This Means War

There was a time, not long ago, when in most of my tennis matches I was the big banger. Win or lose, I usually hit faster and heavier balls than my opponent. But with age, that’s changing.

Yesterday I played with a friend whom I’ll call Art. He’s got a big game himself along with something I rarely possess: stamina. He loves nothing better than to run side to side on the baseline, retrieving balls and wearing down his opponent with big topspin.

When I get into a contest with Art on his terms, I usually lose. He makes me hit that extra shot and I too often miss it in an attempt to overcome his “leg” advantage. But when I play thoughtfully, I win.

Yesterday it was hot and humid. We were playing near mid-day and I hadn’t set foot on a tennis court — or done any substantial cardio — for nearly a week. So when we started playing a set, I knew I didn’t want to get into a banging contest with Art, exchanging cross-court rally balls until I could no longer breathe.

My strategy was to mix up the pace and to play him in and out rather than side to side. He’s not real comfortable at the net, and if you get him into a deep corner at the baseline, his instinct (like most players) is to race back along the baseline. A short ball takes him out of his comfort zone, and if he does get to that ball he's likely to play a weaker shot, setting up a potential passing shot.

Yesterday, we had some long points, but we had a lot of short ones because I refused to play to his strength. At one point, he even complained that he’d have to hit the treadmill later, because he wasn’t getting enough cardio.

At the end of all this, he walked off the court and said, “You wouldn’t let me get into a rhythm.” Exactly.

A tennis match is like a war. You don’t attack your “enemy” at his point of greatest strength. You find his weakness and force him out of his comfort zone.

It’s taken me years to realize this precisely because I’ve usually been the banger. If you’re playing a lesser player, it can be a great strategy to say, with your racket, “For every cross-court forehand you hit in a rally, I’ll hit one more. And harder.” Then you just watch the other guy melt down in the face of relentless consistency.

But when your opponent has a higher-quality game, the key is to take that rhythm away, not to feed into it.