TennisOne Lessons

Practice Makes Better

Joel Drucker

There are two windows of time when I most enjoy walking around the Pacific Life Open – from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. and from 4:30 – 6:30 p.m. On each occasion, one when the sun is rising, the other as it starts to set, the day takes on a subdued quality. Best of all, it’s a wonderful time to wander the courts and witness the joy and labor of pro tennis players practicing.

Practice is particularly engaging at Indian Wells. There is a warm, spring training-like flavor of optimism and possibility at this event, light years removed from the hasty pragmatism of indoor tennis, where court time is at a premium, and the urgency of Grand Slam events, where the stakes are so high each player’s tension rapidly rises.

But at the Pacific Life Open, the weather is warm and inviting. For the most part, great numbers of the entire sport – and the thousands of fans walking the grounds – have come out of hibernation. It’s a time of hope. But also one of work.

Great as the pros are when they compete, when they’re playing matches it’s occasionally possible to relate to them as they struggle and even make the mistakes every tennis player makes – double-faults, groundstroke errors, and so on.

Practice is entirely different. Here it’s clear just how much hard work the pros have put in. Here is Lindsay Davenport, cracking hard, deep forehand service returns as her coach, Adam Peterson, throws in serves. Here is James Blake, ripping backhands, coming forward, closing out a point with a thundering overhead. Here is Ana Ivanovic, rolling crosscourt topspin forehands that bounce sharply east of the alley and in turn set her up for a backhand she drills through the court.

I’m often asked what it is the pros do that makes them different, say, from even a 5.5 player. The answer is trite, but true: consistent pace and depth. Like the greats in any field, they make the routine seem simple, both by virtue of their disciplined technique and their attentiveness to making technical and tactical adjustments. The word that comes to mind: refinement.

And yet, even more importantly, I’m struck by the way the pros make their time on the court count. There’s a focus to each practice session, a sense not so much of urgency but of attentiveness. All those magazine covers, fashion shoots and parties are meaningless to Maria Sharapova when she heads out to practice. With her Prince bag over her shoulder, guzzling from a water bottle, gazing at the court she’s about to walk on to, Sharapova may from a distance look no different than any other player about to hit some balls. But peer a little closer and you see – as with just about any pro – a deep focus in the eyes, a determination in the stride and keen attention to each ball.

Certainly there are moments of playfulness. Ivanovic, for example, this week has a hitting partner who makes dozens of loud jokes to her and the crowd over the course of her sessions. But at heart, on those practice courts, it’s strictly business. I’m always impressed by the singular focus of each player’s coach. Though a practice court invariably includes a range of people – hitting partner, physical trainer, family member and so on – all of them are mere blurs to the laboratory-like attention the coach provides his charge. To see the likes of Sven Groeneveld gently urging Ivanovic, Larry Stefanki showing the nuances of a shot to Fernando Gonzalez, Brian Barker aiding James Blake, or Dean Goldfine just commencing his work with Tommy Haas is to recognize just how intimate and arduous the tennis journey is.

“That’s where it takes place,” Martina Navratilova once told me. “That’s where you do the learning, where you spend the time figuring things out. In certain ways the matches are out of your control – you just get out there and play. But the practice court is where you can take charge of so many things.”

Dining here two nights ago next to a longstanding coach who prefers not to be quoted, I was told, “You spend a lot of time together and you get to know each other and you can spend hours to arrive at a breakthrough that takes a minute. My job is to understand how these players think and how they learn. It’s not just a matter of transferring data and saying, ‘do it this way.’”