Ljubicic to Raonic: forget improving your weaknesses, focus on weapons...

[Luxilon Borg]

Paul Annacone mentioned that Lex Lugar's, er, Ivan's coaching strategy with Raonic is too
focus on his strengths, and to not worry about improving his weaknesses. I totally
disagree with this advice. This is right out of the 1980's.

The big 4 have obsessively worked on weaker parts of their games, which in turn frees up the stronger parts to perform with less pressure.

Nadal has been working on his serve non stop, and we know how good his backhand became. Joker improved his fitness and serve, Federer the backhand, and Murray the forehand etc. and others like Stan have worked tirelessly on the forehand and Berdych the movement.

Any thoughts on this coaching advice?

 

[Murat Baslamisli]

I am not sure I buy it %100. I mean, are they never going to work on service returns, movement and backhand? Those are the weaknesses. If Ivan said " We will work on the weaknesses as much as we can, but our priority is to improve the weapons even more" I would be OK with that.

 

[Luxilon Borg]

I am not sure I buy it %100. I mean, are they never going to work on service returns, movement and backhand? Those are the weaknesses. If Ivan said " We will work on the weaknesses as much as we can, but our priority is to improve the weapons even more" I would be OK with that.

From what I gathered, Annacone says the philosophy is to focus on how your player hurts their opponents..and to have confidence in that...with Milos it is clearly the serve and forehand.

Incidentally, Jim Courier was on board with it, which is not surprising, considering how he never improved his horrendous backhand. All that extra running to hit a forehand no matter what took it's toll on him and IMO cut his career short.

The Sampras mentality was similar btw.

 

[Moxie]

Not to be rude about Raonic, but if you only have a couple of strengths, and one of them has to do with being tall, I'd say that not focusing on improving weaknesses doesn't sound to me like a good strategy. (And by "a couple," I'm being generous.) I agree with you, LB: the best guys playing have worked on strengthening the fallow parts of their games, and that has reaped benefits, across surfaces, and various top opponents.

 

[Luxilon Borg]

Not to be rude about Raonic, but if you only have a couple of strengths, and one of them has to do with being tall, I'd say that not focusing on improving weaknesses doesn't sound to me like a good strategy. (And by "a couple," I'm being generous.) I agree with you, LB: the best guys playing have worked on strengthening the fallow parts of their games, and that has reaped benefits, across surfaces, and various top opponents.

Well said.

It should be noted that this strategy only has the potential to work with players that have HUGE weapons like the Raonic or Isner serve or the Verdasco forehand Etc.

I can't imagine Nadal going on the practice court and not beefing up the areas in his game he feels are vulnerable.

 

[Moxie]

I'd say the first place they might try to make an effort is on the ROS. (Are you hearing me, John Isner?) Having a great serve is a bonus, but then you have to break. His ilk might not be deft movers, but they could become great "readers of serve," and aggressive about taking it on.

 

[Luxilon Borg]

I'd say the first place they might try to make an effort is on the ROS. (Are you hearing me, John Isner?) Having a great serve is a bonus, but then you have to break. His ilk might not be deft movers, but they could become great "readers of serve," and aggressive about taking it on.

Agree, ROS is shambolic. I'm far more lenient with Isner due his size.

If you look at the return numbers for the big four, it is astounding their break and second serve return points won compared to the rest of the field.

While he will never be in that top echelon, something should be done.

 

[brokenshoelace]

It's only a horrible advice if taken to the extreme, which I doubt Ljubicic would advocate. I don't think he's suggesting to Raonic to completely ignore his weaknesses. However, there is truth to what he's saying: Raonic is limited, and he isn't going to beat players with movement or backhand (that doesn't mean he shouldn't improve upon these aspects), so he should play to his strength as much as he can. Isner does that quite well, though obviously he's far more limited.

 

[Denis]

This is a typical advice for people who play teamsports. You can compose a team in which other players strenghts compensate for weaknesses. Strikers, defenders etc using a striker that is only incredibly quick in a team that plays counter-football.

It's useless for tennis. The opponent will always play on your weaknesses. Ask Fed and Nadal.

 

[Murat Baslamisli]

Yeah, I mean how can Milos break a serve by focusing on his serve? His return is a weakness and if he wants to win, he has to break his opponent, hence , work has to be done on the return .

 

[Front242]

Work on his serve AND his ROS would be the best idea. Roanic's ROS has been much better from what I saw of him this week though.

 

[El Dude]

Let me play devil's advocate for a moment. First of all, doing what the very best in the game do is not always the right way to go. Raonic, no matter what he does to his game, will never be Rafa Nadal and Roger Federer. While he can watch and learn from their games, they aren't the best role models for him, not only because they are so much better, but they are different types of players.

Rather, Raonic might be better suited looking at players with similar skill sets and limitations, and seeing how they improved their strengths and accommodated their weaknesses. Maybe the advice was poorly phrased (or understood by us), but what he was really trying to say was: Be the player you are, just optimize the strengths that you have and don't try to be something that you're not.

What is the best-case scenario for Milos Raonic? It certainly isn't Nadal or Federer. But maybe its Goran Ivanisevic? A good coach should have a realistic sense of what that best-case scenario is, and even if they should never say "You're capped off at this level," they can at least be working to help the player actualize what their potential actually is, rather than playing the fool's game of trying to be something that they're not.

 

[brokenshoelace]

Again, Ljubicic is not wrong. Look at Andy Roddick. Despite becoming a more complete player, most would argue he was better when in 03-04, despite his game being more limited.

 

[Murat Baslamisli]

At the end of the day, Milos will work on everything, no matter what. If he wants to improve, he needs to see this game as a whole. I mean, let's assume his forehand is a weapon...How do you hit a great forehand? By being in the right position. How do you make sure you are in the right position? By having good movement, which is not a great strength for Milos. There you go...The only weapon he can focus on making better in a vacuum is his serve. Everything else is attached to something else.

 

[Luxilon Borg]

Again, Ljubicic is not wrong. Look at Andy Roddick. Despite becoming a more complete player, most would argue he was better when in 03-04, despite his game being more limited.

That is an interesting point...but one could also argue he was competing against a pool of players with specific weaknesses, which, essentially, the top 10 today do not have, or have at least improved upon continuously. No one could argue that Berdych is not a better mover than 3 years ago, or that Wawrinka's forehand is heavier than before, etc...

When Roddick was at his peak in 03, 04, he was playing against guys he could overwhelm physically, like Coria, or Henman, or Schuettler. As things progressed, that was not the case.

BTW, Roddick DID work on his backhand incessantly.

 

[Luxilon Borg]

Let me play devil's advocate for a moment. First of all, doing what the very best in the game do is not always the right way to go. Raonic, no matter what he does to his game, will never be Rafa Nadal and Roger Federer. While he can watch and learn from their games, they aren't the best role models for him, not only because they are so much better, but they are different types of players.

Rather, Raonic might be better suited looking at players with similar skill sets and limitations, and seeing how they improved their strengths and accommodated their weaknesses. Maybe the advice was poorly phrased (or understood by us), but what he was really trying to say was: Be the player you are, just optimize the strengths that you have and don't try to be something that you're not.

What is the best-case scenario for Milos Raonic? It certainly isn't Nadal or Federer. But maybe its Goran Ivanisevic? A good coach should have a realistic sense of what that best-case scenario is, and even if they should never say "You're capped off at this level," they can at least be working to help the player actualize what their potential actually is, rather than playing the fool's game of trying to be something that they're not.

For the record, I think I channeled the advice given pretty accurately. Annacone and Courier spent quite a bit of time discussing it.

I also find it interesting that Ivan was providing this advice considering he had a glaring weakness, the forehand, which would absolutely fall to pieces under pressure. The backhand was a magnificent stroke as well as the serve..and those were the two shots he relied almost exclusively.

While there is some truth that looking to the top is not always smart, I believe in most cases it is.

 

[Sundaymorningguy]

Actually, I think the part he needs to focus on along with the American guys is fitness. They are fit, but if you look at the top elite guys their fitness level is on a whole different level from Raonic and the American guys. ROS has become just as crucial as the serve. If Raonic can at least improve ROS, he can create some issues for players especially with that forehand.

 

[brokenshoelace]

BTW, Roddick DID work on his backhand incessantly.

And rightly so. So should Raonic. However, you're making the mistake of taking Ljubicic's comments way too literally. I doubt Ivan actually means "forget about your weaknesses and never work on them." However, what he probably means (and I'm speculating here) is to play to his strength, without trying to match the top 10 in terms of movement, point construction, etc...

Yes, Roddick did work on his backhand, but his problem later on is, in his effort to catch-up to Federer, he changed his game significantly. His forehand became far more spinny, he wasn't hitting it as big, he stood back behind the baseline, etc... And you could argue that he became a more complete player and his all around game improved, and yet, his results suffered...

 

[Luxilon Borg]

BTW, Roddick DID work on his backhand incessantly.

And rightly so. So should Raonic. However, you're making the mistake of taking Ljubicic's comments way too literally. I doubt Ivan actually means "forget about your weaknesses and never work on them." However, what he probably means (and I'm speculating here) is to play to his strength, without trying to match the top 10 in terms of movement, point construction, etc...

Yes, Roddick did work on his backhand, but his problem later on is, in his effort to catch-up to Federer, he changed his game significantly. His forehand became far more spinny, he wasn't hitting it as big, he stood back behind the baseline, etc... And you could argue that he became a more complete player and his all around game improved, and yet, his results suffered...

I agree with your post.

To clarify, Ivan also said that MR needs to focus on how HE hurts the other players as opposed to how he gets hurt. What they are banking on is his ridiculous serve will be the 800 pound elephant on the court, and the forehand will bat clean up.

I will also repeat about Roddick that the improvement in physicality of the top 50 or so was a problem for him. He had a built in inefficiency in his game outside of the serve. The guy was a sopping wet by the third game. Btw, in some ways was ahead of his time, with his tremendous conditioning and striving for a complete game. I think his ability to think on the court was also underrated.