Hey Sean, i just started watching ur videos a few days ago. First of all I think it is amazing how you are aspiring to become a pro tennis player on a budget, I cannot imagine how hard the journey can be sometimes. As I am a tennis coach myself I always love analyzing these videos on what I think can be improved ( I´m neither a pro player nor a pro coach (yet) tho i consider myself pretty decent). I am sure on youtube there are many "coaches" in ur comments telling u what u need to do better, so if u are annoyed by it, feel free to just stop reading here. I will continue watching ur journey and wish u just the best! Here some things you may want to work on in my opinion: -footwork -> while u are considerably fast as it seems u lack two little steps before many shots in the rally, especially when ur opponent is hitting somewhere in the middle. Here I feel like two steps would bring u in a much better position, it gives you much more stability and accuracy in your shots. I have seen that you do not have a professionell coach (at least on a regular basis) so a first step might be to further prioritise exercises like the spider drill where you soley focus on speed and little steps. Also a stepladder right before hitting a ball can make u more aware of it aswell (when your hitting balls thrown by your girlfriend for example) - returning -> as you mentioned you havent played in a while so this can be also due to that, but while i think your reactions are great, In my opinion you try way to much with ur wrist on your backhand when returning. As he is hitting his serves pretty big, stability in your wrist (when not slicing/chipping the ball obviously) should be the main priority. Therefore you should prioritise hitting the ball more in front of your body with a stable wrist (roger federer is a great example of that). A very great exercise for that can be a Serve done at the T-Line by a hitting partner, which gives you less time to react and not take a swing back or move your wrist (I hope you understand what I mean here) I hope you don´t take it rude in any way as I really want you to succed. Good luck on your journey and I look forward to your next video!
I'm behind these suggestions as well. Your best backhands are hit when you close the body early, close more, and stay closed as long as possible. Hold onto that coil and trust that your release and uncoiling (of your arm and elbow) is fast enough to hit long line or even short cross (because it is!). On many backhands, the body is too open or opens too early, leading to balls going long or less than clean contact. All the best bud!
Really like your style and flow - very smooth on both wings. Great single-handed backhand! Tough luck on the match but keep forging ahead and thanks for sharing your journey. Hope you crack the Top 500 soon!
You did well, Sean ☺️👏 keep working on your game and fitness, and you’ll get those wins 💪 you inspire me, as I also have a tournament coming up next weekend, kind of the “atp finals” for amateurs in Romania, and I’ve been training harder than usual lately 🤞 it’s great to see a pro like you and all your routines, warmups, training, etc.
Tough luck Sean, pretty damn good foe 2 months off though. He was playing insane. Hey one thing I noticed you doing that I think you could work on. I think you're often too infront of the ball. You could try getting the side of the ball more urgently as it appeared you were often getting jammed from not enough space, typically on your fh side. Maybe rewatch it with this in mind and see if you agree, could be something to work on, I dunno.
Man it's really tough on that surface, ball moves really quickly and skids, I really think a lighter easier to manuvure racket can help you more, you can save the energy to cover more court.
By the way….. i think the RF 01 compliments youre game beter when facing hard hitters :) weight-late-spin-wristshots . But im a rec-noob so disclaimer2😂😂
Unlucky mate. I thought you played pretty well in that first set and one break decided it. Second set, your level dipped a bit and your opponents level increased and that was the difference. Things to improve from what I can see: 1) Definitely improve your returns. Even if you have to chip deep ala Fed to neautralize the serve/point. 2) Be a little more consistent playing controlled aggresive tennis but I think this will come naturally if you can play more. 3) Maintain a high level over a long period of time. This will come the more you play and the more experience you gain. But other than that, your game's there mate. You just need to tidy a few things up and play well point in and point out over 2/3 hours for 5/6 consecutive matches which will come with experience/confidence. Keep going mate as you're on the right track👊👍
First video of yours I watched! thanks for the sharing, it felt real, I could feel your lack of match toughness and lack of rythm in my gut... it's a shame but it's part of the process... I believe your reflection is spot on, let me add two notes from a weekend warrior (with 30 years of process in me :-) - Don't give too much credit to ranking numbers...I might be having a not so good day, but you positioned immediately in the lower position giving him psychological advantage - I feel maybe your back-hand lacks just a tad more explosiveness in the swing ? it looked to me like the acceleration through the swing is low and too linear... - Lack of clarity of intention - think you mentioned something about this, that thing sounded so real and close to my game as well .... :-) I'll be following with interest... Best of luck
Great performance and it will be bankable experience for the tournaments to come. I share the sentiment expressed in the comments already around footwork. Difficult to get perfect but felt like you conceded the advantage a few times which caused the error
In the second set your psychological mindset started to slip and when that happens a player will start to make mistakes. Its actually very normal. If we go back to the beginning of the match you psychology was a lot more dialed in. However, still not at the level where top pros are at. This time frame relates to when the mind starting to drift from the focus of the game and the conversation inside your head becomes a little to intense. The problem is that thinking cost time and in tennis time is not something a player has a lot of. So, a player always want to only thinking ahead in a game and in a lot of cases kind of not thinking but more like letting the brain just take care of business on auto pilot and you only step in when really necessary. A top player will hold focus for anywhere from 50 to 80 mins before they start to drift and they will have the strategies in place to get back on point very fast. However, you often see the top players start to lose it a bit and the really good players are still able to win the match. It's all psychology at the end of day and getting that right isn't straight forward. But keep up the good work and look back at the video and find at least 10 aspects that you can easily count as "WINS" edit them out and remember them and use some visualization to programme them into your game play data bank. Doing this will allow you to just repeat these actions in a game setting without having to think about them and that will save you time which gives you time to think on future shots and tactics during the match.
You need to stop putting on more muscles in the gym and start focusing on endurance. You should do a lot more cardio exercises, an hour on spin bike or treadmill, and slow burning cardio stuff to increase your fitness. But avoid building up more muscle as that is just using up more oxygen during matches. Look at your photo with Djokovic, you look way more pumped up. You were late with many of your shots. That Pro Staff racket is way too heavy. Also, you could have kept many of your shots in if you had more top-spin on them. Hence you need to switch to a spin frame.
Take the positive the serve was on point, the rest was crap...you need matches to gain confidence and go for your shots, this was a lack of confidence.
Great watch. Despite the loss. Big server is a nightmare to play if they are consistent as well (no free points). What is your take on slowing the game down as a returner, taking all the time that u are allowed to take.
Unlucky! Seems like your matching shot for shot beautiful technique, honest criticism would be to work on your speed and fitness. You seemed half a yard off getting to/feet positioned to the ball in this match. Speed maybe isn’t natural to your game but definitely something you can improve to see you up near that 500 rank easy!
you need to develop your footwork. for example on 11:36 (same on 11:32) you did not move, the ball came to close to your body and you made a misstacke. There are a lot of such situations in this video: you make only 1 big step (14:27). that causes a misstacke. you have very clear technique, so if you fix your footwork, you would take you game on the next level.
There's no intensity to your game, you lack the accuracy and footwork to play the way you want. You should model your game more around Dan Evans than Federer 2017. You don't have the talent or IQ to do what your trying to do. Your footwork needs serious improvement as well as your accuracy, a lot of balls are going down the middle, what is your intention?
