Ten Minutes of Tennis: What Player Style are You and What Style Fits Your Game?

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Hey, hey, this is Shaun with the Atlanta Tennis Podcast,

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With that said, let's get started with 10 minutes of tennis.

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Hey, hey, how we say? This is Shaun with GoTennis! and the Atlanta Tennis Podcast.

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We are here with world renowned tennis coach.

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I don't know if I actually have permission to call you that,

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but I like calling you that Justin.

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World renowned tennis coach Justin Yeo, the Aussie in Puerto Rico.

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I have a friend who calls himself America in Spain.

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So he's the American living in Spain.

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You're the Aussie in Puerto Rico.

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My buddies in Pennsylvania called me the ferner.

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Said, "Oh yeah, the ferner."

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It's spelled F-U-U-U, and yeah, ferner.

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Yeah, exactly. That's a good Alabama kind of talk.

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Like that.

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But today we are talking about what player style are you and what game style fits your abilities.

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So Justin, Yeo, that sounds like two questions to me.

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So let's start with the first.

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What player style are you?

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Are there really people out there that don't already know?

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Yeah, look, that's a pretty detailed question that now in 10 minutes,

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but I'll do it the fastest we can.

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I'm going to quote some Mike Borrell here because Mike Borrell is fantastic at the little ones.

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What he has recognized and I've been saying this for probably two decades as well,

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there's a bit of personality behind your game style.

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And that's where a lot of players don't get it right.

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And we can sort of use examples for Afer and Federer.

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One very quiet, one very out there.

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I used to ask kids, would you rather sit in a corner and read a book?

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Or would you rather go watch a movie?

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You can sort of get an idea of personality.

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They're quiet one and this one's the rowdy you've won.

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And you have to work with a personality sometimes to help the game style.

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Because if you try to get them nice and calm and just move the ball around and be passive,

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they might be a raffer and you're not utilizing their strength of their personality.

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So that's a good one for little ones to start to identify how to get the right game style

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around their personality.

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Then you then need to put them in a competitive situation and see whether they like to attack

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or whether they like to stay on the baseline and rally the ball.

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Their mind, maybe their mental ability isn't right there yet.

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So they actually struggle and start to make errors quickly.

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So you have to try to force and work with the strength of what they have.

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I've seen that in a lot in June.

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June is a, get within four shots and they make an error or a winner.

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Then you've got to start to structure things better in those four because that's sort of where

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their mental state or their attention span is.

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Whereas some will say, "Well, you need to get them to hit 50 balls."

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Well, their eyes and their maturity won't allow them to hit 50 balls.

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So the quality of striking and the style of play is not going again with their personality.

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So, or where they're at, obviously.

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And then you see kids that win a lot of tournaments that can play the game of chess.

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And they just sit there mentally and visually can see everything.

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And we'll just eat people alive all day long.

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So that's on the junior side.

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It takes a lot.

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You've got to talk with your coach.

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You've got to do a lot of assessment.

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You've got to do an olive analysis as the player grows.

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More analysis, more analysis.

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But if I was good to put my coach development hat on.

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Junior coach development hat from Australia.

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The first thing I would say for most coaches or kids is start to work with them

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on understanding how they can learn as many game styles as possible.

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So that they learn that the game right now is the game that's going to be again involved in 10 or 15 years.

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So you have to start to give them some of the tools that's going to give them a chance in 10, 15 years.

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If not, you can't teach them like their 80s with a win screen right beforehand.

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They ain't going to work.

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So right now we're seeing everything's built on time.

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Taking away time, taking the ball on the rise, getting to the net.

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So the sooner the coaches start to teach them the more advantages they have in those game styles.

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Flip it the other way.

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And we go to a 40-something year old, a 30-something year old, or a 50-something year old.

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They need to look at their physical capabilities and then say, "Alright, what can I hand or what can I hand?"

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Because some of them, like myself, I'm 15-hour and I'm reinventing my physicality, didn't realise my hips were so bad.

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And the trainer twice a week is destroying my hips.

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But when he's doing it, what he's proven is it's not a degenerative thing.

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I've just haven't trained them or strengthened them or given them mobility.

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And because of that, I'm reinventing and I can actually run further, drive cross-court harder.

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Service improves a lot. There's a lot of things.

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So you have to work your options.

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When you get to a later stage in life, you have to start to realise what you can do physically to play a certain game style.

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Is that made sense?

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Absolutely.

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And as an adult, I'm going to ask this similar question.

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I seem to ask when we have these conversations, which is, "Okay, we have the ability to look at a young player or a beginner."

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And ask these questions early.

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But let's say we're asking it late.

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Like you say, I might have to physically stick with what I'm stuck with.

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Well, like that.

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I'll stick with what you're stuck with.

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But in that case, it's a scenario where I've got to figure out what I have.

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So those are my abilities.

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And stick with that game style. But if that game style doesn't fit my personality,

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I've got this strange cognitive dissonance going on.

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Like asking me personally, Sean, the player, to hit 50 balls in a row,

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I'm just going to walk off the court.

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Yeah, I'm boring.

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I'm just boring myself.

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What?

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And to leaving the court.

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I'm going to hit a drop shot eventually.

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It's just how my brain works.

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But the more I play the other style,

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the more my personal style works well.

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So it's a combination of like he used to bring in multiple styles,

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being able to do many of them.

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So my question being, how many styles are there?

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Are there just two?

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There's offensive and defensive.

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Is there, how many styles are there?

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Three, four?

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Have we quantified that?

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Yeah, but we've quantified it.

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You know, you can talk about an all-rounder.

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You can talk about aggressive baselineer.

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I think that's pretty much what we've come down to.

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If you really look at the players these days,

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and the players, these players nowadays,

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have to have an all-round game.

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Because if they don't have defensive slice,

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or you know, cross-court winner,

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or even just be able to hold a rally and come to the net,

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you know, one of the things that Jokovic showed very obvious

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that no one really talks about is I call it the opportunity world

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where, you know, a ball slightly inside the baseline,

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takes an early move backwards, waits for the opportunity and runs forward.

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So there's definitely all-round player is the way to go.

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And you've got to teach that as soon as possible.

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But for players of amateur's, I think you're right.

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I mean, you know, their physicality is a certain way

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that they need to try to be an expert at the first four shots.

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And I don't think if, you know, you could grow up in the 80s and the 90s,

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we were all thought, "Rather, rather keep the ball alive,

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get to the net, chip them charge," or all that stuff.

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But we were taught to hit a lot of balls.

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And there was never a purpose around zero to four shots,

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like get it done, you know, and get into patterns of going that way.

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Then I'll go that way, just like shooting pull, eight balls, right?

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You start to think about, "I'm going to go that one,

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and then I'm going to go that one, and then I'm going to go that one."

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We didn't do that a lot, or total up in the tennis.

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There's zero to four shots.

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I mean, Craig Shonesy has proved that the average point is, you know, one or two shots.

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If you look at the data, and even if the data, he's proven that zero to four

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is where people need to be teaching themselves to do something.

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And I still see a lot around, I still see a lot of balls.

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And all you're putting is traffic and, you know, yards and miles on your body,

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when you really should be trying to work on structures and patterns.

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Well, that leaves us into next week, which is talking about patterns, singles versus doubles.

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If I've got a good pattern that works for me, if my kick serve to your back hand coming in,

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hitting a volley cross court on the ad side works really well for me, but it doesn't work on the

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do's side, I need to know that. And I think that suits my abilities as well.

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But if you don't have a nice kick serve, maybe that doesn't suit you.

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So the player style doesn't work there.

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Justin, you know, I appreciate your time. We'll talk to you again next week.

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Thanks so much.

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Yep, you're welcome.

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Well, there you have it.

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