The Tour: Shanghai and Madrid are over and therefore the season ends with two Clear No 1s – Justine Henin and Roger Federer, with four consecutive years as No 1, closing on Pete Sampras’s record six years. This is the record that Pete is particularly proud of and he believes the hardest achieved since six years is a long time to hold the highest standard in the world. This is in my view the record that Roger may not break since he will have to hold off stern challenges from Nadal, Nalbandian, Djokovic and very soon Andy Murray.

There is a bias in this Inside Story because I know that Andy has hired first class people to help him address his physical improvement. I’m proud that the quality of Jez Green has been recognised at the highest level and that he will help Andy’s attempt to move to the top of the game. Jez is unique because he is a very good player himself who is able to translate his sports science knowledge (Bsc Loughborough) into tennis specific training. He knows how a player thinks and importantly knows how it feels to perform the moves like a player rather than purely from observation. It is also key that he understands the balance needed to execute each shot from his own experience of actually hitting the ball with a quality strike. (Read full story: MCTA trainer Jez Green to work with Andy Murray)

I have worked with Jez for over 10 years and in this time we have devised a unique approach to coaching and training players which was the background to starting the Monte Carlo Tennis Academy. We were the first in the UK to have training blocks where our players trained 2-3 weeks purely doing physical conditioning without any tennis and we are still the only Academy to my knowledge who have this disciplined approach. Coaches generally panic when told their players need to go 2-3 weeks without hitting a tennis ball and tend to hedge their bets with a combined block. It is impossible to hit the conditioning hard and expect players to have anything left to play tennis.

Anna Fitzpatrick, Ana Veselinovic and Ilija Vucic have all had a 2½ week block of pure conditioning. The advantage we have is the relationship Jez and I have. We trust each other totally and I know that during their training blocks Jez is able to reinforce tennis movement with resistance and also help them mentally relate every bit of their training to how it will help them on the court. The MCTA creates a flexible environment around the player with coaches and trainers who are like a family and this model is, in my view, the future of tennis.

The pressure and claustrophobic atmosphere of one-on-one coaches does not exist because it is a team that coaches and trains a player. The players sometimes travel with a trainer, at other times with a coach and sometimes both. They do conditioning blocks with their team mates and during these blocks they spend a lot of free time together and even cook for each other (see Clive and Ana’s blogs) all of which take some of the isolation out of tennis. Tennis can be a very lonely sport especially when you are out there on the court playing poorly and equally off the court when your confidence is low and attention is off you and on other players doing well. You cannot feel any improvement and this is when you need your trusted support team to encourage you to just put your head down and get on with the work because if you do it will turn around. If there is only one person performing this role frustrations can boil over when results continue to be poor, whereas a team of people performing this role in different areas of training means more than one perspective on the same problem in different environments which our experience has shown keeps the player fresh when they are going through a bad patch.

The Academy is into its final two tournaments of the year with Ilija and Henri (see report) attempting to set up there final year in Juniors with good showings in the Eddie Herr and Orange Bowl with Hampo. ‘Fitzy’ will be with me for two Challengers in the Czech Republic whilst ‘Yastog’ goes it alone to Nigeria to try and make her ranking target of 300 before the end of the year. We set realistic goals for the players to reach based on proven statistics and if these targets are not met we temporarily suspend players and give them a period on their own to attain their goal.

Jez meanwhile will work with Andy in Florida devising a programme specific to his needs based on his test results, after which they will hit it hard for a couple of weeks. (more)

I will be back after Christmas with a review of the year to come and in the meantime I wish you all a fantastic holiday season, wherever you may be and whatever you will be doing.

David

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