TennisOne Lessons

by Kim Shanley

The Greeks first defined the classic vision of grace, balance, and the Golden Mean (nothing to extreme). The Greeks, inventors of philosophy, also believed that a man's life should be directed by clear ideas.--from Part 1, Bill Tilden and the Classical Vision

Talking about Greek philosophy may be a strange way to start talking about winning tennis matches. But it wouldn't have seemed strange to Tilden, one of the great theorists of the game who thought of tennis as a science and an art. Like the Greeks, Tilden had a deeply rooted feeling for balance, that a great tennis player must have all the skills for both offense and defense.

Here Tilden is posing a fundamental disagreement with the style and philosophy of the modern game of tennis. Power, speed, and offense dominate the modern game. Huge serves, blistering forehands, rocketing winners from impossible angles--it's-big-babe, don't-wait-for-your-opponent-to-miss-run-around-your-forehand-bang-the-hell-out-of-it-tennis. Of course I'm exaggerating a bit, but not much. Listen to the style and substance of Nick Bollettieri, the brash spokesperson for the brash, hyper-aggressive philosophy of today's game. In Bollettieri's 1996 autobiography, "My Aces, My Faults," his co-author, Dick Schaap, titles the first chapter, "Everything to Excess." (Remember the classical Golden Rule: Nothing to Excess?)

How good a coach is Bolletieri? In the last chapter of his book, Bollettieri sums it up for us. "I know I am the best tennis coach in the world. I have no doubts about that." How influential is Bollettieri? He nurtured or honed the all-out attacking game of Agassi, Courier, Pierce and Seles. Most recently, he coached Mark "The Scud" Philippoussis. To be fair, over the years Bollettieri--and even by his own admission--has gained a much better grasp of overall strategy and the nuances of the game. But the trademark of the Bollettieri's school of tennis is hyper-aggressiveness.

In recent years, with Andre especially, I've urged my players to be more aggressive, to move inside the baseline, to play the ball on the rise.... She [Carling Bassett] was a great competitor, an incredibly tenacious player whose game lacked only the trademark Bollettieri forehand. The forehand was for me what the Green Bay sweep, with the pulling guards, was for Vince Lombardi.

In a 1995 TennisMatch article on return of serve, Bollettieri can barely tolerate the idea of anyone playing this shot in a defensive mode. He titles the article, "GO FOR IT!"

Tilden's classical view of the game is that man--particularly the average club player--is a fallible creature playing a sport more liable to expose his fallibility than demonstrate his perfection:

Bollettieri's basic orientation is just the opposite of Tilden's classical view. In his September, 1996 "How to End the Point" piece in Tennis Magazine , he begins with an impatient dismissal of defensive tactics.

One could make a good argument that in today's professional tennis, big athletes and power racquets, have fundamentally changed the game to favor aggressive, first strike tactics. I believe Tilden, a realist, would have recognized this shift and given it its proper due, but I can't help but think he would still express his reservations. In his last book published shortly before his death in 1953, Tilden commented, "There are some very valuable things of the past that have been lost in the wild scramble for speed and power." What has been lost? How about tennis itself? Certainly at Wimbledon, the premier showcase for tennis, matches can last for two or three hours but the time players actually spent hitting balls back and forth over the net (you know, the fun stuff) often is a small percentage of the time on court. Well, this is a familiar argument, and the familiar come-back is that's only true when the big hitters play and only true at Wimbledon. Maybe, maybe not. This is not the place to try to settle that debate (but I think it's hard to argue that while there still may be excitement in witnessing a 137 m.p.h. ace, there isn't much drama).

Besides the reduction of playing time, what else has been lost? How about the emphasis on skill, variety of strokes and tactics, on tennis artistry (when will see another tennis artist like McEnroe)?