most people would necessarily approach it that way.
Speaker 1Right, if they were talking to a player who was struggling to find a partner and they've had several first round losses in a row, I think most people would say like, okay, what do you need to work on for your game? But not what do you need to work on to support your partner better, especially if they don't even have a consistent partner yet. It's like, well, let's flip it on its head and think about, if you did have a consistent partner, how could you be a better partner to them? What are some of the things that, in a little detail, that go into being a good partner? You talked about the emotional side, the support. What else goes?
Speaker 2into that.
Speaker 1And what did y'all talk about?
Speaker 2Well, I think it's, we would talk. You know the old saying that when the student's ready, the master appears. So I would just keep preaching to her. When you're ready, the partner will show up, but if you're not ready, the partner doesn't show up. And, as you know, that entire concept is not about the master showing up or the partner showing up. That whole concept is about you being the best version of you, and I've always been a believer in character first. If you've got character, then we can coach you. If you don't have character, I can't coach you. And Erin's one of the highest character people I've ever known. I mean, she is off of the court, on the court, a top character. She's a mama bear type person. You don't mess with her people. She has your back at all times about all things. So to become a good partner, you just have to shift that a little bit to how do I help this person? What do they need? What do they need at this moment? How do I help this person? What do they need? What do they need at this moment?
Speaker 2A lot, of, a lot of open, honest communication, which is really difficult for most people. You know, one of the first things I ever told her was you can only be as successful in life about how many uncomfortable conversations you are willing to have. And a lot of times partners don't want to have an uncomfortable conversation because they're afraid of a fracture, of what might come on the other side. But if we have an intense emotional conversation as partners, well now we're laying the groundwork for trust. If you make yourself vulnerable with somebody, out of that vulnerability comes deeper relationship, deeper meaning, because you supported them through whatever the conversation was or they supported you through whoever it was, and that's how you grow.
Speaker 2Whether it's business partners, whether it's a wife and a husband, whether it's a parent and a child, doubles partners is a very intense relationship. You've got these two individual people who are trying to make a living or be the best they can be, but they're tennis players and tennis players are inherently selfish. Because as a young tennis player, it was you against a 64 draw and it was you against a 64 draw, and half the kids might've been making bad calls and half the parents might've been coaching through the fence illegally. So you really learn early on to put this wall up and it's you against everyone. So now we have to take that wall apart and put a doubles partner inside of the wall with you in the bubble, with you, so to say, and to be a team and to get tennis players to be team players. They're all the aspects of team that happen in every other sport. You have to make it bigger than yourself. You have to serve how do you serve somebody else's greater good and help them become the best version of themselves.
Speaker 2It's not about being competitive. It's about being cooperative, because the highest form of competitiveness is cooperation and it's all these concepts that tennis players don't know. But you can read about it on X every day. Tom Brady or Saban or Kobe or Michael. They all talk about being great teammates and what it takes, but there's never a quote from a tennis player of what it means to be a great teammate, because it's an individual sport and they don't understand how to be a teammate. So now we take this doubles game, where you have to be a teammate and these are the characteristics that you've developed.
Speaker 2It can't be about winning and losing. It can never be about that. It can never be about an outcome. About that, it can never be about an outcome. If you have an outcome orientation, then you will always struggle to get through whatever you're trying to get through, whether it's help somebody else, because you always shift back in your mind to that outcome. So if we make it about a process, so what's the process? It means you communicate open and honestly. It means you take care of your business, you practice hard, you do your gym, you watch your film, you eat the right foods, you hydrate the right way, you get the right sleep, you be responsible for yourself. That's part of being a great partner. It's not about blame or what you did or what you didn't do.
Speaker 2And we all slip. You know we all play tennis. We all play doubles with some. Just yesterday I had a doubles match with a guy and I missed three volleys on his serve. I broke my partner and I said to him God, I'm so sorry. And he honestly said it's okay. And you know, then we rebound because he honestly wasn't in his mind Like I can't believe that happened. Well, this is. You know Aaron's got these characteristics. Things happen on the court. She sets it aside, they move forward, gabby does the same. It's what makes them a nice team and Dan Kiernan, who coaches Gabby, is a tremendous communicator. So you know we're hitting it from both sides. You know, helping these people be great communicators so that you can be a great tennis player, a great doubles partner for somebody. I think those you know, the tennis skills we know, but the tennis skills break down to.
Speaker 2You can only teach technique in tennis based on the tactics you want to employ. So you can't just blindly teach technique. It makes no sense and I know a lot of people do it, but for me it doesn't make sense. So if we want to serve and volley and we want to be able to limit someone's return options, well, we're working on a slice body serve. We're not just hitting slice body serves because everyone should have a slice body serve. We're hitting slice body serves because if we can hit our target and we can tie someone's hands up as a serving volleyer, I'm going to have a better look at a first volley. So the tactic in mind is how we teach the technique and Aaron has adapted to this understanding that we don't blindly do anything. You know, if we mess with the return to do this or that, it's because there's a tactic that we want to employ with that return or behind that return. And she has taken ownership of wanting to become a better player by learning to do these things, which make her a better partner.
Speaker 1Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. I think I want to get to more of the kind of team dynamics later, especially how that works with Gabby having a different coach and then y'all working together as a team. But let's step back and talk to us about Wimbledon. You just got back. They made the finals, lost a very close match in the finals that really could have gone either way. They've now played three grand slams together one-one, semifinals at another, finals at another. Their level is so high at these big tournaments. But talk about the two weeks specifically. What was it like for you? What was your role during the two weeks? How did you spend your time on a day-to-day basis? Just give us kind of your perspective.
Speaker 2Well, I got off the plane two weeks ago, saturday, and immediately took a train to Eastbourne where the girls were playing the final. They were playing against Kitchenock and Ostapenko and in that final match the girls were performing beautifully. Performing beautifully. We were up a set 7-5, 6-5, 30-15, 30 all, or maybe 15-30, then 30 all. So two points away from winning this match, possibly, and then end up losing the second set in a tiebreaker and a 10-pointer in the third for the third. So that was. It's important to note that, because that's where the learning comes from. You know, I believe in my soul as deep as I can. You win or you learn. So there's no losing, there's only learning. And Erin makes jokes that she's learned a lot this year. She learned, you know, in Australia you mentioned the Sammies. Well, we were up 5-3 in both sets. You know, some people go well, it should have been this or that, shouldn't have been anything. It is what it is. No one should have won. It was what it was. The other team's not going to roll over and die. So we did some learning after that, which led to the next season of the year, which led to then the next season of the year. So in Eastbourne that day ended and then we took a car back to London and went to where we were staying. But but that started the Wimbledon process.
Speaker 2Now we compartmentalize Eastbourne, we look at the video, we watch the film and we decide okay, she didn't want the next day off, she wanted to practice. So I went through the video that night, made a list of three things we had to focus on and practice. So we practiced the next day and focused, got on on the grass again, practice those three things that we want to do, put a good hour and a half in, you know, before the next day, and that's basically our cycle. It's, it's practice. We look at a lot of film. The film is our guide. What happened in the last match? What? What do we need to focus on here so that we can be this much better possibly in the next match? Practice it. And then, of course, everything always zigs and zags, you know, practice. But that would be our daily routines. Unfortunately, at wimbledon they were on the schedule every day, from when doubles started, through the following, through the finals I mean one day off, you know we were on the schedule every day.
Speaker 2There were some days like uh, I guess it must have been quarter final day. Uh, we were the last match on three nights. So we're at wimbledon until after 11 o'clock, three nights, and then had to come back and play the next day you know whether it was mixed?
Speaker 2if you you know, unfortunately, if you succeed and you win more matches, this happens to you especially once on the schedule you are the late match because now the next day they're not going to make you the first match, you're going to be the late match again and the late match again. So, and she had doubles and mixed and her and mike unfortunately lost a very tough mixed match in the semis. The people who won it, um, which made her that mixed match was very late in the semi, which made her come back the next day and have to play the doubles final. But we were there real late the night before, you know. So every day that's the process you get up, you meet at the courts, you have breakfast, you go to the warmup area over at Orangi, the practice court area.
Speaker 2Um, if we didn't have a match then we'd go to to Raines park, which was it's a beautiful park they built there. We'd go practice there early. In a tournament doubles players don't get much priority on court time, so we do spend a lot of time off site at other sites. So Rain's Park was our, our go-to place, where there also was a gym. There also was a cafeteria, so it was nice that we could eat there, but that was our daily thing Get up, go to the courts, eat something, go to the gym, prepare to play, go out on the court, do your practice. Get done on the court, do your cool down. You know, and that's a, you know that's a four plus hour process, from start to finish.
Post-Match Analysis and Practice Progression
Speaker 2If it's a match day go to the courts, either warm up first or have breakfast first, depending on what time the match is After the warmup, you know, go eat something. If we didn't eat before, get together. And at Wimbledledon this year we were first match on one day, so we got there at nine. We had a warm-up at 9 30. We did our warm-up 9 30 to 10, uh went back. She got her things organized at 10 45. We're at 11 am match. The skies opened 11 45, 12, not before time. You know 12 30 one o'clock. They just only at 27 minutes after or 57 after they move in a half hour. So you can never really, because the minute the rain stops they get the covers off the courts and it's go time in 15 minutes yeah, yeah at 6 pm that day, they canceled all the matches except ours.
Speaker 2They now moved us to the last match of the night on court, one which was covered. So we end up now being there all day and all night. And you know, this is, this was the cycle of this year's Wimbledon, with the rain all day, all night. Go home, come back, do it again all day, all night. So my job is to try to keep the mindset where it needs to be. You know, I'd send her. You need to go eat something now. You need to go to the locker room and get away from everybody. You know this was the job becomes. It's not just play tennis, but it becomes like hey, how do we just keep our player in the best mental state, the best mental place where they're not turned on for eight hours all day? Go, go, go and then try to play, but the nervous system is calm, so that when it does come time to compete, we can get where we need to be.
Speaker 1I want to ask about that practice after Eastbourne. So you said they lose that tight final on Sunday. That practice is an hour and a half on Monday. I assume she wasn't on the schedule on Tuesday because I don't think doubles had started.
Speaker 2Practice was Sunday. Saturday was the Saturday. Final wasn't on the schedule on tuesday because I don't think doubles practice was sunday saturday was a saturday final oh, saturday final. Okay, so practice sunday, so she knows she doesn't play monday at one correct um you have to figure you can go a little harder, I guess yeah, we have to figure a day off in there, can't just go, go go every day.
Speaker 2The body, it's sure mine. So we decided that monday would be a better day off, because Sunday the wounds were fresh, for lack of a better phrase.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2So the focus in practice is a little more intense because it hurt a little bit. So we put in our practice and you know it's kind of a when we reunite. You know I don't travel with her all the time, so but when we reunite we have a specific progression. We go through that hopefully kind of resets everything that needs resetting Because, as you know, as you play matches your strengths get stronger, your weaknesses get weaker and some of the habits that you have that come out under duress or at moments of fatigue start to kind of slip back to some older habits. So we have to kind of hit the reset button and go through.
Speaker 2So we go through everything, start to finish, from volleying to taking pace off of volleys, to adding pace to volleys, to overhead, to moving overheads to overhead, volley combinations to serve and volley. I mean everything. We just go back to the beginning and go through everything and it takes about an hour and a half to work through everything, making sure we put the adequate time in for serve and serve return, which are nothing's more important. Serve 40% of the game, returns 40% of the game. 80% of the game is serve and return. So we always have to make sure we have time for that and we're continuing to evolve as returners, building options into the return on the serve, building options into the serve. So it takes a good 90 minutes, probably more. If we really were going to go through it even longer, then that becomes a bit excessive on the day after finals and the day before two days, three days before a slam starts, because we're still going to have our practice on Saturday, tuesday and then probably play match Wednesday.
Mindset and Skill Development in Tennis
Speaker 1Okay, and you said you don't have to go into the specifics, but you said there was three things that you worked on during that practice. How do you go about thinking about what those specific things are with each practice like that, and then also how much of that is weighted towards that loss literally the day before versus like kind of the bigger picture?
Speaker 2I think you meant to say how much of that is weighted toward the learning the day before.
Speaker 1The learning the day before Learning, that's the film.
Speaker 2That's what the film's for. You know, when I watch a match I guess there are probably some coaches out there who are a lot better than me because if I watch the match live, I mean there's too much going on and I'm just trying to support my players and I'm trying to pick up the tactical alternatives to what's happening. You know, as they say, information overload equals pattern recognition. So I'm trying to pick up the patterns in the match so that I can help tactically. But there's so much more going on. There's the technical, there's the body language, there's the communication, there's so many other things going on that we've really got to go back to the film and I really have to go through the film. And it takes forever to go through the film. I mean, a two set match that took an hour and a half to play is going to take six hours to go through the first time because it's stop and start and reverse and rewind and stop and start in slow motion, you know, and I make my notes and then we'll have a conversation and that'll kind of set us in. Tennis players are really good about telling you everything that they don't do well, but tennis players aren't really very good about saying what they did well and, if you ask me, what makes fellas like Roger Federer or Rafa Nadal or Alcaraz Sinner like what makes these guys great is they don't get stuck in the things they don't do well. You know they're able to. You know, as Ted Lasso said, they're goldfish. You know they have four seconds of memory and they move on. So you know. So getting a tennis player to shift their mindset to talk about what went well and what they're doing well is very difficult. So the conversation always starts. They can tell you everything that went wrong, every big point, that everything went wrong. So we tried to limit it to just a couple of things, a couple of areas for growth we'll call them and something we learned that maybe we knew but we forgot we knew and it reminded us again and that kind of sets our game plan now for the next practice. So I think that next day we worked a bit on transition volleying, we worked a bit on overhead, particularly overhead after closing on a volley, and we worked a little bit through the returns. You know those are kind of the main focuses, but then, like I said before, we have to hit the reset button, so we have to go through all aspects for a short period of time to reset everything. So that's probably 45 minutes and then the last 45 minutes is probably 15 minutes per skill set that we're trying to focus on or mindset that we're trying to focus on because we don't have the right mindset.
Speaker 2You know, serving and volleying is a mindset. You know most people are serving and volleying and trying to hit a big serve in a winter volley. That's not serving and volleying. Serving and volleying is simply a tactic that allows us to transition to the net behind a serve, established position next to our partner, hopefully covering the court in a way, you know, making our wall, as we call it, to create our wall so that the opponents now have openings, but they're the low percentage spots and if they're going to beat us, you know, with the low percentage spots, that's fine, but we've established position at the net.
Speaker 2So it's always resetting, whether it's the shot or the mentality, if you're going to return and come in. The return and joining your partner at the net is to set our wall and put pressure. Being at the net, you don't have to hit a return that causes a winner and then hit a winner on the first volley. You know, pressure is cumulative over time. So we're always reviewing over and over and over again because, like I said before, the tennis player can slide back to some dominant thought. There's a little bit of regression to what they used to do. Particularly someone as good as Erin is and was as good as she was in the juniors and as good as she was in college, she can revert back to a little bit to what she used to do, which maybe is obsolete at the top 10 level in the world, even though it worked, you know, at a much lower level.
Speaker 1Sure Okay. So I want to step back a little bit and go through your story for us. So I was reading through your bio earlier and you've got, I don't know, countless like coach of the year awards and you've worked with 20 plus players in the top 100 and on and on and on. Tell us as much as you can how you got started in tennis then to kind of where you are now, and give us the rundown and the highlights.
Early Tennis Development and Coach Mentors
Speaker 2I accidentally started playing tennis only because in the sixth, fifth grade, sixth grade, sixth grade, basketball season ended and we had just moved to Florida and now the only sports in the spring were swimming or tennis. So I said, well, I'm not playing tennis, no one plays tennis. I never seen tennis before. So I went out for swimming because I'd been on swim teams before in summer camp. I swam and they made me a backstroker. So after swallowing half the pool the first day, I'm like I'm not doing this. So I went to the tennis coach and I said is it too late to come out for the tennis team? And it was a woman named Dee Dee Allen who later became the women's coach at Wake Forest. She was my gym teacher and the tennis coach. She said, no, please come out, because no one was coming out.
Speaker 2Didi said you know, he's a good athlete but isn't how to play tennis. You know, I like held the racket, like you know, halfway up and kind of did this, you know, ran everywhere, and Didi said he probably should take a lesson. So back at that point in time she said there's a guy named Gary Kessel, he's at a club called Inverary, you should go take a lesson. So my mom made me a lesson for the next afternoon, a half hour lesson, so my lesson was from like 3.30 to 4.00. And then Jay Berger's lesson was like 4.00 to 4.30. So like we kind of started playing at the same time, although Jay was the top 10 in the world and I was nobody, but we did start at the same time. So we start.
Speaker 2I started that and then Didi said you know, there's a tournament at Holiday Park. You should go play. All the kids play tournaments. And I said okay, well, how do you do that? So she told my mom well, it starts on Friday. I said, wait, what do you mean? It starts on Friday? She says well, the junior tournaments are Friday, saturday, sunday. I said what about school? She said no, none of the kids go to school on Fridays because they play the tournaments. I'm like a row. My dad told my mom and I was in the 12 and under. So you always played at 8 am. You know, if he's done, you take him to school immediately. So now I had to start winning a round. So I was around for a second round at one in the afternoon, so I didn't have to go to school. So that's how I started playing.
Speaker 1It's good motivation.
Speaker 2You know, whatever it took, I started playing tennis. I didn't fit in too well, you know you had to go to the club and wear the proper white clothes and I didn't really like it too much. But this thing to miss school on Fridays, I was like, okay, well, now I'll wear the proper clothes and I'll do the proper things. So I was never really that good, Didn't love it. Love the team sports more. Basketball, football, baseball that's all we used to play when I was a kid. You know football was in the fall and then basketballs in the winter and baseballs in the spring, you know. So I kind of like those sports more as the team, the whole team concept. I never really understood the tennis. I never really could quite grasp what I was supposed to be trying to do.
Speaker 1So I was always a little so your school didn't have baseball.
Speaker 2No, no, no, At that time we all played. You know, you played Little League.
Speaker 1There were no travel teams back then there were no starting sports.
Speaker 2At five years old, you know you got to play in the rec basketball league. When you got to seventh grade you got to play little league. When you, when you started in little league you had to be eight years old and you know you played mustang and then you moved up to bronco and then you moved up to pony, like it was all local stuff there stuff. There was no travel teams. So you played all those sports and football was we played at the PAL and there were eight teams in the league and there's no travel teams. You all played each other all season. So I did those things and loved them.
Speaker 2And this tennis thing I struggled with because A I didn't really get it. I didn't really understand how to be a tennis player. I wanted to be better and my dad wanted me to be better and you know he would kind of tell me what to do. But it wasn't great advice. It was kind of things you do. You know I could hustle my way through a basketball game. I could play harder defense. I could pick one skill and do it.
Speaker 2In a baseball game I was a pitcher, just throw strikes. It's the only job I had, just strikes. You know, as a football player, if you play defense or offense, there's a play, you do your part. If I'm the outside linebacker, I contain no one's allowed to go to the outside. That's all I had to do is one thing on one play when I was a tennis player. You have to do it all, but, but. But you don't have to do it all. It's really, you have to be consistent.
Speaker 2But I never understood that. I used to think the way you played good tennis was to beat the other person hit shots they couldn't get. And this isn't the inherent flaw in the sport, because when we all start and we're all beginners we can hit shots that people can't get. But as we go from level to level to level, you cannot hit shots people can't get. They get everything. So now if you're trying to avoid them, you hit out wide, you're missing the net.
Speaker 2So I didn't really understand how to play and fast forward a few years I kind of stopped playing and in high school a guy came to school and did a slide presentation, a little circular slide. I used to come in with a big thing and it was on Mercer College in Georgia and it looked cool and I went home and told my dad I want to go to college. College looks cool and no one in my family had ever gone to college out of high school. So they, my dad, said I think you should go to college. College is great, but you better get a full scholarship.
Speaker 2And I was an all county basketball player but wasn't really playing that much tennis at the time and I thought, well, surely I'll play basketball in college. Well, no one wanted me and I wasn't that good. It was all. It was all ego. So I thought, well, maybe I'll start tennis. And again, this was during the year where they didn't recruit tennis players, until you know, march and April of your senior year. So you had time, not like the world now where it's internet and all that.
Speaker 2So I write letters and start playing tennis and a guy, a coach from Iowa State University named Bernie Weiss, offered me a full scholarship, went to Iowa State. I thought, well, I get to go to college. But that's when I fell in love. I thought, wow, this is awesome, we get a bag of clothes every day.
Speaker 2You turn them in and they wash them and give them back. We go on a road trip. You pick up a bag of uniforms. You travel in a van with all these guys. You go out to practice every day. You run hills together.
Speaker 2This is when I started to love tennis. Before that I could take it or leave it, but now it was awesome. So I was introduced to a coach named Bill Tim, who's in Huntsville, alabama. I went to see Mr Tim and he explained this whole thing in a way that I'd never heard before, that you couldn't argue with the logic. And that started. He worked with me when I was 17. And I just talked to him this morning for an hour. He's still my coach. He's 84. We still talk all the time.
Speaker 2You know, last year at the U S open on semi-final day, bruce Lipka, coach of the girls, scott David David off, coach of Rohan Bopana. Brian Shelton, coach of Ben Shelton All three of us are from Mr Tim's program. We all were in the same program at the same time in Huntsville Alabama. I mean, I met Bill. That changed my life. You know, coach Tim is just the best I'd ever seen, unbelievable. So that's when I got excited about being a tennis player and that's when I wanted to be a better tennis player and that's when I wanted to work at it and that's when I did all the things you said I hit serves, I did my running. So that really started my development then and it's continuing now. I think I'm still getting better. I'm still working hard at it. It's been a lifelong journey and the coaching along the way turned out I was way better at that than playing and I was ranked 800 in the world in doubles Not very good I at that than playing and I was ranked 800 in the world in doubles not very good. I mean it's not awful, but no one's making a living there and I didn't have any money and I started helping some other players and turned out I was pretty good at it. So they would pay for the hotel for the week if I would work with them on the court, feed them balls. So when I'd run out of money I needed a job. Ian Duvenhaig, who is the women's coach at the University of Miami, offered me a job there. Ian then got the men's job at the University of Florida. Off I went. I got the men's job at Miami University in Ohio, ended up in the club business Always felt like I was only where I was because of all the people who helped me, all the people who gave me housing Brian Gottfried, when I was a kid, was the traveling pro at our club All the wristbands Brian gave me and old rackets and bags, and I just I was so, so grateful for all of these people helping me that when I was in that position I promised myself I'd always help.
Speaker 2And all of these players started knocking on my front door and so-and-so sent them or so-and-so sent them Can I help them? They can't afford a coach. Would I be willing to help them? And I said, sure, you know I'm happy to help you. So many people have helped me.
Speaker 2And that's ultimately how I ended up with Aaron. You know, a girl named Ingrid Neal came calling. Will I help her? I said no, I won't, please, no, please, no, please, fine. And you know that's this group of girls. Now. I mean I had Aaron and a girl named Ricky Icary. You know, there's a girl I've been working with cause she's partnered with Ingrid, and then there's Ingrid and a girl named Ellie LeShemia. I mean there's this whole group of girls that we all started when they were ranked not, not that, not that well, a lot of room for work, but they've done the work and they've all got better. And there were, you know, all these girls in the main draw of a grand slam and all winning around. And I remember when, like, we used to show up at grand slams as alternates and just be happy to get in. Now they're winning matches in grand slams. It's absolutely a fascinating progression and that's just how I got where I am today.
Speaker 2It was always just whoever wanted help needed help. When I left college coaching went to Florida. A guy named Joe Brooke was our director and he coached a lot of. He coached Davis Cup in Lebanon, davis Cup in Singapore. He was very well connected in the tennis community and Jana Novotna was down there and she had just lost a terribly emotional Wimbledon and I had a small sports psychology practice. I had a master's degree. Joe introduced me to her, so I spent that winter. She was a serving volleyer. You know I teach the all court game, spent some time with her, helping her. Her coach was Betty Stova. Betty, though, apparently, was in Holland for a lot of the winter. She was down there looking to work out, get better. You know, it was always an accident is always just being in a certain place at a certain time and just more than happy to help anybody who wanted help.
Speaker 1Again, because I'm not where I am at that point in time or today, if I don't stand on the shoulders of many, many people who helped me along the way- yeah, I mean, you can call it an accident, but I, I think you know, you put yourself in the right situations over and over again and these, these good accidents happen, Right Um yeah. So I think it's.
Speaker 2I think, as long as your motivations, you enjoy it. If your motivations are in a certain direction, you know.
Creating Chaos and Structured Doubles Strategy
Speaker 2I don't think it ever works. You know, everyone's first response to me after the girl started having success is oh my God, you must be making so much money. You know, and I laugh cause no, it's not. It's never been about the money. And and it's not about the money and I would never make it about the money, it's because I'm only here, because of all the people that helped me. It's why I went into college coaching in the first place in the 80s, because I didn't have a great experience and I thought these guys should have the best experience of their life and they should have every opportunity to become whatever they want to become, you know. So after all these years in the club business, when the Penn State job came open, I thought you know, I think I've got one great adventure left in me. I got a tank still full of gas. I'm not ready to ride off into the sunset. You know, I want to do something meaningful, I want to leave my stamp on something.
Speaker 2And it worked out that these guys gave me a chance. The athletic directors, pat Craft, we connected, a woman named Brandy Stewart handled the search. Really, these people, we talked, they believed in me, they gave me a shot. Couldn't be more excited about it. But all it is, again, as you said before, it's just putting yourself in a certain position and having the right motivations. And having the right motivations. I told them I don't know that we're going to beat Ohio State, who's won the Big Ten 18 years in a row. To win the Big Ten now means national championship level, I said. But what we will do is we will prepare these young men to be independent, high-functioning human beings within society and contribute. That's the goal, that's what we're going to do, and along the way, maybe we'll play some better tennis if we work at it. But the goal is not to win tennis matches. The goal is to mentor and develop some fine young people. That's what I believe in love that um.
Speaker 1So I want to get back to strategy a little bit. Um, we're coming up on 45 minutes here. Uh, I want to ask about indian wells. So we um, um, yeah, the Indian Wells this year. I was sitting down on I think it was court eight or nine, and, uh, one of your players, or Rike, uh, was playing a match with with. Um, yeah, han, you growl.
Speaker 2Stefani and uh, uh, I think it was against.
Speaker 1I think it was against Kudermatova and Kalinskaya that this one oh the first match. The first match, I think it was yeah. Yeah, it was against them two, and so they're playing two. You know quote singles players, I guess, Although Kudermatova has had some success at doubles.
Speaker 1Like singles, doubles. Yeah, they're more baseliners, and I remember sitting there chatting with you during the changeovers and then listening to you, kind of in between points, communicating with them and I don't know that. I don't remember the exact quote, but you said something to them. Like you know, get to the net and create chaos, or get to the net and be a disruptor. If you remember the exact phrase, correct me. But why did you say that and talk about the strategy for that specific matchup?
Speaker 2Well, it doesn't take a lot of intelligence to understand that if you're going to play singles doubles with those ladies who are some of the world's best singles players, you've put yourself at a tremendous disadvantage. You know, this is what I alluded to before about tactics. So if we're playing a match and someone does something really well better than we do it, we don't want to do that head to head all day. We're not gonna hit cross-court ground strokes all day. So we're gonna try to put them in a position that might make them a little more uncomfortable and maybe we're uncomfortable also. But we have to accept the fact that if we do this their way, we're not going to have success.
Speaker 1So if we can get to the net and be a pest, be annoying be everywhere I think that's the word you use for going If we get to the net together yeah, we get to the net together, create chaos.
Speaker 2You know we want the points where everyone's running all over the court. Nothing is standard or typical. We don't want one up, one back, diagonal cross court rallies. That's not for us. We want chaos. We want crossing and lobbing and running and chasing and two at the net or two back or a drop shot and over. I mean we want total chaos on the court. But for us it's structured chaos because we understand where to be to support our partner, where the percentages are, what shot to take away, how to bait and cover. You know we practice those things.
Speaker 2So for Uli and Gao in that match, we don't want to stay back and play one up, one back. We want to take second serves and go to the net. We want to, if you stay back, make a return and first ball cross. We want to get a bump, lob down the line and get into a straight rally so that our partner can cross in front. You know, without there being angles, you know we want to create havoc out there. That's because if we can make you play a style that you don't like to play, nor you want to play even if we don't want to do it. That still gives us the best chance. And to those girls credit. They were very coachable that day.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think they won the match and I think it was a third set breaker, but it was pretty pointed.
Speaker 2Yeah, which Uli came up with a shot out of nowhere. Yeah, we were behind, yeah. It was it was exciting.
Speaker 1Yeah. So I want to jump to to kind of club level doubles for a second. So you've been a director at Woodmont Country Club in Maryland for a little while now 25 years, 25 years. Okay, so what are some of the most common mistakes you had to fix during that time with, let's say, like the 3-0 to 4-0 level doubles players?
Speaker 2Well, first let me say that everyone's missing.0 to 4.0 level doubles players. Well, first let me say that everyone's missing the boat if they don't put rackets in people's hands and teach them from the beginning, all the way through. I actually teach the two, five ladies the exact same drills, the exact same way that Ingrid and Aaron or Gabby. Same stuff, nothing's different. The only difference is these tour girls are more consistent. It's all happening a little bit faster, it happens with a little greater precision and accuracy. The consistency, the accuracy is better and the radius of effectiveness is a bit larger, but the concepts are all exactly the same.
Winning Through Problem Solving and Options
Speaker 2It all starts with the basic concept that the tennis player is only as good as their worst day, period, end of story. And on your worst day, you're only as good as the options you have. So we try to build options versus other people. I hear them talk all the time they're trying to build weapons and I don't think that works. Because if we go back to the fundamental flaw among tennis players we talked about before was that if you think the object is to hit the ball so they can't get it or to make life difficult for them, it doesn't really work. You end up making errors if you're trying to avoid people. I mean, the origin of the unforced error is the desire to avoid the opponent. So if you're going to try to avoid the opponent, so at the club level it's the same message. You know, targets are far inside the lines. Make them play, let them play. Chip the approach shot. Chip the approach shot because we can blend in the bump lob, we can blend in the drop, we can blend in the deep chip, because we have three options on every shot. We can solve a problem. If we're not trying to solve problems and you're trying to win, you're not process oriented.
Speaker 2So this is the exact same conversation that Aaron and I will have, as I had a clinic this morning with some ladies. And same conversation, same stuff Someone's at the net, they miss wide. Why are you missing wide? Because you're trying to avoid her. Why are you trying to avoid her? Because it hurts your feelings if she hits a winner. Well, how about we let her play? And if she hits a winner, we say nice shot, because we know from the data that in a match of fairly evenly matched opponents, first of all, we know from Roger Federer's recent speech at Dartmouth that you know he won 84% of his career matches or whatever, but won or 86 and won 54% of the points and that's what the guy who's like the greatest of all time.
Speaker 2So you can imagine here where matches are closer You're talking about 50.5% of the points. So since we know this is the case, we know that 30% of all points in a match are won or lost. Either we want to look at it by winners or forcing shots. So if there are 100 points and you and I play 30 of the points, I will have hit a winner or forcing shot that I won. Good serve, good volley, overhead, forehand, on the run, whatever 30% will be you doing the same thing. So that's 60% of the points. That leaves that middle, that 40%, which is almost half the points, 10% shy of half. It's what happens in that 40% that matters. So if we can orient you to not trying to hit it away from them, but we orient you to trying to be in position, get to the net, put pressure, bring them to the net, lob over the backhand Some tactics that involved not hitting it away from them we put ourselves at an advantage in those 40% of the points to hopefully win more of them, not by hitting winners, because we just said that only 30% are going to be winners or forcing shots.
Speaker 2So if you think that the way to beat somebody is to hit winners or forcing shots, you're misunderstanding the entire sport. The way to beat somebody is to be able to solve a problem. The way you solve a problem is to have options. What do those options look like? Well, it looks like do you have a kick serve to the tee? Do you have a flat serve to the tee? Do you have a flat serve to the body? A kick serve to the body? A slice serve to the body? A slice serve wide. You know, if I have alluce court, I can solve the return problem. If I can't hit my targets, I can't solve the problem. So it's really about solving the problem and it doesn't matter the two five player, it's just slower and a different speed. We're lobbing straight up in the air right to the heart of the court.
Speaker 2We're not actually asking them to lob the backhand to the backhand corner, whereas you might ask the girls to do that, but then the girls are trying to do it off of a very big serve with a very good net player, so it actually all ends up being equal. It's the same feeling a person has as long as the opponents are always equal to the level of the player.
Speaker 1Yeah, that makes a ton of sense.
Speaker 2No, it doesn't change. It's still about understanding that the game is about. Consistency is the ultimate weapon. Once you develop consistency, do you have accuracy? Once you have consistency and accuracy, can you maintain those two things under what we'll call mobile duress having to move, and how big is your radius of effectiveness? You know, visualize Sampras hitting his running forehand and ending up three rows deep in the stands. You know Pete's running forehand radius was big, up three rows deep in the stands. You know pete's running forehand radius was big.
Speaker 2Right now, picture, uh, carlos carlos's radius of effectiveness goes from side fence to side fence to back fence to net, which makes him the best player in the world. What makes my two five ladies two five ladies is their radius of effectiveness is about two and a half steps. I find that what your USTA rating is in steps. You know a 5-0 player man. He's got five good sprinting steps. You know a world-class guy who's a 6-0, he's got about six full sprint. And it keeps going on and on until the radius grows. And in that radius you're effective, reaching the ball. You can match offense with offense, you don't always have to shift to defense. And it's just the differences, my two five ladies. You know, if I get them, you're in trouble. We throw a lob up in the air right to the person, let them in over, we back up, we play defense, no different. It's all the same. Like I say, it's just the speed it happens, the radius of coverage and how accurate and consistent they can be.
Speaker 1Same concepts, though Are there any specific? I guess either shot selection, positioning or movement errors that are more common at the club level than the pro level.
Speaker 2Again. I'll answer that in a similar way. They are all the same problems. As tennis players, very few are taught what we'll call advanced footwork or racket work techniques. Most are just taught the same thing as a kid. They grow up, get bigger, stronger, faster and they're doing the same thing within the same context. If you watched the finals of the french open and you think back in the semi-final, in the final, carlos alcaraz hits two backhand cross-court passing shots in a full eastern forehand grip where he just bumps the outside of. Alcaraz hits two backhand cross-court passing shots in a full Eastern forehand grip where he just bumps the outside of the ball and hits it back on the angle. That's obviously not his typical backhand. He hits it in a different grip and hits it differently. Well, that's what we'll call an advanced skill set the ability to change the grip because the ball is going to go over the racket face points, and to use the wrist in a positive way to bump the outside of the ball. So those are advanced racket skills and they go with advanced footwork skills accelerating through wide balls, accelerating through a deep lob. Those skills can be taught to anybody, anywhere.
Speaker 2I have five-year-old kids. When I teach them to play. We always start at the net. We always start from the contact points backward, as opposed to starting on the baseline where there's a bounce and a hit and then later on trying to include the net. And the reason we do that is because the kids are going to play more at the baseline than the net, whether you like it or not. If they don't have two separate habit sets one for playing in transition at the net and one for playing on the baseline then the baseline becomes the dominant footwork, racket work patterns and all they try to do at the net is miniature versions of the baseline habits and they're in trouble.
Speaker 2So tour players, same stuff. I mean, look how many tour players try to serve in volley and the ball bounces at their feet because at a young age they didn't learn to accelerate into and through a volley. They're oriented toward let a ball bounce, let a ball bounce. They don't even know they're doing it. So at the club level we're trying to correct those things at a lower level. So at least when our 2-5 player becomes a 3-5 player, hopefully they're progressing a little bit to have the options they need.
Speaker 2So with the tour players, a lot of it is working backwards from there. If they don't have the habits we need, they don't have the footwork patterns, they don't have the racket work skills, then we're trying to install them while learning them and layering them into their game. While competing and playing at a very high level, which is a little bit tougher actually than the club player. It's easier to get the club player to buy in because they're not good than it is to get the tour player to buy in. But if you really watch the tour players, it's all about that flexibility to solve a problem. Options.
Speaker 1So one of the most common questions I get from club players and I'm sure you've answered this a thousand times but how do we beat pushers?
Speaker 2Yeah, it's well. First of all, you have to spell pusher C-H-A-M-P-I-O-N. So that's the first misunderstanding. You know, when people play me, they say I can't play against the guy who plays like you. I get no rhythm.
Speaker 1Yeah, I don't give you any rhythm because I don't want you to have any rhythm, you know.
Speaker 2so the pusher is really, just really consistent. They don't miss. So if I'm going to beat that person, I have two options right. One is be willing to stay out on the court for four hours and don't miss more. But again, most people are oriented not toward being consistent, but they're oriented toward being able to hit a ball they can't get. But when you play the pusher they can get everything and they lob it back and you don't know what to do with it. So then, tactical option two if consistency is an option for you and it's not for me. Two if consistency is an option for you and it's not for me, I don't have the patience to have long, extended rallies.
Speaker 2I am going to use the length of the court to try to create some chaos. I'll play the drop and bring them in. I'll bump the lob. They run back. Now I can move forward. I'll take every second serve. I'll try to chip and come in behind it, blending the deep approach with the short approach. I will take their push shot out of the air and target whichever stroke side I deem to be their weaker side, not trying to hit a winner, not trying to avoid them, simply just trying to transition to the net. So I'm not stuck on the baseline doing this push thing anymore. I'm willing to lose, but I'm going to lose different. I'm not going to lose because I lost patience and I made unforced errors. Because, as we talked about before, in that middle 40% of points, if I make errors on 30% of those I'm going to lose every time. So, against the pusher, that's what they're counting on. So I'll change my. I'll serve and volley Now there's no pushing and if they're a lobber I'll serve and volley and then I'll anticipate the lob.
Speaker 2That's tactics, that's using tactics.
Speaker 1So what about for doubles? Let's say we're playing a team that pushes at the club level. I imagine we need to have one up, one back. How should we think about that tactically?
Speaker 2Well, I think you can start with one up and one back. But why not serve and volley? They're going to do something. Are they going to lob the return? Are they going to hit the return? Great, you can back your partner off the net a little bit. I've backed my ladies up, you know, to the service line at times because really what that does is discourages the lob. We all know that if they still lob the two, five lady and on the service line, it's still going to be very effective. But what it does is discourages it because they think, oh no, she backed up, I can't lob now. So we've discouraged the lob and we've stopped that shot from happening. So maybe it becomes serve, return short. Dump in the service box, bring them to the net. I lob them.
Speaker 2First we move forward and take over the net and now we're not doing the pushing thing. If you settle into the one-up, one-back and you sit there and start playing that game with someone who wants to play it, you're going to be stuck doing it. You know, and this comes back to options. Probably the most important option is can you chip? Can you get underspin? Because if I can chip it under, it's way more important than topspin, I believe, because the topspin is going to carry and doubles. The topspin is going to carry and bounce up. If you can hit the underspin and take pace off of the ball and you make the pusher run forward where they don't like to play and they're uncomfortable, you have the advantage.
Mastering Different Types of Volleys
Speaker 2Now I'm going to change that dynamic and we're not going to play the game you want to play, even though I may not be a good serving volleyer. If I don't want to play the push game, I've got to serve and volley. I don't have a choice. I've got to maybe play in no man's land and take your ball out of the air and be able to volley it moving forward if I don't have that transition volley. Now I know what to work on with my pro. Now I know to go on the ball machine in practice. Now I know to go on the wall in practice. I have to become competent in those options that will help me get through this match with the pusher.
Speaker 2Because if you don't have the mentality to stand out there and just make a hundred balls every point but some people do not Then you need it. You need an option, and a lot of people say that's not real tennis. I can't play against people who play like that. Well, I understand, so let's play differently then. Well, I don't, I don't want to serve in Bali, I don't know how. Okay, well now, now we're stuck. Now we're stuck. We don't have a choice. You don't want to do one thing and you don't want to do the other thing.
Speaker 1We're out of options. You have to be uncomfortable.
Speaker 2Yeah, no-transcript.
Speaker 1So I want to get to a couple of listener questions and then we'll do some rapid fire and hop off here. Amanda from Instagram asked Aaron's volleys have improved a ton. What are some drills that you like for volleys and improving nut skills for volleys and improving net skills?
Speaker 2Well, thank you for noticing that, really appreciate it. She has worked incredibly hard on her volleys. I mean, I can't give that young lady enough credit for how much work she's put in. So what we do on the volley is we recognize that the volley is part of how to play the net. So if we want to know how to play the net, we need a variety of volleys. When I watch most club people or pros for that matter practice their volley, they stand in one spot and they just volley. That's not how you volley when you're playing a point. So what we do is we compartmentalize the volleys into the volleys Aaron needs to hit.
Speaker 2There are the closing volleys, there are the high volleys, there are the swing volleys, there are the transition volleys. There's the volleys when you're the returner with a server's partner. There's the volley when you're the returner's partner and you're crossing or they're coming at you. There's the volley that comes behind a serving volley. There's the volley that I mean we just named seven different volleys and we haven't even tried yet. There's the diving volley that requires the grip change in the wrist bump. There's the peel off of the low volley. There's the backspin over the medium height volley. There's the flat over the higher volley. If you're not armed with all of these options, if you're a broken clock, sure you're going to be right twice a day, but that's it. But that's it. So if every volley you have, let's say it's backspin, for example, you only do backspin. Well, the problem is on a low volley you try to lift the ball and when you try to lift it it goes in the net every time. So the low volley requires side spin. The lower the volley, the further out in front you get, the more the racket face has to move parallel to the net, not perpendicular to the net. You know, the higher the volley comes up, the more the racket starts moving perpendicular to the net. Maybe the high volley is straight perpendicular. You know. Maybe the lower volley it still goes higher to lower, with an open racket face that the ball goes up.
Speaker 2You have to practice all of those things and Erin has embraced all of those. I mean, if you go back and look at old film, she was never getting first volleys out of the air. She had some volleys in the last few months. Blow my mind the evolution of her transition volley game. And that's not an accident and that's not knowledge, that's time and repetitions that she's put in. You know, she made a decision that she wanted to be the best version of herself, so she started putting that time in and, as your listener recognized, it's really improved a lot.
Speaker 2And that's why all those drills are. They're compartmentalized. I mean, you know, that could be a separate thing. We can actually do the drills and show everybody happy to, but it just starts from. It starts from no, there's a proper way to not move your feet when you volley. And we actually start there and then we move to one step volleys. Two step volleys, full accelerating volleys side to side, and that covers the lateral movements. Then we go to the forward movements. We're just covering all of them and I wish there was a shortcut.
Speaker 2I wish there was a magic pill that I could tell the people to go and take and they'll be better volleyers. You know, I used to have I'm cleaning my office now and I apologize to everyone watching this why my office is a mess, and it is because I'm in the midst of moving but I had this jar that looked like this and it had a tag around it that said magic volley dust. You know, because I've always taught the all court game. So I've always been. You know, juniors always came to me Can you teach me to volley?
Speaker 2I'm like, no, I can't teach you to volley, but I could teach you to play the net. And they'd say, well, he has a big tournament this weekend. Can we have one lesson? And I would think to myself I don't know what I can do with one lesson. And people say how much is the lesson? And I'd say it's $1,500. They'd say one lesson is $1,500. And I'd say, yeah, I think if you want a miracle you should pay for one. I say now, if you want to come every week for an hour for the next 12 weeks, well then it's $100 an hour. So that's kind of the mindset is people think if you just tell them something, they can do it.
Speaker 1So yes, her volleys are greatly improved and we've worked every single one of them over and over and over. And thank you for noticing amanda. Yeah, yeah, I think when I talked to her at the wta finals last year, I um mentioned that to her and the first thing she said she said she said my coach has made me hit so many volleys and it's paying off.
Speaker 2Yeah, she always complains about it. She'll tell someone. I'll say oh, you're returning so well, what's the secret? She's like oh, he puts me on that darn ball machine and I hit a thousand returns every day. I'm in Maryland.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2You know, but that's there's no knowledge, there's repetitions.
Speaker 1Yeah, there's no secrets. No, so it sounds like for the club player. Maybe figure out which volleys you're struggling with most in matches and then have a ball machine. Start with two.
Speaker 2Yeah, start with two volleys, your transition volley and you're at the net or your. There's two kinds of volleys One ball that comes to you and one ball that you go to. So if you're in transition, you're going to the ball. If you're at the net already, the ball's coming toward you more you know. So we kind of start there and always use targets, because targets give feedback.
Speaker 2Oh, I missed short in the net, I missed long, I missed wide. If you don't know where you're aiming, how are you going to correct? Because, like I said, it's only about solving a problem. I mean, it doesn't matter if you use an Eastern forehand grip, a continental grip, it doesn't matter what grip you use. You know people get all caught up in that stuff and you know, I remember would be nice to have all the flexibility and the advanced skills. But for now I think you want to start off.
Speaker 2There's two targets a deep target and a short target. And when you're in transition, that deep target, your friend, because you know everyone. As you say, they push and they lob a lot. But in the picture behind you, if you see that Cancun sign on the court, if I make them lob from there, I have time to cover the overhead If I hit weak volleys that are no man's land and they move six feet inside the baseline and lob me from there, I have no time to react and cover a lob. So I get beat all day and then people say, oh, I don't want to go to the net, they're lobbing me to death. Well, your volley is no good, you know. Basically, if we drew a line across the court about four feet inside the baseline and then do another line across the court about four feet inside the service line, so we've got these two lines here, this one's inside the baseline, this one's inside the service line, we want no balls in the middle, we want all the balls deeper than that line to the baseline or shorter than that line in the front half of the service box. If we're doing that and we're using the length of the court, I think that's where we become effective and it really doesn't matter.
Speaker 2People always say I don't know how to do that. And I'll say well, how many thousands of balls have you hit trying to figure out how to do that? Again, they think it's about information. It's not. It's about going, it's about experimentation, it's about knowing yourself, it's about understanding maybe some basic concepts that you know, the less ball I hit, the less distance it goes. It's not about hitting a ball low if I want to hit it short. It's still about having height, but the higher it goes, the closer I can make it bounce to the net. So there are probably some basic concepts, but it's just practice. Will You've just got to?
Speaker 1go out and practice it. Another question from Instagram. So this is from Rock Springs High School. I guess they have an Instagram account. If I have a weak second serve, should we play two back and then rush the net? So I guess really, how do you handle a weak second serve? And it sounds like this is maybe for high school level players.
Speaker 2High school guys. Take the basket of balls out and hit 100 serves every day and I promise you in 18 months you'll have a better second serve.
Speaker 1There you go, simple, you know. In the meanwhile there's a theme here hit a lot of tennis balls.
Player Development and Coaching Logistics
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean in the short term. Yeah, sure, you can try that. You can try to back and rush the net together. You can try one up, one back and serve and volley. You can try one up, one back and take the first return and hit a lob and then go to the. You can try a million different tactical things but at the end of the day you're not addressing the problem. The problem is you have a weak second serve. How do you remedy a weak second serve? You take a hundred balls in a basket, you go out seven days a week, you put targets on the court where you want your second serve to bounce and you practice your second serve and, like I say, in about 18 months, somewhere between 18 and 36 months your serve will be a lot better. And I wish there was a shortcut, but unfortunately there's not.
Speaker 1Okay, do you have time for a couple more?
Speaker 2listener questions. Yeah, I've got time for you Will.
Speaker 1So Scott from Instagram asked what does practice look like with just Aaron versus when Aaron and Gabby are on the court together? That's something we haven't really talked about.
Speaker 2It's a really good question, so you alluded to it before. When it's when it's Aaron and Gabby, we'll go there first. It's either Bruce, aaron and Gabby or Bruce and Dan, aaron and Gabby, so it's a different dynamic. If it's Bruce, dan, aaron and Gabby, dan and I always get together first and talk about what practice is going to look like and we settle on concepts that the girls need to be solid with. You know, returners, partner, servers, partner you know the girls have their typical warmup. They go through together when they're together. So they'll go through their warmup first so that they're always doing the same thing on practice day or match day and then we'll go into what we needed to practice.
Speaker 2We do a lot of wall where we have two at the net together and we have one of us Dan or I's back and the other one of us is the partner and we work the wall and they can go at the net person or then we go two back. We work a lot of that because that comes up in the matches a lot. We start with the transition to the wall. You know we'll do a lot of serve and return, where now they make the wall by joining as the serve and volleyer, or joining as the return and come in. So almost most of the concepts after their warmup are team oriented, team related. You know, unless, like I say a lot of times, servers partner, you know, we'll feed, you know, five or six balls to one because we need to practice the moving forward to the volley. Then we'll feed five or six to the other. But it really evolves and revolves. It evolves through the practice up to more team oriented things and it revolves around Dan and I meeting before practice and talking about, you know, hey, we watched the film from the last match. We saw this. This is what we need to do today. You know, aaron.
Speaker 2Separately that's a different story. You know, warm-up is much shorter because there's work we need to get done, so warm-up doesn't last very long. We hit a few balls and then she's always like, okay, I'm ready, and then we jump into, very similar to if you take a private lesson from the pro at home. You know, hopefully, that pro has a developmental plan that they have for you over a long period of time and you're working in a developmental direction. We jump back into Aaron's developmental plan combined with what we saw in the last match. Marry the two together and we do our encore work.
Speaker 2You know we never want to make her overthink in the tournament, so we try not to change something. I'm not a big changer. A lot of people I see them changing a stroke changing.
Speaker 2I like to take what someone has, maximize it first and then add in those advanced skills we've talked about.
Speaker 2So if you're volleying poorly but you use something skewed to an Eastern forehand grip, all that means is your contact point has to be further in front and you're going to volley with a lot of side spin, not a lot of backspin. So we take that instead of trying to change the grip and which is very difficult to do and takes a really long time and a lot of repetitions. It's doable but it's not easy and it's not a short-term project. We can remedy that by just understanding with target, with height above the net, with side spin here's what you have. We can maximize that first. So that's what a lot of our time is spent doing when it's one-on-one. Sometimes we're fortunate enough to get a hitter and I don't have to be the hitter. It's not easy to be the hitter with her. She's a huge ball, I can handle it, the net, but like when we got to the grass the first day we practiced, her ball was ginormous. Her forehands were so big on the grass I was struggling with it.
Speaker 2You know, so we had to shift into something where I didn't have to hit forehands off of her ground stroke.
Speaker 1Yeah. I can imagine.
Speaker 2It's just too big, but it's. But she's a good sport about it. It only yells at me a little bit.
Speaker 1That's funny. So from Twitter Tennis Pig, who has a really good doubles Instagram account actually, he asked how your hiring at Penn State will affect your ability to coach Aaron and what it's going to look like.
Speaker 2That's a really good question, something I'm not sure I have the answer to. I have had a job full time job for, like I say, the last 25 years. So Aaron always worked into my life instead of me working into her life, you know. So I think it'll probably be similar. You know, most of the work we do is film. You know, wherever she is in the world, there's a tournament, now that she's at the level she's at, everything is on WTA TV or the tennis channel. Everything's archived.
Speaker 2So then we go through the film, we talk about what practice will be tomorrow. I'm obviously not hands-on all the time, but usually there's somebody with them who then takes the instructions of what practice will look like, and she's very good at saying what her needs are after our discussion and then focusing on it and doing it. So I imagine that we'll continue a similar system. I mean, when she's in China or Asia, you know the matches are 3 am, you know. So that's not going to change. I mean, when she's in China or Asia, you know the matches are 3am you know, so it's.
Speaker 2That's not going to change. I'm still in Eastern time, it's still in the middle of the night, you know. When she's on the European swing it looks like one thing. I've typically been at the slams. That's typically what I've been at. Last year is the first year ever.
Speaker 2I went to Australia um with them. She wanted it. I said, okay, I'm in um, I won't go to australia anymore, obviously because the college season will have started up, uh, but the college season, typically that ends in may, you know, and there's recruiting at the french open, junior french recruiting wimbledon, and recruiting the us open. So it's really a way to marry a lot of these things together anyway that are all part of both of the worlds that I exist in. So I imagine it'll look fairly similar that it's been. You know, there are nowadays as you know anyone who follows college tennis it's incredibly international. They have these showcases all the time in Europe. I think a bunch of coaches are in Germany right now at a showcase over there looking for players. So I think these things all marry together nicely.
Speaker 2Obviously, between January 1st and May, whatever, there won't be much, you know, unless she comes to town for a few days to reset something into practice, but that's not different from how it was in the past. You know, this year I happened to go to Indian Wells. We'd arranged it long before because I was taking a group of my members out there and we were doing a members trip, so again I could marry the two together, you know something like this. And then Miami they had a good run and Dan had to leave. He was going to do Miami. So then I came down to Miami for the last three matches or something like that, and the girls handled those me and Dan changing spots seamlessly. Aaron couldn't be easier to work with and Gabby's a fantastic person to work with.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah. I think a lot of people I don't know if I've ever mentioned this on the podcast or when other coaches mentioned it, but a lot of people may not realize that these doubles players don't have a full-time traveling coach, even the best doubles players in the world, many of the men do.
Speaker 2And, as you know, the prize money is much different in men's doubles than women's doubles. Right, and they can afford it. It's tough with all the travel and all the everything to afford it, even though the girls are earning a decent living. Now I mean by the time you get done with taxes and expenses and everything else. It's not what people think.
Speaker 1Yeah, and they have to think about like saving money for when they retire at 38 or 35 or 40, whatever it is.
Locker Room Access and Wimbledon Favorites
Speaker 2Transitioning. You know, maybe when they want to buy a house, maybe they want to go back to school and get a grad degree. So for two years, if they're an NBA, I mean, there's life that's going to happen, you know. And Aaron bought a place in the Bahamas last year where a ton of the Canadian players have residency for tax purposes. So there are life expenses. So to afford a full-time coach on the road with you, that's not easy. Dan tries to be there. I tried to be there. Or Dan has an academy, soto Tennis Academy in the South of Spain, soto Grande, tremendous academy. He has some guys on his staff sometimes who go on the road with the girls. One of his guys, mike, went to Asia last year for the Asia Swing. Mike was in the middle east for the middle east swing this past year, mike digby. So you know we try to support them in that way that someone can be with them. But it's a it's a lot of times a rotating team of people trying to help right.
Speaker 1Um. So eleanor from instagram uh, or eleanor says she's an old friend from high school plantation.
Speaker 2Eleonora Angulo.
Speaker 1Yeah, she said. Send him my best and congratulations.
Speaker 2Tell her, thank you. Tell her that I was just cleaning out my house and I found an old box of high school things, that I found a picture of her sister, who I had a huge crush on.
Speaker 1That's so funny.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1And then last one from Dan, your favorite hangout spot at the All England Club in Wimbledon.
Speaker 2So men coaches at a tournament who coach women are not allowed in the men's locker room. Obviously we're not allowed in the women's locker room. But if I'm at Wimbledon, if I'm coaching a man player, ben Shelton I can go in the men's locker room with Ben or Harry Heliovar the doubles you know who won the doubles. If I'm Harry's coach, I can go in the men's locker room with Harry. Well, as a man coach of women players at tournaments, everywhere, I'm not allowed in the men's locker rooms. I'm not allowed in the men's locker rooms. So some tournaments have a decent locker room. For us, some tournaments have nothing. The US Open, it's an embarrassment. We have to go all the way over to the indoor facility to go change my clothes after practice on a 92 degree day. I can't change, you know and shower where everybody else is. It's. They should be ashamed of themselves. You know, some tournaments I won't say the say the tournaments basically have a port-a-potty that I can go change my clothes in. Well, at the all england long tennis and croquet club, one of the wonderful parts is that we male coaches of women players have access to the members locker room in the indoor facility, which is magnificent. So I spend most of my time there. Uh, the brian brothers are always in and out. Andy Murray actually, who's a member, he does his prep in that locker room. You know he goes over there with his physio and his massage table and gets ready for before his matches and practices. That's where I do most of my hanging out in the members locker room in the indoor building, which is where the male coaches do their. You know we have a locker they give us a locker. We can shower, we can change, we can home base out of there. So Dan and I spend almost all of our time there when we're not eating my favorite thing probably of all things.
Speaker 2I'm a very early person so I get to the courts about 7am, usually hit with somebody on the indoor courts get some exercise in the morning. It's about 7 am, usually hit with somebody on the indoor courts, get some exercise in the morning. The Yonex guys love to hit. Friend of mine, dan Champion. We'd hit. I'd hit with almost anybody get some exercise. So there's a spot on the fourth floor that overlooks court three by the players dining. So that's probably one of my favorite spots. I get there every morning. I have some tea. The British people don't like it because I don't put milk in it and I put ice in it. So I basically make myself iced tea every morning and I sit and overlook court three. And you know, the covers are still on the courts. They're just taking them off and they're mowing the lawn, they're painting the lines. I find it almost a religious experience.
Speaker 1So that spot and the men's member locker room, the indoor, that's where you'll find Bruce all the time.
Speaker 2That's good. That question was from Dan Kiernan, by the way. That's too funny. He's the best. He's the absolute best there ever was.
Speaker 1Yeah, that was funny. He responded on Instagram with that. All right, so a couple of rapid fire questions, then we'll hop off. What is your favorite tennis racket?
Speaker 2what is your favorite tennis racket? Well, I guess my favorite racket of all time was probably the Dunlop Max Fly, but now that I'm an old person I would have to say the Yonex racket that I use. I played with the Wilson Pro Staff the federal one forever and ever. And then, at Wimbledon a couple of years ago, the Yonex guy said just try it. And so I just tried it and, uh, you know, my whole life changed.
Speaker 1I play with the E-Zone 98 plus.
Speaker 2I don't know why a quarter of an inch has changed my life and the length of the racket, but I can serve again like a young man. So I I'm very happy that E-Zone 98 plus is a phenomenal stick. I think the whole Yonex line quality control fantastic rackets.
Speaker 1Yeah, I'm. I'm thinking about switching to the ezo 98. I might have to try the great racket great racket.
Speaker 2I'm stringing it now at like like 34, 32 oh wow, okay, um your favorite tournament wimbledon, wimbledon.
Speaker 2I mean there are some great tournaments, Australian Open's, great. They treat the coaches really well there. They give you coaches gift Coaches have physios, massage therapists, it's awesome. But come on, man, Wimbledon's Wimbledon. You know you walk up to the village. You know you walk up to the village. I was staying with a wonderful family MP and Neil, which was five houses up from the indoor building, Takes me literally three minutes to walk there every day. I mean it's Wimbledon. You know the pictures on the walls, the black and white pictures from the winter of 1889, Wimbledon. It's unbelievable.
Speaker 1What is your favorite tennis book?
Reviving and Valuing Doubles Tennis
Speaker 2Oh, my favorite tennis book. Oh my God. I just packed up all my books. There's a book called World Class. It's by Bert and Jane Boyer. It is out of print. I sent them a letter. They lived in the south of Spain so many years ago. I wrote them a letter like a real letter, Because Tony Trabert helped them write the book and I met him when I was at Miami because he was from Cincinnati. He got me their address. I wrote them a letter. They had five copies of the books they gave me, so I've got a few copies here and there. I think it would make a great movie. Brian Shelton's also a person who that book. He read it and loved it when he was young.
Speaker 2World Class by Burton, Jane Boyer, is the greatest tennis book. I probably read it once a year. I'm not talking about learning. I'm talking about just for tennis enjoyment, For learning. The two greatest books are the Greatest Salesman in the World by Ogmandino and Chop Wood Carry Water. Those are the two like for a tennis player to read. Ogmandino is about a variety of things, persistence being one of them. The scroll mark three, Chop Wood Carry Water, is about how to become process oriented versus outcome oriented. Josh, I forget Josh's last name.
Speaker 2Oh, here it is Josh Medcalf, it's always on my desk Chop Wood, carry Water the Greatest Salesman is here also, but those are tennis books, but world class for reading. If you're a tennis person and you want to read a great book, it's the best.
Speaker 2It's about tennis before the open era, transitioning into the open era and then just after the open era, and each one of the characters in the book is based on a real player from the tour of those days, the amateur circuit or the pro circuit, and when you see the acknowledgements you can figure out who's who. It's the best, it's a fantastic book.
Speaker 1So you said they're not printing it anymore. It's been out of print for 25 years, so how do we get it back in print? It sounds like a project we need to take on.
Speaker 2I don't know the answer to that, but with the invention of Amazon I found a couple of copies. A couple of years ago in a library somewhere in Illinois I did a search and every time I find copies I just buy them. Sometimes they're $1.99. Sometimes they're $45. But I just never want to. I think it might be a PDF online somewhere as well. Someone told me that. But my kids do computer things for me. It's not my strength.
Speaker 1Interesting. So the last question for you how can we make doubles more popular?
Speaker 2That's a good question which a lot of people have thought of. I actually think it requires something really bold and the men tried to do this. The men tried to buy the doubles tour off of the ATP with a private equity group and the ATP wouldn't let it go. The problem you have is the tours need doubles. As much as they talk nonsense about it and try to say doubles doesn't matter and they want to get rid of it. They need it because without doubles, what are they going to put on the courts? What are the people going to watch? There's not enough content. People.
Speaker 2People say, oh, they'll do round robin tournaments, they'll have a 32 draw, they'll have eight groups of four players. You know, for the first, you know three days everyone will play round robins and then they'll settle into. You know, like the final 16, 8, 4 and 2, and I don't think that these guys are going to want to play that much. Uh, you know it might happen, but there and then you have content. But you need doubles for content and most of the, a lot of the world in the us particularly love doubles, you know. So go to indian wells. You were there. The crowds were larger on the doubles course than the singles courts, unless it was a really named person. So I think it has to.
Speaker 2If it's not going to be its own tour, then the tours I actually think they need to have doubles stars. Forget trying to create these rules that the singles people will play doubles. If they want to play, play. If they don't want to play, don't play.
Speaker 2But you've got a girl like Erin, a girl like Gabby, you know, sue Way, mertens, taylor these are all great stories, you know. Tell their stories and tell them as part of a doubles tour, a doubles circuit, a doubles focus. You know, at Wimbledon, it was a little bit sad because their Instagram never talked about doubles. Yep, you know, never mentioned our girls about anything that they had done. And what's worse is, at the, at the champion's ball on Sunday night, all they did is introduce the singles winners, said nothing about the doubles winners, of the mixed winners. And as long as people are behaving that way, the doubles, you know how do you make it bigger? You talk about it, you value it and it has value. Anyone who didn't like watching the men's doubles final versus I don't care any singles match, pick a singles match, I don't care. I mean, the men's final was eh, eh. There were so many doubles and mixed doubles matches, all tournament, that were just absolutely dynamite. I actually think that this is a crazy idea.
Speaker 1So it's okay, people can Instagram you or whatever and tell you that Bruce.
Speaker 2I think they should be at mixed doubles. Every tournament that has the men and the women at it Indian Wells, miami, all of the ones that have both should have mixed, and they should change the mix to where the men get one serve, men get one serve, the women get two serves, play two out of three 10 pointer. It's fine. I think people would eat that up. I think you've got a product there that's dynamite, and even the mix at Wimbledon was just awesome. Sometimes, though, the men serve so big it's tough to deal with, but if we take one serve away, now it's a whole different animal.
Speaker 1I like that. No, I like that a lot, I agree. I mean, I think the ideas do need to be radical and I was encouraged to see that the men tried something at Madrid. But I'm with you. I don't think that getting singles players to play doubles is a long-term solution. That's a short term.
Speaker 2Well, they default all the time it makes everyone angry. You know part of the blame goes to college. Also, College tennis did a huge disservice when they minimized the doubles, Putting the doubles first, with one set of no ad before the singles. Yeah, this is moronic. To me this is like playing overtime before a game. Yeah, you know, change it back to the old days If college. This is the same discussion how to make college tennis more appealing. You know how to make doubles more appealing, and it's all about putting a format together that people want to see. You know college should go back to the old format singles first, doubles after, except, get rid of all the third sets. Go back to no ad scoring. I'm sure you're aware the line calls in college are interesting you know, and when there's no ad it's kind of encouraging it a little bit.
Speaker 2I think now that you've got the big four power conferences, each of those conferences should go to their members and say you have to have electronic line calling by 2026. There's no more players calling the lines. This is leading to a lot of nonsense. It doesn't work. You can't put one person in the chair who's drinking buddies, you know, with the coach at whatever school you're at. This doesn't work. It's the least professional thing there is. You get rid of the no ad. You make ad, but no more third sets, only 10 pointers, singles first. If the match is over, the match is over. Shake hands, that's how it goes.
Speaker 2If it's time to play doubles, then go out and play two sets with a 10 pointer of regular scoring doubles. Or if you want to make it no ad, great, do the doubles, no ad. You're still only talking about three hours, roughly three and a little, which is like any of these other sports nowadays televised with commercial time. Now you've put the emphasis of doubles back in and it starts at that level, which means the juniors are going to care about doubles. Which means the juniors and their parents are going to go watch doubles. Now everyone's going to care about doubles, starting from the grassroots on up, because that's where most American kids are. They want to go and play in college. If international kids want to play in college, now you've added a layer of doubles mattering at a much lower level. So then carrying it onto the professional level not as difficult that's out there, I know.
Speaker 1No, no, no, it makes sense. Yeah, and I think a lot of it starts with some of these format changes, but also the marketing, like you said, the fact that Wimbledon's Instagram account posted about doubles. Maybe once their Twitter account, I don't think, posted about doubles until the Bryans played a Legends event. It wasn't even an ATP or WTA.
Speaker 2This is, you know, Legends sports work in golf really well they take 100 yards out of every hole and every old man golfer looks fantastic because you lose distance, but the accuracy is great yeah, they can still put yeah legends doesn't look right in a lot of the other sports.
Speaker 2If the athlete is a little out of shape and can't move, it looks, it doesn't look right and I know that the people like cheer. It just doesn't. It's not the same, you know, and that actually that actually maybe creates doubles. When they do the legends and doubles only people look at it as an exhibition thing at Wimbledon and maybe that affects the way they see the doubles in the mixed, because the average fan doesn't really know and some of the best sporting fans I've ever seen the amount of people in the stadium. The British sport fans are fantastic. I mean they're filling up the stadium at 10 o'clock at night to play doubles and mixed doubles, but they're not really sure what they're seeing possibly, so they group all these things together.
Speaker 2So you know, to solve any problem will you always have to go back to the origin of the problem. The origin of the doubles problem is it's not valued at a low enough level. You know the junior tournaments don't have doubles anymore, you know. So the origin of the problem is no one's valuing it from the beginning. So how do you make all of a sudden it'd be valuable at the tour level? You know you've got to fix that 17 levels lower, where you know juniors can play doubles and they're all playing doubles. And then college doubles matters and there's a pathway in doubles and you know the singles people want to make all the money and they have all the power and that's fine. But that's also going to take away from the doubles.
Speaker 2Everyone used to play doubles because there was no prize money in singles to just play singles. Why did Stefan Enberg and Anders Gjerd and Mats Wielander and John McEnroe? These guys all played doubles?
Speaker 1because, a it was good practice for their single skills and B money, extra money, yeah yeah, yeah, we could talk about this for hours. Bruce, thanks a ton for coming on. This was a lot of fun. I'm sure we'll do a round two at some point and I'll uh, hopefully it'll be an electric heater looking office.
Speaker 2I apologize to everyone what my office looks like right now but you caught me in the middle of doing scheduling at Penn state and getting organized in a couple other things. But I promise next time. And you see my moving boxes behind you.
Speaker 1Oh yeah.
Speaker 2I'm sorry for that everybody. My wife's going to yell at me when I get home about I couldn't clean my office up before.
Speaker 1So sorry, it is all good. You've been pretty busy making the Wimbledon final and starting a new job, so I think people can understand. So thanks a ton to everybody listening. We'll link to everything in the show notes and I will talk to you all next week.
Speaker 2Thank you everybody. Appreciate your time, everyone. Have a great day and let's follow Penn state men's tennis. It's a whole new day.