Line Calls
Peter Aaron, our Line Calls columnist, calls 'em like he sees 'em.
If you don't like the call--or if you do--send in your email responses and
we'll post them. Peter's opinions are his and don't represent those of TennisONE.
Past Line Calls Columns
The Long and Short on Chang
Are you starting to feel length-challenged about your normal length
racquet? Every day at my club you can hear several ribald jokes bantered
back and forth over the net about the multi-faceted advantages of the extra
inch. OK, I admit it, I laugh too. Perhaps we're a bit humor-challenged
on the court and this is the best we can do.
Most of the case for the tennis advantages of extra inch (there I go again)
seem to rest with and on the racquet of Michael Chang. Unless your cable
guy is Jim Carrey and you've missed the last few years of tennis TV, you
know that Chang switched to a long body racquet a few years ago. Thereafter,
he began hitting more aces and his tennis ranking rose. So it must be because
he switched to a long racquet, right? Well, just wait a minute you long
racquet hypsters. It's been a while since I cracked a logic book, but isn't
this a classic logical fallacy? Just because A happens before B, doesn't
mean A caused B. So just because Chang switched to a long body racquet before
he started hitting more aces doesn't mean the long body is the reason for
the improvement. Well, what else could have caused it, Mr. Logic? Well,
how about Chang improved his technique and practiced more? How about he
just decided on a more aggressive strategy of hitting most his first serves
for aces instead of hitting them 85% speed like he used to? Similarly, I
think his rise in the ranking is much more attributable to his willingness
to attack off his groundstrokes and come into the net than it is to his
big first serve.
I think there's a good chance that all this hype about his improved first
serve has hurt Chang's game more than it has helped. And I'm not the only
one. I've hear Tony Trabert and John McEnroe both question whether Chang's
strategy of going for the lower-percentage big first serve is really the
right strategy for Chang. When he misses the big first serve, it makes his
second serve, which tends to land short, very vulnerable to attack. We saw
this happen most recently in Chang's French Open loss to Stefan Edberg,
a player who he should easily beat on clay. In those sets when Chang's first
serve percentage fell below 50%, Edberg attacked his second serve relentlessly
and broke Change repeatedly.
And while we are the subject of long or short, I think the TV commentators
should stop treating the 5' 9" Chang as if he were a tennis midget.
The "little man making the most of his gifts"--or descriptions
like it--have been trotted out too many times. Pancho Segura and Ken Rosewall,
two of tennis' greatest players, were both under 5' 9" and I don't
recall this obsessive focus on them being vertically challenged. Besides,
I'm a gigantic half inch over 5' 9" and I like to think of myself as
a medium-sized man making the most of his gifts.