Styrling Strother is an innovative tennis coach who trains junior players and adults to transform the way they practice and think about the match court. He is a Tennis Performance Trainer (TPT) with the International Tennis Performance Association (ITPA), a PTR Professional Coach, a best-selling author, and the founder of Styrling Strother Tennis, a player development program located in Cary, North Carolina.
This episode will totally shift your practice habits, and inject fun into your doubles matches. Styrling shares some transformational ideas with me in this episode.
We also discuss his new book, The Art of Winning Tennis, which offers strategies that change the way you see the court. I'm about halfway done with the book and it's already got me thinking about adjustments for my next match.
As we dissect the traditional practice court paradigm, you'll discover why it's critical to move beyond technique to the strategic 'where, when, and why' of each shot. You'll learn to embrace the pressure of in-match scenarios through our in-depth analysis of scoring and drill modifications that mimic match conditions.
See the shownotes for this episode here: https://www.thetennistribe.com/styrling-strother-interview
**Doubles Strategy Courses** These video courses will help you play smarter doubles and make winning easier.
**Doubles Ebooks** These guides offer proven advice to improve your doubles strategy.
***
Download your free doubles guide to learn how to force errors and get more easy volleys at TheTennisTribe.com/doubles-guide/.
***
Styrling Strother is an innovative tennis coach who trains junior players and adults to transform the way they practice and think about the match court. He is a Tennis Performance Trainer (TPT) with the International Tennis Performance Association (ITPA), a PTR Professional Coach, a best-selling author, and the founder of Styrling Strother Tennis, a player development program located in Cary, North Carolina.
This episode will totally shift your practice habits, and inject fun into your doubles matches. Styrling shares some transformational ideas with me in this episode.
We also discuss his new book, The Art of Winning Tennis, which offers strategies that change the way you see the court. I'm about halfway done with the book and it's already got me thinking about adjustments for my next match.
As we dissect the traditional practice court paradigm, you'll discover why it's critical to move beyond technique to the strategic 'where, when, and why' of each shot. You'll learn to embrace the pressure of in-match scenarios through our in-depth analysis of scoring and drill modifications that mimic match conditions.
See the shownotes for this episode here: https://www.thetennistribe.com/styrling-strother-interview
**Doubles Strategy Courses** These video courses will help you play smarter doubles and make winning easier.
**Doubles Ebooks** These guides offer proven advice to improve your doubles strategy.
***
Download your free doubles guide to learn how to force errors and get more easy volleys at TheTennisTribe.com/doubles-guide/.
***
In this episode, I interview coach Sterling Strahler. Sterling is a tennis coach who has worked with juniors in Kerry, north Carolina, for a long time. He's trained thousands of tennis players. He is also a best-selling author and he has a new book out, which I will talk about in a second. But in this episode you're going to learn how to improve your anticipation. You'll learn some new doubles, drills and games that you've probably never heard before, and then you'll learn a new system called the momentum scoring system. So I'll talk about all that here in a second, but I wanted to briefly give you a few announcements.
Speaker 1:So, for those of you who only listen to the podcast you're not subscribed to the newsletter or YouTube or Instagram I wanted to give you a couple of quick announcements on some things that are changing for us in 2024. So I am starting to include new lessons in the newsletter every Thursday. They are unique to the newsletter, so I wasn't doing this before, I'm going to do it now. So if you're not subscribed to the newsletter, be sure to go to thetennisdrivecom and subscribe so that you can get those lessons every single week. They're only going to be published in the newsletter going forward. I'm also going to be doing two new short video lessons that are going to be published on Instagram as well as YouTube shorts, and then I'll be doing one long video lesson every week as well that's going to be published on YouTube, and I think all these will be published on Facebook as well, if you prefer that social media platform.
Speaker 1:So January is Netplay Month. I surveyed all of you and the majority of you told me that netplay is the thing that you're struggling with the most. So I already have a few lessons up on YouTube and Instagram so you can check those out and then subscribe to the newsletter as well. And then at the end of the month, I'm going to be releasing a new video course that will be all about netplay strategy. So I'm going to cover the mindset you need to have when you're at the net. I'm going to cover some common myths and kind of dispel those for you. I'm going to cover some different drills you can use to improve your reaction time and improve your feel at the net. We're going to cover different tactics for offensive volleys, defensive volleys, touch volleys, overheads, all sorts of different stuff. So it's going to be a really comprehensive course that I hope you'll get a chance to enroll in. So keep an eye out for that later this month and I'll have some more announcements on some upcoming podcast about it. But let's dive into this episode today. So this is one of my favorite episodes I've done in a while. Actually, I think you're going to really have your mind blown a little bit. I don't say that often.
Speaker 1:Sterling is kind of an innovator in terms of tennis. He has been studying analytics for a long time but he is able to kind of distill the analytics into something that's actually tangible for those of us who are not kind of math brains and can't really make sense of all of the numbers. So he goes through a few drills that he uses with this momentum scoring system and it kind of changes the way you think about being up 30 love in a game or being at 30 all in a game, and it helps you. It's a game that helps force you to concentrate a little bit more often so you don't have those points where you kind of take your foot off the gas. If you will, we also cover his new book, the Art of Winning Tennis, which I'm about a third of the way through. Really like it a lot so far. So I highly recommend that We'll link to it in the show notes.
Speaker 1:And then we cover, of course, his tennis story. He has some advice for USTA teams or any sort of league doubles teams as well, and then we also dive into this specific thing that he teaches a lot of his players in terms of keeping their eye on the ball. So a lot of us, when we hit a really good forehand, we stare at the ball as it leaves our racket and Sterling thinks that that's not a good idea actually, and he tells us where to look instead and how it's going to improve your anticipation on the court. So there's a lot of innovative ideas here that I think, even if you just take one or two of them away, I think they're really going to have a big impact on your game. At the end.
Speaker 1:We talk about his favorite tournament, the racket he's using currently and how to make doubles more popular. Of course, he has some good ideas on that. He actually asked his younger son why he liked the Bryan brothers and had some some insights from him. So that was kind of a little fun part of the conversation as well. So this is a long intro, but hopefully it's worth it. So, without further delay, enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Sterling Strauther. All right, we are live. Today. We have Sterling Strauther on Sterling. Welcome to the show, thanks.
Speaker 2:Will Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:So I met you first three. No, probably like five years ago at this point at PTR, and I remember we talked a lot about the minimum scoring system, which you were big on at the time, and I want to get into that a little bit later, but we were talking. Everything you do centers around transforming the practice court. In fact, your website is transformyourcourtcom. Is that right?
Speaker 2:It's transformyourpracticecom. Yeah transformyourpracticecom. Right.
Speaker 1:So I wanted to start with just a very basic question what does transform your practice court mean?
Speaker 2:So the reason why I picked the word transform is when you transform something, you're making it a thorough and dramatic change in the form and the appearance. So transforming your practice court literally means that you are dramatically changing the way it looks as far as the drills or challenges or games you play during practice, and so the way it feels, mentally and emotionally changes, because the practice drills and challenges are now scored. There are consequences of winning and losing a point in practice, or even consecutive points, and it introduces you back into a practice that challenges your decision making process. So that's really what I'm talking about when I'm talking about transforming your practice.
Speaker 1:Why does the practice court need to be transformed for most people? What are we doing wrong?
Speaker 2:So I think, instead of saying what are we doing wrong, it's probably better to say like what have we misprioritized? So I think that and we kind of coined this, as there's a traditional tennis culture practice court and then we've sort of countered that with the art of winning practice court, which means so we're reprioritizing the way we play and compete on the practice court. So so this is what I would say that the traditional tennis approach is the coaching prioritizes how you hit the ball over where, when and why you hit the shot.
Speaker 2:OK so in in our new book, the Art of Winning Tennis, we go into great detail about how traditional tennis culture has set up a practice court where most of the focus is on how good your shots are, instead of how your shots affect your opponent positionally and what kind of response you're getting back from your opponent.
Speaker 2:And so the opponent has been basically taken out of the practice court environment for the most part, and scoring competitively with consequences has been mostly omitted from the traditional practice court, the traditional tennis culture practice court. This is one and I was, I was a part of that Like I've I've kind of I've come out of that mine headspace of just doing things without consequence or immediate feedback of consequence, right, because so many times we hit, you know, we got a basket of balls as a coach and we're feeding balls and the players not experiencing, we're not letting them experience the consequences of hitting a shot, that you win the point or you lose the point, right, and but this is what happens is a match. So I think that's why there, that's why there's something wrong with the practice court, if you want to put it that way. I just think that we've misprioritized, because there's things we do in the practice court that are important, like repetition, but repetition without consequences is where we fall short of developing a practice court that looks and feels like the match court.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I want to dive into all that by consequences. So you say repetition without consequences.
Speaker 2:What's an example of a consequence, just so that the listeners can kind of better understand that a consequence would be either you score a point or you lose a point once you hit a shot or a series of shots. Ok.
Speaker 2:And so, instead of just as a coach, you know, we used to feed balls and we would work on where the ball is going, and we work on spin and things like that, and we would just do it over and over again, but we weren't scoring it. So now an example of that would be OK, you've got to make two shots in a row to this target. With this type of spin, if you make two shots in a row, you score the point and maybe we play game scoring like 15, 30, 40. If you miss a shot, I get the point as your coach and so you've got to win the game basically against yourself.
Speaker 2:I'm just the beneficiary of your error as far as the point, but you're basically competing against yourself, trying to make two shots in a row, or sometimes it's four shots in a row, but we don't really get much past that, because I'm trying to stay close to what the data is saying, right? So four shots, eight shots or less yeah, it's about 90 percent of the points you play. So that's four shots for you.
Speaker 2:So we do a lot of two, a two plus two, things like that. And that's how. That's what I mean by consequence, because if the player gets feedback as far as they lose a point when they miss a shot, or they win a point if they make two in a row, now they're starting to contextualize their technique, their improved technique, if you will. Okay, so there's context around improving technically or movement wise. They have to do things specifically in order to score the point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. And I think something that just kind of clicked for me and I've done a lot of this myself because I'm familiar with your work and something that just clicked for me though, while you said that was this is a way to actually measure your improvement. So you know, if I'm at you know, a club playing a match and I'll look over and see a coach giving a private lesson, they'll be feeding a hundred four hands, not scoring, not measuring any of it. But if you can play that game against your coach, hitting the four hands, cross court with depth, with top spin, and you, let's say, you lose that game and then you lose it a little bit closer and then two weeks later you're winning that game, that's a way to actually measure your improvement on your forehand, versus the traditional way of just hey, we're going to feed four hands for 10 minutes and we're going to feedback and we have no way of knowing if they're actually getting better. But if you're hitting that target and measuring it, then people can get actually get better. So I would encourage listeners, if you take private lessons or clinics and you're not doing this, talk to your coach and come up with some kind of scoring system and implement this stuff that Sterling is talking about, because this is a way for you to actually measure the way that you improve and then create some of these consequences that you're talking about.
Speaker 1:So next I wanted to ask about the book. So the book just came out like a month or two ago, pretty recently here. The art of winning tennis is the name. I'll link to it in the show notes for everyone listening so that you can check it out and purchase. I started so I do all my books on Audible, so I started listening to it. This morning I'm probably maybe a third of the way through, halfway through. So I have some questions about the book specifically. But tell us just how did the book come to be and tell us a little bit about your co-author as well.
Speaker 2:So I met Dan about five years ago. He actually contacted me, sent me an email. He had picked up my first book, seven On-Court Strategies to Expiriature Playstate. That's on Amazon as well, but he came across that book himself while he was on holiday. He's from the UK, so he's reading through the book, and he was a tactical and strategy expert who worked with the RPT over in Europe, which is our form of like the USPTA or PTR, and he would teach classes on the mental, emotional state of a player, so he came across my book. We got in contact.
Speaker 2:For the last five years we've been taking all the material I've had since 2011, all the games I've created, and we're sort of putting it together and sort of framing it out and making it digestible, if you will. And the new book is something that I've had in me since I wrote my first one, which was in 2017, but I've been trying to stir through all of this information and put it into a context that was real for the reader. That was something that when they read it, they're like, wow, I can actually implement the things that I'm reading. It's not just a philosophy, it's not. It is a system, but it's not just something I just think about. It's actually something I can do something about. So the new book it's taken about four years to write as far as like get it together. So it will absolutely challenge the way you think about match play, as well as think about how you're practicing and preparing for match play. So it introduces what most will find as new ideas of perceiving what happened in your match that influenced the winning and losing of your match.
Speaker 2:So we introduced what I created as the momentum scoring system. So this completely exposes the fraudulent game score as being both inflated and deceptive. So, making decisions about how you play the next point, if you're basing it solely on the game score 30, all, 40, 30, this is gonna lead you to more of an emotionally charged decision a very poor decision, in my opinion, as to how to play the next point. And the momentum score is actually the real score. It's the best score to decide how you're gonna play the next point in order to increase or maintain your probability of winning it. And so this is really the.
Speaker 2:We start from the game. We talk about the game and how the game is being, how you negotiate the game in tennis, and then we talk about how the momentum score and the game score is completely. The momentum score gives you the game score, but the game score is this inflated idea. It's a inflated scoring system that just distorts your perception about what decision to make. So that's kind of what the book is about. That's kind of how it's happened. So it's a it's we've heard from people it's not necessarily an easy read. In other words, you wanna you'll be able to read it over and over again and sort of get it for understanding. The audible is to me. I listened to it and I love to listen to Dan talk because he's from the UK. He's got that Queens. English.
Speaker 2:It's so cool to listen to. But even I, as an author writing the book, when I heard it on audible I started to really get a deeper understanding of what we had even written. And it's weird. It's weird to experience that, but I found some new like. It was like a breath of fresh air, even for me going back on the court the next day with my players and doing this with them. Hearing it on audible just brought it like alive. So I'm really happy that you got the audible version. Yeah, it's been good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, even if you get the printed copy, try to get the audible as well, if you can, because it will give you a different perspective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think a lot of listeners obviously love audible because they're listening to a podcast. So it wouldn't be surprising if some of them purchased that. And I know a lot of them listen to either this podcast or tennis books, like the intergame or whatever it is, on their way to mattress to kind of get in the right mindset. So this could be a great one for that.
Speaker 1:And as I've gone through it this morning, I've already had to like rewind 30 seconds, you know, a few times, just to like okay, I think I understood that concept, but I want to hear that again and really like stop what I'm doing and think about this, which is really I don't know this sign that's like something is there that you can listen to multiple times and really has a deeper meaning and is getting it like the fundamentals of tennis. And I want to talk more about the scoring system in a few minutes, but before we dive deeper into the book and some of the theories, tell us your tennis story. How did you get started in tennis? I know you're coaching in Carolina now, so just tell us your story about how you got started to where you are now.
Speaker 2:So I grew up playing tennis. But when I grew up in the 80s, we grew up playing multiple sports, most of us as kids and there were different seasons of sports, right.
Speaker 2:It's not like today, where you can just pick a sport and play a year around. So I grew up playing tennis. However, it was really my third sport. I was mostly a basketball and football player. I was a point guard, I was a quarterback, I was running plays on the field, right, so I was reading defenses. I was calling plays to disrupt and give our team the highest probability of winning the game right. So I wasn't. It wasn't really until I met my wife when I was 19 years old.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we've been together a while, and so that began this journey of playing and even coaching tennis seriously, because my wife comes from a very competitive tennis family. She played division one tennis, college tennis at North Carolina State, here in Raleigh, North Carolina, and that's where we're from, from Cary. So I talk a bit more about my history and my first book, Seven Oncourts Strategies, but the main influence of my tennis coaching has been really from the perspective of a strategy and tactics point of view instead of a technically driven purpose, right. So I'm a huge proponent of sound technique in tennis. In fact, if players come to me on court, they're like man, you are a stickler on good technique Because I, you know, I at that, at saying that all of our technique and movement needs to be taught more with a tactical and strategic mindset, because it's really worthless without that context.
Speaker 2:So when I was a kid and a teenager, and then a young man, when I practiced my shooting technique in basketball, it was, I was pretty religious about it and I was out. I was out in my backyard for two, three hours every day just shooting free throws, shooting jump shots, layups, moving, and I was a great shooter of the ball as well as a mover. But I found that what was even more important was being a great decision maker on the court during the game. So, having a plan and a play in mind as I brought the ball down the court, this was what calmed my mind and settled my emotions. So, whatever specific play, that was what I was going to initiate to begin the process of scoring like a basket in basketball.
Speaker 2:This was the essence of competition, right. The most important reason to play and compete. And so the execution of that play was technical and there needed to be proficiency in your technique, right. But without the play in mind, the specific strategy, the technique of how to do it was really worthless, right? So I coached for a long time I was coached high school tennis and in 2011,. That's when I discovered data analytics on my own while I was coaching high school tennis. This was four years before I even knew who Craig of Shanice was.
Speaker 2:Because I didn't beat him until late 2014 and early 2015 at PTR. So I was transforming everything I did with players on the tennis practice court and this was based on the strategic decisions that the analytics was showing me that was happening in a match. So that's kind of how I've got. I swerved into data analytics. It was almost like it was revealed to me, like right in front of my eyes. I was watching a couple of my players play competitively and that's when I sort of took off right there. And then when I met Craig, a lot of things happened there where we formed a friendship and then I was on his first four shots. A lot of people around the world started finding out about me and junior tennis data, because very few coaches around the world were actually doing junior tennis data. Yeah, I talk a little bit about the history of that on my podcast, the Tennis Revolution, so anyway. So that's kind of how I got started.
Speaker 2:I was a pure athlete growing up as a kid I played like five different sports. So I think that's why I look at coaching tennis a little bit different than maybe from just a strict players mind or headspace. Right, because I play different sports. So I see learning and playing the game a little bit differently Now, obviously, I went through PTR, uspta. I have my certifications and all that, but I found that to be a really good coach. You've got to find mentor coaches that have been doing this a long time. That's what I did when I was younger and I really studied them Like. I flew out to California, spent a week with Ken DeHart. I would spend time with coaches off the court during the symposiums and ask them questions how do you do this, how do you do it this way? And these were coaches from around the world, especially with PTR Spanish coaches, italian coaches, european coaches. Yeah, that's a great way to learn.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you've got to do that. But really as a coach, you do need to find how you coach should match who you are as a person. So I used to be a little bit hesitant, like I don't know. I was as a tennis coach.
Speaker 2:I didn't grow up as a pure player, I didn't play in college, but I found that the things that I could draw off of were very unique. They were uniquely different than being a player growing up and playing game competitively, like I never really had an issue of coming out of myself and really focus on the person in front of me. So I don't have a lot of stories to tell about myself as a player, so I just lean on. Ok, how do I make this player in front of me, whatever level they're at 3-0, 4-0, 5-0, 8-utr Junior, 12-utr Junior. What can I do as a coach to help them improve? So it's really less about me and what Sterling accomplished as a player and it's more about how can I, as a coach and with my experience, sort of help this player understand who they are as a tennis player and how they can be a better player and a better competitor more intelligent.
Speaker 2:That's really what I'm after, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I like a lot what you said about technique as well, having that kind of tactical mindset when you're thinking about technique, because it applies, I feel like, even more so in doubles. Right, because there's so many different tactics and strategies, there's more variables on the court. But it's one of the reasons. Like, if I go play a USTA tournament I've played less recently, but over the last five to seven years I've played a lot of adult USTA tournaments and sometimes in these open draws I'll play against these like Division I college kids who in singles they would wipe me off the court, like they would beat me one-and-o in about 20 minutes. But in doubles I can actually beat them and their technique is better than me on literally every shot. But I've got the tactics down and the strategy down that they don't have and sometimes I lose anyways, of course, because they're that much better technically. But I stay in the match and sometimes can get a win.
Speaker 1:And then the other thing that came to mind when you mentioned that is is I see so many players at the you know, 3-0 to 4-0 level, adult club level players, where they miss a shot and then afterwards they kind of do a shadow swing as if it was something wrong with their technique when really they tried to hit it down the line when they should have gone cross court, or they weren't even in the right position to hit the ball. So a lot of times people I feel like focus too much on technique and not enough on kind of their positioning and strategy and shot selection and all these different things that I want to dive into with you here. So a couple questions that you all kind of brought up in the book and obviously we're not going to dive as deep as the book does, but I did want to bring some of these up. So the first one is watching the ball. So why is watch the ball bad advice?
Speaker 2:I used to say it all the time and then I had to check myself because when I started getting into the analytics of why points end and how they end in competitions, you will only watch the ball half the time and actually you want to see the ball instead of actually watch the ball. So you want to see the ball, so you need these. The cycle of the three phases is really like scanning, tracking and focusing right. That kind of encompasses seeing right. So we do start off the book this way. We talk specifically about how to see the ball better.
Speaker 2:One of the things I like to say to my players is look for the spin of the ball coming out of your opponent's racket, which is it sounds so. It's so much common sense there, but the problem is that we don't actually see the ball coming out of our opponent's racket because after we hit our shot, we look up and then we immediately find the ball with our eyes, which makes total sense because your eyes are attracted to motion, so the ball is moving faster than your opponents in real time.
Speaker 2:I talk a lot about this in my first book. So we look up and we see the ball, we kind of judge our shot, we go into subjective judgment of our shot Is that was that good, was it high enough, was it wide enough? And we don't look up toward our opponent. So we talk about when you hit the ball and you look up, look past your ball that would be scanning the ball. So you see the ball but it's kind of blurry because you're scanning the ball. And then you're looking to focus your eyes on your opponent, maybe their racket, maybe they're going to their forehand, so you look to the left side of their right-handed player, you look at their racket coming through. Then you're going to see the ball come out of their racket faster. One of my first mentors was the late great Vic Brayden and they did a study back in the 70s that if you see the ball come out of your opponent's racket within two to three feet of the ball leaving your opponent's racket, the human brain can calculate up to 90, 95% accuracy where the ball is going to bounce on your side of the court. He said that like I was younger, but it stayed with me. So when we started looking at.
Speaker 2:Why do players respond late to their opponent's shot? It's not because they're slow physically, necessarily. It's not because they have the right shot prepared. It's that their reaction was too late because they looked at their shot too long after they even looked. Not too long, they just looked at their shot after they hit it and they didn't see the ball coming back to them until the ball was pretty much at the net, where the net was, and that's milliseconds, which, I'm sorry, that's not milliseconds, that's tenths of a second. If you think that a human being can move nine feet on a tennis court within one second, that they can move a half a second around four and a half feet, which is the width of a double's alley. If you look at your shot after you hit the ball, you're going to lose anywhere from two to four tenths of a second. That's like three feet of movement that you're late on. So you're going to respond late. Then that means you're going to move faster. That means you've got to break or slam on the brakes or slow down, decelerate faster, which you can lose your balance, obviously, and so that's how it affects your shot.
Speaker 2:So the eyes to train your eyes to look up at your opponent after you hit the ball. Scan the ball, but focus on your opponent. That's probably the most critical thing. You need to train as a tennis player and will. Honestly, how many coaches and I'm guilty of this too. So I'm not just pointing the finger out and not pointing them back at me.
Speaker 2:I used to do this too, but I had this revelation of wait a minute. I've got to train a player's eyes. I can't just assume that once they hit the ball they're looking at their opponent because the ball is too tempting to look at because, like I said, our eyes are attracted to motion. So that's really why, saying watch the ball, you've got to do more than that. Now I created a game, a challenge, called ball player. That's in my first book. So you call out, you say ball out loud. When you see the ball come out of your opponent's racket, you say ball. And then, after you hit and look up, you literally say to yourself player. So when you say it audibly, it triggers your eyes to move. And then we go from saying it out loud to saying it softly to ourselves, to trying to hear it in our head, and that's the progression of habitually training yourself to move your eyes to the right object at the correct time.
Speaker 1:I'm going to start, when I get film, when I'm doing clinics of these club players, I'm going to start looking at the head of the net players and see what they're looking at when their partner hits. I bet what would you think? Probably 95% of them are watching their partner's shot rather than watching the opponent.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. In fact, if you're able to receive inside of your opponent's ball, it's really both players should be tracking. It should be player, player, right.
Speaker 2:So, if I'm at the net and I'm looking and the ball has now crossed my opponent's back so they just hit a ball over, I'm looking at the player that's receiving the ball. But after that player strikes the ball and it goes past me, I've got to look at the. I've got to look at the other net player If we're both at the net, right, so I've got to go player player. That's how my eyes track so many doubles players, especially if you're at the 3-0, 4-0, and it's ladies and men. But we're tempted to watch the ball as it goes past us and then we look at our own partner striking the ball.
Speaker 2:By the time we turn around, we've lost a half a second of response time. That is huge right Point. Five seconds, that's about four and a half feet of movement time that you've moving up. Not just that, it's really dangerous to look back at your partner hitting you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you might get hit.
Speaker 2:You're either going to get hit, or it goes past you and then somebody poaches and now they hit you back. So you don't want to get a fuss sandwich that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So doubles or singles, this will save you three feet. So when people talk about like, oh, that player's got such good anticipation, they're probably just not following their shot, not following the ball on their shot. They're hitting, looking at the opponent to save that three feet and they're not actually faster. They're just better at anticipating because they're using the system.
Speaker 2:Right, their reaction time is faster. They're not just saving space like three feet, three, four feet, they're saving time. So I still play against my competitive juniors and they're like, coach, you're so fast, but you're so old. And I said, yes, I may be old, but let me tell you something my eyes are much faster than yours because I'm tracking the correct object at the correct timing and you're still watching and judging your shot, whether it's good or bad or not. So I'm in an objective observation mode and you're in a judgment mode. So I'm like you need to move out of your house of judgment, stop judging your shots. You need to move into the house of observation, start observing, like, what am I doing?
Speaker 2:And then how do, how, where? How's the ball coming out of my racket? Right, what comes? You can? You can pick up spin before your opponent even hits the ball If you're looking at how they go high to low or low to high, but but yes, I mean in doubles especially, and this is a double show. So we want to talk, we want to put this in that context. You can be lightning fast and have, like you know, two knee injuries If you just use your eyes better and you stop looking at the ball as it's going away from you. You should only be looking at the ball when it's coming toward you, and the only way you can do that if more effectively, is if you're looking at the your opponent receiving the ball, and that is I mean. If no one gets anything out of this podcast today, they should take that one to heart and really put that at the number one list. Number one on their list to improve. I need to prove how I use my eyes when I play.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And like. A simplified version of this is probably that I've talked about on the show previously, but you're taking it to like kind of. The next level is is the server's partner. I'm always telling people to to just stare at the returner as the serve goes into them and is, and you can study their body language and you know. If I know they have a weak backhand, as soon as they turn to their backhand side, I know I can be more aggressive as the net player or as soon as they turn to their forehand side if they've burned me down the line four times on a weak second serve as soon as they turn to that side, I know I need to shift over a little bit because that's where they're going. So you can do that not only on the serve but all of these other shots as well, kind of during the point.
Speaker 1:So next question this is very related, but if you want to elaborate on kind of how this integrates into people's games in other ways, is opponent based thinking? It's something you talk about early in the book and I'm sure you dive into a little bit deeper later on, but it sounds like this watching the opponent instead of the ball as part of opponent based thinking. One thing that came to mind for me as I was listening to the book earlier today was the recent 60 minutes interview with Djokovic he talked about I don't know if you had a chance to see it, but he talked about how he's studying his opponent literally on changeovers when they come back from bathroom breaks, when they're drinking their water, when they're getting their towel. He's constantly studying them to figure out any little edge that he can get, and he's the best player in the world. So if he's doing it, we probably should too. But what is opponent based thinking and how can we implement that on the doubles court?
Speaker 2:So Novak Djokovic is probably the best at opponent based thinking because he understands what he can do, but when he's competing, he's not focusing on himself necessarily. The focus is turned outward to what is his opponent doing. He's trying to figure out what is his opponent thinking. I think this is probably one of the things that I do best as a human being, and I think this is why my coaching is very unique is because when I grew up I grew up my father was in the flower. He's a professional floral designer and I grew up in the flower business and we always would have to plan for weddings. He's in different events for the weekend, so we would have to do a lot of prep work and I would do something else and I'd be standing around and he's like what are you doing? I go, I'm waiting for you to tell me what to do. He goes. No, he goes. You need to learn to read my mind. I was 14 years old. I'm like what are you talking about, dad? I can't read your mind. He goes. Yeah, you can, he goes. You can read what I'm going to tell you, because you need to pick out the patterns of what we need to accomplish. There are patterns every week. We do the same things every week to prepare for these events and you need to pick up on OK, what have you accomplished? What's left? Things like that.
Speaker 2:So the joke of it is so good at this on the tennis court. So, when we are thinking more about our opponent than ourselves and our subjective opinion about how we are performing our shots, this is the opposite of opponent-based thinking. This is me-based thinking. Right, our opponent is why we are competing. I mean, they're the very reason that we're on the court.
Speaker 2:Most of the time in practice, we're focused on ourselves, because that's the way the practice court is set up for the most part. This is why we differentiate between traditional tennis culture and the art of winning. We're focused on ourselves. We're focused on our individual shots and how good or bad they are. So this kind of practice does not A train our eyes to look up at our opponent, because there's not really anyone on the other side of our practice most of the time. So we hit a shot, we look up, we look at the ball. So, as a coach, here's the way I've adjusted this when I'm doing a fed drill to a player, I'm feeding the ball in the direct line of where they need to look next. So let's say I'm feeding from deuce and I want them to hit the add. I feed the deuce and I move my body as a coach to add. So after they hit the ad, they see me again.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you want them to hit and then look at you.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. But if I'm just standing in one place off the side of the court as a coach and I fed a ball, well, they're naturally going to look at the. When they look up, they're going to naturally look at the ball that they just hit. Now, sometimes this is valuable actually, especially when you're just beginning the game, and I have young kids. I want them to see the flight of their ball Right, I want to see what kind of spin did they create? Did they spin? Did they create like a fade Like?
Speaker 2:And Chuck Tom down in Atlanta with congruent tennis method, he has rebirthed this idea of hitting fades and draws for me. So fade is like in, like a ball that tails off to the right If you're a right-hand player and draw comes back. It's like a golf is made famous by golf, but he's done a job with that. So what I'm doing is but I'm trying to train a player to look up at me. So if we, if we're consistently practicing in an environment where we're constantly judging our own shot, we're in a me-based thinking mindset, right, our headspace. So we want to train in a way where we're we have our opponent in mind, and that's what opponent-based thinking is.
Speaker 2:Now, these other things, like when you're watching a match and you own changeovers. Yeah, as a junior player, you should be looking over and seeing if that your opponent is tired or if they're frustrated or if they're calm, like you need to sort of pay attention to the body language during the point, during the game, on changeovers. What is your opponent? What kind of body language is your opponent sending you? Cause, we're very bad as human beings at hiding our emotions. Okay, those are reserved for really world-class poker players, but we're not good at this on the tennis court. Yeah, tennis invokes a lot of emotion. So you can figure out if you're watching, if you're paying attention, if you're giving your attention towards your opponent, and that's that's opponent-based thinking is giving your attention and prioritizing your opponent over yourself. Yeah, this is something that I've what's that?
Speaker 2:When you're competing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, this is something that I've and I still have to continue to improve, but I've worked on it a lot over the last you know, five, five or seven years or so um myself, because I do see so many players and I get into this habit myself where, like they're so focused on just hitting a clean ball and like playing good themselves that they're not worried about, you know, they don't even pick up on the fact that, like that opponent is really good at rallying from the deuce court, like you should probably try to lob down the line and get them to the ad court. Like they don't, they don't even pick up on that. They're just so worried about hitting a clean forehand cross court, even if it's a bad matchup and they're going to lose, and it's something that, uh, yeah, I mean I still fall into that trap when I'm like not at my best. Um, you know it takes a very conscious effort to implement this.
Speaker 1:Um, similar to the, the watching the opponent instead of the ball, um, it's, it kind of goes against our natural human tendencies, um, but it's more effective. So we need to make a conscious effort if we do want to improve on some of these things. Um, so next question uh, when we make an error, we think it's a technique problem and it's our fault. So that's uh roughly a quote from the book. I don't know if I got it exactly right, so I'll say it again when we make an error, we think it's a technique problem and it's our fault. So why is that wrong and what mindset should we have when we do make an error?
Speaker 2:on the court, we all make errors. We lose as many points, or about as many points, as you win right. So the closeness of the match is so real, every game is close, every point is close. You are in your opponent or so closely linked together and so what you do affects them and what they do affects you. But we are blind to this most of the time because we're so self-absorbed. We have this self-absorbed attitude of it's all about me and and the great shots I can produce and the better shots I hit, the more likelihood or probability I'm going to win the point. And that's so far from the truth. It's just a door, it's a distorted perception, is what it is Right. And so this attitude, this self-attitude about my great shots we make an error like, oh well, it's just on me. And this whole idea, I mean this is something that really I had already been on the vein of thinking about how absurd, unforeseen, forced errors were. But when Craig or Shanice did a talk on this about four years ago it was the set, it was the year right before COVID hit he basically talked about how absurd, unforeseen and forced errors are and that it's all based on subjective opinion of of who's who's judging that Right. So we hit a shot, we make an error. We're like, oh, it's unforced, yeah, they didn't, because we don't have our opponent in mind. It goes back to opponent-based thinking, right, and so? So what happens is because we practice with the main focus of creating better shots and we play a match and lose a point, our mind space, our head space, is filled with thoughts that it's totally our fault.
Speaker 2:Right, I'll rehearse this forehand man. I work on my forehand all week with my coach and this dag on thing is breaking down every time. Well, wait a minute. Is it is your forehand? Is it the forehand return, or is it the forehand after you serve? Right? Which forehand is it Right? Is it the forehand that you're running wide on? Is it the forehand that you're getting jammed on? Is it the one you have to run forward on? Is it the forehand you have to go back and receive a high forehand, a ball that bounces up Like we're, we're not? We need to be more specific about which forehand are we having problems with. But the problem is we can't really determine that because we have generically sort of reserved our decision to it's our forehand? Right.
Speaker 2:We didn't. It wasn't the high loopy ball our opponent hit to us. We didn't even see the high loopy ball because we were still judging the drive that we just hit to them or the loopy ball we hit to them. We're judging that it wasn't deep enough. So we don't see the high loopy ball come back and then we don't move in time. So most of our errors, if you will, are really they are self-inflicted, but for different reasons. Not because we didn't practice it enough is because we're not noticing what's coming back from our opponent. So if you, for example, in doubles, if you know the average rallying in a doubles point at all levels is four shots or less, then you're going to focus on how you send your first two shots as a team. Okay, so your your first two shots that you play in the point. That's where a consistent see and accuracy begin. Are you being consistent and accurate on the first two shots?
Speaker 2:Let me give you a personal story about this. So I I sometimes go out on Wednesday nights and I'll play with the guys and they're most of them are four oh, there's a few three five's in there, four oh, and there's some a few four five's. So good level player, medium level player, and so when I play, if whoever I'm playing with I'll play with one of the other guys, right, and I'll say look, here's what we're going to focus on. We're going to focus on making the first two shots of every single point. We are not going to miss on our first two shots and we need to have a mind. We have to need, we need to have in mind where we'd like to hit those first two shots.
Speaker 2:So you need a plan, you need to, you need to know where you're going to hit it right. But the key is you need to reduce your errors on your first two shots. And it is amazing to me, will, that I haven't lost with my partner ever in three years, cause I get my partner to buy into making the first two shots at very point, and then they start to realize wait a minute, sterling, most of these points are ending four shots or less. I said I told you, like I told you this was going to happen, like I've seen this happen for 13 years, right, and so what happens is we, and then, if we make our first two shots, our objective is to make the next two. Okay.
Speaker 2:So we're building this two plus two every every point first two. Then if we get through those, we're going next to and it's so interesting that we watch our, our opponents. They start, they start pulling the trigger too early. They go down the line instead of going cross court. You know, hit the volley right back to us or they hit the volley. They try to hit an angle volley instead of hitting a volley down the middle Right. They had tried to hit a smash to the corner instead of smash down the middle Right. And so just the pure idea of being consistent on two plus two, you're going to, as a player, you just need to go out and do it. You need to go try this, okay, and and you need to start to be aware, and once you start trying this, you're going to be aware of how short points are and you'll be like holy cow. Yeah.
Speaker 2:This is actually happening. Um, it's fascinating.
Speaker 1:I remember the first time I sat down and like charted a, a USTA doubles match. I sat down and just written down the rally length of every point and uh, because I had heard the numbers, probably from Craig or somebody, and I was like well, they did, like this is it was actually a a ladies match, and I was like they have a, none of them have great serves, like they have a lot of long rallies. It's not going to be. And the average was like 3.7 or something it was. It was super low.
Speaker 2:Um, there was some rally, but the there were. There are going to be some long rallies. Yeah. But for the most part, there, there, there, eight shots are less. 90% of the points are eight shots, that's. That's four shots for you and your partner, right.
Speaker 2:So if you go two plus two, get the first two and shift your mind to the second two, and it's, it's the one two, sequence Right. And it's funny. It's funny Will, if I, if I, start missing a few, I go back to counting. So I'm returning serve and I'm returning serve against a, a four. Oh, four, five. Pretty good spin, pretty good pace. But I'll go. You know what I'm going to count when I hit this. So I'll go right. When I hit it, I'll go one, and then if it comes back to me, I go to got it Right. And and then my partner's kind of doing the same thing, he's got the same idea in mind and I don't miss. It's great, like I'm.
Speaker 2:I know I'm a professional tennis coach, but I hit, you know, 1.5 million tennis balls a year because I still, I still actually hit balls with, with my, with my students. But I'm telling you, when I go to counting, my nerves go down Like I'm a human being. I get nervous too, even playing against these guys, cause what are they trying to do? They're trying to show up the pro, they're trying to beat the pro, they're coming out Right and and they, they like to see me miss, cause I got you, you know. So I'm trying to you know. Avoid that. Obviously I'm like you know. No, I want. I want to see if you, I want to see if you can actually beat me. I don't, I want to reduce my errors on my side. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And, and I'm paying attention to what they're hitting me so if they hit a really wide serve, really nice serve, I'm, I'm one and I'm high and heavy cross court, or I'm high and heavy down the line, right. So I have a plan, but I'm literally counting, and so that's the one to reset strategy I talk about in the first book seven, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I like this idea of having a a plan for your first two shots. And I would say to listeners like so if you're the server and your partners at the net each of you obviously you have a plan. As the server for your first shot, you're gonna serve wide body tea, whatever it is. But then your plan as a team should probably be the net player gets a volley on the next shot right, ideally. But then you should have a plan as the server If it gets by the net player, like what am I doing on this next shot? So that you each have your own kind of second ball plan.
Speaker 1:And then same for the return team. The returner obviously is in a more reactive state, but they need to have their plan to return solid over the net strap, or I'm gonna lob this one down the line or whatever it is. And then both the returners' partner and the returner should have a plan If the second ball gets to me. This is my kind of plan A and plan B, depending on the type of ball that comes back. And I think having that plan is just gonna even if you can't execute it some of the time, I think it will for sure help. So we've talked a lot about mindset.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let me say one thing about that Because, well, I coach a lot of like USTA teams. The teams will come to me and they say, hey, sterling, help us, we wanna win the conference championship or whatever, whatever division they're in.
Speaker 2:So I'm like the first thing you need to do is you need to team up partners and you need to stick with those teams, like you don't need to vary on too much, and the reason why is because you need players to play together long enough so they learn to communicate these things that you just talked about. What's the plan? Right? If I'm constantly as a captain of a USTA team, if I'm constantly changing my lineup and putting different players with different people and they don't play together that often, there's gonna be a severe lack of communication of what's happening, and that's one of the things. My suggestion when you're doing this is pick when you play doubles, stay with a partner, play with them long enough. You know and establish this, because you're gonna also, too, as a doubles player, your objective will go back to the opponent base, but when you're playing doubles, you're really the fourth most important personal court Right. Every shot you play, you should be trying to make your partner look really good. Right yeah.
Speaker 2:And so if we're doubles partner, every shot I hit I'm trying to make will look good. Get put in the position. Every shot you hit you're trying to make me look good. That way, we're both trying to make each other look good and we're gonna play amazing together. But if you're not playing with that sort of thinking in your headspace you're gonna start to focus on yourself too much. You're gonna become self-absorbed and then when you lose the match or you make errors, you'll be like I let down my partner, I did this, you know it's all about me.
Speaker 2:We lost the match because of me. Well, that's actually so far from the truth. This is distorted perception, because it takes two to lose a doubles match, right, and if I'm getting every ball, well, maybe my partner needs to look to take more of those balls away from me right or coach more right. If so, I'm getting picked on, but so yeah, so I just wanted to say that I think that's an important point to something to point out.
Speaker 1:When you're calling competitively as teams.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you know having it's something that I've learned more and more about talking to coaches as well as some of the pro players I've had on the podcast is like how important the communication between doubles partners is, because I, you know, it's something that sounds obvious and seems obvious, but there's so many deeper layers to it that you can learn more and more.
Speaker 1:Like I had to receive Ramon after he won the US Open several months ago and he talked about how he will tell his partner, joe Salisbury you know, hey, I'm not really feeling it today and, like when he said that, I was thinking to myself, I don't think I would ever tell my doubles partner that, like, I wouldn't want them to know that I'm not feeling good. Like it's my responsibility to get up for the match, but he's really just being honest, like, and if, like he slept poorly or his energies low, like, and Joe can help pick him up, then that's beneficial for the team as a whole. So, like me, not being willing to share is actually hurting the team rather than trying to put it all on myself. So the communication is.
Speaker 2:Just communicating that thought actually relieves you of the pressure and tension.
Speaker 1:That too yeah.
Speaker 2:Of having that right. So you've actually released that tension and pressure up to your opponent, your opponent. If you guys are good together, they can absorb that and then just give you and say, hey, it's okay, you know what? It's good, we got that out. Now let's develop a plan now from here. So just saying it mentally, emotionally, relieves you of that pressure and that's why it's so important, because you're actually being honest and honest frees you up. Yeah, now you can play carefree, free of care, instead of trying to play careful, full of care.
Speaker 1:So I wanna be respectful of your time. I know we're running on like an hour now. Do you have time for a handful? More questions? Absolutely.
Speaker 1:So we've talked a lot about mindset. I wanna shift our focus to the actual practice court, some things that people can go and implement next week. What are some of your favorite doubles drills or games that people can implement? And I know I sent you a few notes before. Yeah, sometimes people are practicing with two people working on doubles, three or four, so you can take it any direction you want.
Speaker 2:Okay. So I think one of my most favorite. I've played this a lot with my high school girls when I used to coach high school tennis. It's a game called Stinger A Stinger and Stinger is you have players hit a second serve that's kind of spinning and slow and the return player stings it, cross court. They hit like a driving shot deep, if they can get it deep, or they get it a float or two, and then they come in. So they basically go returning and viling and they're partner. Maybe if there's four people their partner's already there. So the return team is getting to the net first and putting the serve team in a position of one up, one back, immediately right at the beginning of the plate.
Speaker 2:And that puts enormous pressure on the serve team, especially on the server after they serve. Now they're having to go to an S1 first shot after the serve and they're having to pass two players. So we played a lot of that, and so my girls doubles teams had an 88% win percentage. We didn't lose doubles matches because every time we saw a second serve we hit the Stinger and came in.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:Yes, and it put enormous mental and emotional pressure on the server. They started thinking I need to make more for serves because if I hit a second serve, here comes the Stinger. Here they're coming in. Yeah. And this is a great game. You can play it with two people, three people or four people. The other game I like to play. Can I ask a question about Stinger real quick?
Speaker 1:Can the server serve in volley, or is that? Is it just kind of? So there's no rules, you're just playing it out. The only rule is the returner has to come in after the return.
Speaker 2:Yes, if the returner does not come in on the return, the return team loses the point.
Speaker 1:Loses the point Okay. And the server can lob on the serve plus one Sure, sure Okay.
Speaker 2:Because that's a part of the decision of you hitting a approach shot, return a return approach shot. That's part of your decision. Do you come all the way into the service line or do you?
Speaker 1:sort of see it in how do you cover?
Speaker 2:the lob. Yeah, how do you slow up at the 60 foot line or mid court and look for the swing volley or the smash of the lob coming back? How does your opponent react to your Stinger? I'm sorry, how does your partner at the net react to your Stinger, like, are they on top of the net or are they playing off the net a bit? And you start to pick up the tendency of what the serve player is gonna do. Are they gonna lob it? Are they gonna loop it? Are they gonna go down the line? Are they gonna try to drive an angle? Are they gonna try to rip it down the line past your net partner?
Speaker 2:So, there's a. So yeah, you're gonna learn a lot about and this goes back to opponent-based thinking. If you're playing these games with the opponent in mind, you're gonna start to pick up on how to play this game better. Okay, and then?
Speaker 1:you're about to say another doubles drill.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think intensity is my favorite. You can play this. A coach can play this with a group of players. That's probably the best way to play it. If you're just playing it with just players, you need at least four players. Basically, you have a line of players in the doubles alley, one or the other. You have two players that are back on the opposite court on the baseline. One of the back players or someone off the court like a coach is gonna feed a poach volley to the first player in line. They come in, they poach volley and they have to play out the point one versus two. So they're at the net and the two opponents are on the baseline.
Speaker 2:So the person that comes in, they do a poach volley and then they have to play at the net. So what it does is it develops volleys, swing volleys. Law of smashes. The two players that are back either lob or they can pass.
Speaker 1:They only get the singles court, I guess. Yeah, so the doubles Two back players.
Speaker 2:The two back players get the singles line, and the one person that poaches and comes in plays the doubles alley. Now, if the player coming in wins the first point, they get a lob, so they get a lob.
Speaker 2:They gotta smash it and then they gotta win that point. When they win two points in a row, they run over and take one of the players on the baseline's spot and the player that's closest to the sideline will come back and get in line and then they go through the drill that way. But I have seen I'm gonna make a video. I don't know if I have a video out there about it, but if anybody listening to the podcast wants to know more about the game, if you're a coach listening or a player or a team, if you can find me, you can find me on the internet.
Speaker 2:We'll include your website and everything Go to my website send me an email, find me on Instagram, send me a message and I will take you through that game. It is one of the most phenomenal games I've ever played, as far as with a group of players, or even learning doubles, because there's so many shots that you will have to learn and master at the same time and it's a point situation, so there's a lot of competitiveness there. I attribute that game. I mean we played that game every single day, every single practice of my six years of coaching varsity high school tennis. We played that game every single practice. We ended practice with it. Sometimes we began practice. It just gets the blood flowing but it gets everyone sharpened into all the different shots that they have to play in doubles. So that's those two games I would suggest, I guess first, Awesome, awesome.
Speaker 1:So I wanna talk about the momentum scoring system and then we'll do some of the rapid fire questions. So just explain kinda at a high level what the momentum scoring system is, and then I wanna ask a couple of specific questions about it.
Speaker 2:Okay, the momentum scoring system is you are trying to win consecutive points in a row. So when you win a point, you are at plus one. If you win another point, the next consecutive point, you're at plus two. If you lose a point, you're at minus one. If you lose two points in a row, you're at minus two. We go, we extend it to plus three or minus three and then we reset back to zero. And the reason why is because if you win three points in a row, according to the game score, you've either won the game or you are at 40 love, or if you're down 15, 40, you're 40, 15,. Three in a row is all you really need maximum to win a game. But the goal is to win two points in a row. So in the momentum scoring system we call winning one point is called a direction point. You're moving in the direction of momentum. When you win two points in a row, it's called a momentum point. You have now. You now have the momentum to win the game. You have that winning percentage. You go in your favor. When you win three points in a row, we call it a conversion point.
Speaker 2:But the goal is to win momentum points, two points in a row, and so the momentum score is never tied, like the game score perceives you to be, like $15 or $30 all, because this is why the momentum score is the real score and the game score is the diluted score, the inflated score. At 30 all, you are not tied. You are either plus two 30 all, plus one 30 all, minus one 30 all or minus two 30 all. So there's four different scenarios for 30 all, and your decision at plus two 30 all is gonna be slightly different of your decision at minus two 30 all, when you play the next point and try to win and get to 40, 30, or it becomes to 30, 40. So this is why the momentum score is powerful, because it actually tells you accurately how many.
Speaker 2:What is the margin of separation of points one or loss between you and your opponent?
Speaker 2:Because if I just go by the game score 30 all and I'm not tracking momentum score, I'm gonna think the score is tied and I'm probably gonna push really hard to win the next point, cause I'm thinking it's super important, which obviously it is important.
Speaker 2:But if you're plus two 30 all and we've run the data on this for the past seven, eight years at the art of winning. We've discovered that if you're plus two 30 all, you begin the point with only a 25% chance of winning that point, because it's very difficult to win three points in a row. And so if you're plus two 30 all, which means you've won the last two points, you've down low 30, you've won the last two points, you have a 25% beginning or starting winning percentage probability. Now you can negotiate that 25% higher by making a really good decision of where you're gonna place the serve. So you're serving to do's. You definitely don't wanna serve it to the player's forehand if you can help it. If they have a really good forehand, you wanna try to stay away from serving it to their forehand you wanna try to serve it into their backhand.
Speaker 2:That means you may have to take a little bit off your first serve just to place it if you don't have the accuracy on your first serve, because the problem with this is when your opponent is at minus two, 30 all. So guess what? We've discovered through the data that a player will play better when they're down in the momentum score than when they're up in the momentum score. And the reason why is pretty clear. When you're up in the score, when you've won two points in a row, your confidence is high and therefore your concentration drops. So concentration and confidence move in opposite directions typically. So when you are down minus two you've lost the last two points you're like, hey, man, I need to dig in here.
Speaker 2:Your concentration goes up, your confidence is down a bit because you've lost the last two points, but your concentration rises. So you play the point better when you're down in the score. The only exception is if you check out. You go like oh, whoa, it's me. And you go into a downward swirl like my shot's fucked today. Nothing's going in Well, yeah, like obviously there's seven times the chance of winning a point is gonna decrease automatically to 50% just my half of that thought You're tanking yeah.
Speaker 2:You're gonna tank it right, Right at the beginning. You get a shot, you're tanking it. You're tanking your winning probability percentage, and so the momentum score gives us our probability. The probability leads us to better decisions about how we're gonna play the first two shots, If we could. 60% of the points are gonna end right there anyway. So you've gotta prioritize your thoughts, and the momentum scoring system is the perfect way to prioritize your thinking.
Speaker 1:So that is I know I went a little long on that, no no, no, that's a very helpful explanation and I feel like so it sounds like from what you've said the likelihood of a player or you know, in our case for the listeners, a doubles team, the likelihood of them winning a point is correlated with their level of concentration, and if they've won two points in a row, their confidence is gonna be high, but their concentration generally is going to be lower. So what we have to do is create a system that keeps our concentration high after winning two points in a row, and that's what this system does. That's what this game scoring does which makes a ton of sense.
Speaker 1:So for the scoring for doubles players listening to this if there's four players in the court, we're gonna to implement this game. We go out and play normal points and we totally ignore the traditional game scoring and we score one if we get three points in a row. Is that right?
Speaker 2:Well, actually, here's the. What I found is the best way to do it. So I developed the scoring system, went how can you apply the scoring system? And how? Because you're always gonna have the game score, like we're never gonna get rid of the game score. It is what it is, it's a part of tennis, it's a part of the tradition. But how can we manage the game score and keep it in the right perspective? So what I did was I created the competitive intelligence games, and these are momentum scoring games, and we do have some get the games where we score the game score, but we're trying to keep the momentum score in the back of our mind.
Speaker 2:So so, for example, one of the games is called Deuces Are Wild. So if you go out as four players, you're gonna play a set. You can play a short set to four games if you want to, but you'll play a set of Deuces Are Wild. Deuces Are Wild is really simple. The team when choose who's serving first. If your team wins two points in a row, you automatically win the game and the serve rotates to the next team. So all you gotta do is win two points in a row. Sounds easy, right? Well it's. You're either gonna. A lot of times you find yourself winning two points quickly, and then your opponent wins two points in a row quickly. Now it's one all in a row. Now you gotta start over. The other.
Speaker 2:the another game is we we call this double mode, we'll call double momentum. This is a new game I created in the last year, so we play this all the time with singles and doubles. You have to win two points in a row. So to remember two points in a row is called a momentum point. So you have to win two momentum points a double mode to win the game. So your team can win two points in a row. Your opponents can win two points in a row. Now it's one momentum point each.
Speaker 2:The next momentum point, the next team that wins two points in a row wins the game. The serve rotates, the set score is one zero. So we'll play games like that where we only focus on the momentum score and winning consecutive points to win the game or win a momentum point. We do have other games where we integrate the game score into that, so we're kind of keeping track of both, but I would start with those two. This is what the course is gonna be about that we're developing. We'll have video of all this. We'll have detailed explanations as well as video about how to play the games. But we found will that the competitive intelligence games, when they are played, they actually look and feel more like the match than the match itself, because it triggers the mental and emotional attitudes or feelings that you're feeling when you're actually playing a match.
Speaker 2:So you're gonna feel this pressure of trying to win two points in a row, or try to stop opponents from winning two points in a row, and so games like Dooses or Wild or Double Moe we do have a game called Tsunami, and that's where you win two points in a row, you get a game. If you win the third point in a row, you get an extra game and then the serve switches. So it's really cool. Games that sort of integrate this idea of winning two points in a row, winning three points in a row, and then how that relates to the game score. So you start to perceive the game score as what it is it's inflated, it's destroyed.
Speaker 2:If I'm up 40, love, I'm not up 40 to zero, I'm up three zero and I'm in big trouble Cause the chance of me winning four in a row is very low. So how do I negotiate that? So I negotiate it with really smart, intelligent two shot patterns, starting with my first two, which we call first strike patterns. So negotiating your winning percentage and using the games is how you create better, you create more intelligent decisions, and this is how you increase your ability as player. The other thing is, by playing the games you really start to pinpoint which shots you're having trouble with, which shots are your technique breaking down on. So we're not ignoring the technical part of the game. We're actually highlighting it in its proper context, because we're figuring out what is our technique doing in the context of the game. And that's a much more powerful experience than just going out on the practice court and just working on your forehand or working on your serve.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or just playing set normal sets of games.
Speaker 2:Playing a normal set. We play full sets of double mode or do so while. Sometimes we'll play a total of six games. So when it's three all, or four, two, we switch the game. So we'll go from like, do so while, to double mode, because we mix it up a little bit. But you want to play it long enough so you get the full effect of it. You want to jump from one game to another, back and back and back. You want to spend some time experiencing the game and allow the game to reveal to you what adjustments you need to make in your own game, whether it's tactically or technically.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it seems like one of the things I love about this is it seems like it just creates forced concentration or pressure on like almost every point right, Like whereas if I'm up 30 love and serving and just thinking about like traditional tennis, I'm like, okay, we're up 30 love, Like we can just serve this wherever and like like sure poach, why not? We're up 30 love Like, just give it a shot and we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1:But if we're like trying to create a conversion point or something like, we're gonna think a lot harder about, like our specific tactic there, which is what we should do, because 30 loves a big point, you know like we need to. We don't want to take any of these points for granted. So yeah, I really I love that system a lot. I'm gonna include in the show notes all that kind of written out in detail some of those games. Then, of course, I'll link to your website and any videos and resources you have as well.
Speaker 2:I've written them out, so I'll send you that and you can just post that, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that'd be great, that'd be awesome, cool, okay, so let's just go on to the rapid fire questions. I know I've got a few more that I sent over to you, but maybe we do a round two at some point. But we're kind of we're running pretty long here. What is? What's your favorite tournament?
Speaker 2:I love Wimbledon. I love the Grand Slams, but I think Wimbledon is one I look forward to. It's actually one I get to watch because usually I'm at the beach, so that's great.
Speaker 2:I get to watch the whole thing. I get to watch multiple rounds. I actually I get to watch some doubles too. I do like to watch Indian Wells too when I can. But yeah, I like the traditions of Wimbledon. You know, I do like some traditions. I think some are valuable. I think a lot need to be questioned, especially when we play in coach, but I do like Wimbledon a lot. Sure.
Speaker 1:What racket do you use currently, or what is your favorite racket right now?
Speaker 2:Okay, so the Yonix E-Zone 98. It is literally the best racket that I've ever. I've ever had in my hand and I've played a lot of rackets.
Speaker 2:but I love that racket for a couple of reasons. Number one it does have natural power built into the frame so you don't have to swing as hard. It's forgiving. It's a soft racket frame. It's not too stiff. It has the expanded sweet spot because the Yonix technology of the flat rim but it's funny, I actually gosh, his name goes away from it right now and he's gonna kill me. But he was a Yonix rep years and years ago, probably like six years ago, and at PTR, and I said you know, I wanna change rackets. So I started looking at the Yonix and I picked up one. I fell in love with the Yonix brand.
Speaker 2:And I played everything, but I do like that.
Speaker 1:I do like that racket. Yeah, that is a good one. What is your favorite tennis book other than your own books?
Speaker 2:Winning Ugly.
Speaker 1:I love.
Speaker 2:Winning Ugly by Brad, I do. I think it points out a lot of things we should already be thinking about but we may be overlooked. But that is my favorite book by far.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great one. It's a good intro into, I feel like, opponent based thinking as well. Yes, yes. He talks a lot about that. So last question how do we make doubles more popular?
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. This was a long answer, but I'm gonna try to speak this one through. What's interesting, I listened to the podcast where we would then Rothenberg is Rothenberg yeah.
Speaker 2:Rothenberg, that was a very interesting perspective, but two things that came to mind. You talked about the Brine brothers. So there's two ways to become a star in tennis. You gotta either have a personality or you gotta have performance right. To become a superstar, you gotta have both. One thing about the Brine brothers that makes them so attractive, and I actually talked to this. I talked to my 16 year old son about this. I said, pierce, and he's a tennis player, he's a nationally ranked junior right, so he's a nationally watched tennis. I said what's gonna get you to watch doubles? He says well, I asked him if he could do the Brine brothers and he's like, yeah, I've heard of them. I said, okay, what if I were to tell you, pierce, that the Brine brothers are twins? He goes oh, I said one's a left handed player, one's a righty. He goes, oh, that's interesting. And I said, and they have flamboyant personalities, like they chest bump after points and they're into it.
Speaker 2:I said would you wanna watch a Brine brothers doubles match? He goes absolutely. That would be very entertaining. This is a 16 year old kid right Now. If we want to change doubles and make it more entertaining, more interesting, we're gonna have to do some radical things right, or we can keep it the status quo and it's gonna go the way it's gonna go. But for me, like if I see something that is flailing and not doing too well, I'm the type of person like all right, let's make a change.
Speaker 2:I mean you know you gotta make a change if you want change to happen, right. So as a doubles player, you gotta either become a personality Like Nick Kirios he's not one, he's one matches, but he's never won a Grand Slam. He's never won, I think.
Speaker 1:I don't think he's ever won.
Speaker 2:He's won a thousand right In singles, but he's won in doubles right. But his personality attracts people to watch him. He's interesting. You know, what's funny is I watched Coco Gough and Pagula play some doubles matches at the US Open on TV, and the reason why I watched them is they're both interesting players to me. Obviously, coco, her attraction is she's young, she's ready to go, she's a powerful player. Pagula has come up through the ranks, you know, and she's making a way of her own. And these two, matt, team up. They were so much fun to watch. They look like they're having so much fun. I think that the commentators of doubles could make a big difference. You know you should get John McEnroe and like Adam Sandler, honestly, like you should get a comedian up there. Somebody doesn't even know anything about tennis. Yeah, yeah, format in doubles. I say change to short sets of four. Go, no. Ask for tiebreaker. Is the third set right? 10 point tiebreaker, get them to last around 45 minutes.
Speaker 2:And interesting you know it's interesting. Here's one at the Grand Slams, have the quarter finals and the semifinals and the finals of the men's and women's doubles or even some mixed doubles. If you want to do that, have them be a part. Have that, have that final men's doubles be at the beginning of the men's finals and have it be a part of the same ticket. So if you buy a ticket to the men's finals, you're automatically going to see the men's doubles finals and it's going to happen right before the match.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And they do the women's? They reverse it right now. So like it depends on the tournament. Some tournaments will do women's doubles finals after the men's singles final and some do the women's doubles final before the men's singles final and sometimes it's like way earlier in the day. So people who show up 30 minutes before the men's singles final don't see the women's doubles at all.
Speaker 3:No, no. So yeah, there's got to be some overlap you got to group it together.
Speaker 2:Look, you've got to take that which is not so popular, and you need to, you need to hitch your trailer onto which is popular, right, stingles is very popular for the reasons you and Ben talked about, right, but you've got to do, you've got to really brand something. That's kind of flailing, you know, a fish out of order, right, I don't want to say it's ailing, but it is flailing, right. The other thing I talked to Pierce about ago hey, pierce, what if? What would he? What would it if you were watching a doubles match and you didn't know any of the players names? They're all pro players. Let's just take, you know men, for instance, you have four guys, right, you don't know any of that.
Speaker 2:What would cause you to watch that match? He goes well, dad, it would have to be short. So four sets, no, or four, four game sets, four game sets, yeah, no, gas scoring. You win at five, four if it's four. All play the tiebreaker 10 point tie. He's got to be short. And the second thing is you know what would be interesting? Dad is mic up the players. I want to hear what they're saying to the partner.
Speaker 2:I want to hear them, you know, getting on their partner for missing that volley. I want to. I want to hear sort of what they're doing. You know what's their strategy?
Speaker 2:He said that would be really interesting. That would be more like a show. It is interesting. I don't watch baseball, but I caught this baseball game one day on TV and I think I was on vacation since middle of the day and they had mic'd up the shortstop. I forget the guy's name. He's unbelievable. He's literally mic'd up and they're playing an actual game and he's sitting having a conversation with the commentators back and forth.
Speaker 2:And he goes wait a minute. Here I got to get this one because the ball's hit to him. He goes wait, hold on a minute. He runs over ball, throws the guy out and then he starts, picks up his conversation back with the commentators. I'm like, wait a minute.
Speaker 1:That's so good.
Speaker 2:This guy is a professional.
Speaker 2:And this is what we, you know what's interesting. We should, because, look, singles is serious. We got serious money at play. We got serious endorsements. Doubles not so much right now it could turn into that, but not so much. So let's treat doubles and let's, let's get it more entertaining. Okay, let's, let's get the stock up in doubles Right, and the only way you're going to be able to do that is you're going to have to do some some radical things like this to get people's attention.
Speaker 2:Right, you have to get people's attention, especially young people or even older people like me, right, like I'm 55, man, I'm old. Come on, you got to get my attention. So, so I would say that you know the doubles players. You know, if they're in this environment, they should be able to, like, have a conversation, talk to the commentators and still be able to play. They should still be able to perform and, honestly, you know their performance is they're taking it seriously, obviously, cause it's their livelihood, but do they want to really make an impact, like, do they want to make more money? The other thing that Pierce suggests is they should all their shirt should be littered with like sponsors, like NASCAR drivers or Ford.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he kind of cool and man just load up those shirts, bro.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but sponsors are not going to put their logo on guys. You know the player shirts if there's nobody watching. So you first.
Speaker 2:you first got to link these doubles matches to singles matches in some way. You've got to find a more, a way that they can play competitively but shorten the match so it's not so long, and then, and then you can, you can introduce other things in certain things like music and things like that you guys suggested. But it's got to be entertaining. Right, the Brian brothers are the exception. They're twins, they're right and lefty. They're entertaining. The Jensen brothers they were, they were entertaining. Yeah, other teams find a way to bring out their personalities.
Speaker 2:But, you know honestly, you know getting, you know perfect doing it should be easy. Particularly to start with like hints and challenges, because I think most joint teams do look good while they'reparent, so they decide to move or make the option and then hopefully before we skip that chance for 말�es, so we can live themią Threeinoat or threek and separate itself from singles in that way.
Speaker 2:But will it be fun, this all? To be on experience for the players. I guarantee you the players, yeah, they're not making a lot of money, but if they're having fun at what they're doing, they actually might start making more money.
Speaker 2:They'll make more yeah, because they will attract the eyes and ears of people and the sponsors will come and they will actually have a more enjoyable life as a doubles player on tour, because it'll be more fun. You know and this is the thing that we talk about with our junior players you know you've got to get out there, you've got to have fun at this game, and this is why we created the different games that are actual, related to what you experienced in the match. So they're real games, they're not fake games, they're not just feel good games, but they are fun, and so this is something that, if we start going in this direction, I think only positive things can come of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely Awesome. It sounds like my dogs are barking, so I'm going to run here. Sterling, thanks so much for joining us today. I think there's a lot of great information here that people are going to get out of this episode, so I really, really appreciate your time.
Speaker 2:Thanks Google for having me. It was a pleasure.