1990s In Spain
Rafa Nadal trains thousands of hours as a kid with his uncle Toni overseeing his development on the red clay in Mallorca.
He builds a foundation of grinding from deep behind the baseline, and he develops a high level of consistency, patience and defense. He learns how to run and rarely miss—and to suffer.
This, by the way, is the training model that dozens of kids in Spain have followed to become successful pro players.
These years grinding it out on clay give him the foundation to one day become the greatest clay court player of all time.
As a professional, he becomes more powerful and can shorten points with his serve, groundstroke weapons, and even successful forays to the net. Always seeking to improve, he also adapts his game to take the ball earlier and stand closer to the baseline.
But his suffering ethos and spirit of perseverance that he learned grinding as a kid never leave him.
Fast forward to today. Modern statisticians study Rafa’s matches and determine that he doesn’t play as many long grinding points as a pro than when he was a kid.
They conclude that 50-70 percent of his points are actually 0-4 shot rallies and success at serving, returning, and attacking correlate to winning at the pro level.
Those same statisticians recommend that coaches should primarily focus on first 4 shots training with children because the analytics say that those are the most important and the practice court should mirror what the pro statistics tell us.
These data analysts also tell us that consistency is overrated, patience is not a virtue, grinding is bad, too much repetition is detrimental, defense is waste of time, and suffering is not important anymore.
So here we are in 2019.
Question for coaches, parents and players:
Does anyone see the logical flaw in the conclusions and recommendations for the practice court of young children?
Chris Lewit, Prodigy Maker