February 2, 2016

John Miller Match Analysis
I recently did a match analysis of John Miller, a regular in the Adult Training Sessions I run at MDTTC on Sunday nights, 6:30-8:00 PM. He has graciously agreed to let me run it in my blog. (Many of you know him as the Director of the three biggest tournaments in the country – the U.S. Open, the USA Nationals, and the North American Teams.) Here is what I wrote to him.

The match I analyzed was against Dmitriy Buluchevskiy at the Texas Wesleyan tournament, March 22, 2014, Under 1800 round robin match. (Buluchevskiy wins.) I watched it point by point, often replaying points and taking notes. Remember that such an analysis is by its nature critical – the key is to fix the problems.

The strength of your game is that when you are in position, you have very strong loops from both sides, as well as a very strong backhand smash against soft topspin returns of your serve. So setting up these shots with serve and receive is key. Just as important is not throwing away points by trying to loop too hard against serves or not being in position to take advantage of your strong shots. Below are six things that jumped out at me from the video and my notes.

  1. You often try to adjust for shots with you upper body rather than make a small step to get into position. This was a problem throughout the match. For example, watch this sequence of the last five points in game two and the first point of game three (you lost all six), where the lack of small foot movements led to losing five of them. Often you do make these steps and make strong shots, but you need to do them every time out of habit. (You can actually just watch this straight through from the Rally1 point.)
    1.  Rally1: Note how as he serves, you start to step in with your right foot, then stop, and then try to adjust for the serve with the upper body rather than stepping, leading to amissed forehand.
    2. Rally2: You served off the end because your contact point was way too high
    3. Rally3: Here you make a nice backhand, but don't take a small step to position yourself for the easy forehand so miss it.
    4. Rally4: You make a nice backhand loop – and note that you do take a step to position yourself for this - but then you reach for the next shot with your backhand rather than step toward it.
    5. Rally5:  You have an easy push to the middle to loop, but try to adjust with upper body rather than take a short step, and so miss the easy forehand.
    6. Rally6 (first point next game): Leaned over to backhand loop rather than step, and so missed. Ironically, on the next point you do step to return the serve, but opponent serves on the edge. 

    =>​ SOLUTION: Focus on these small steps when doing serve & attack drills (including when opponent is doing them), and other free-play drills. They are key, and it must become a habit. Now that we see the problem, I will harp on this in our future sessions.

  2. You almost never attack the middle (elbow) – you play corners almost exclusively. The middle is usually the weakest spot. In fact, that's how your opponent won game 1, with an easy backhand topspin to your middle. (As noted above, you also didn't move your feet for this, and so weren't able to adjust.) Sometimes you'd make a strong attack, but had to play more shots when the same shot to the middle would have won the point. For example, see this point, where you made three very nice backhands in a row, but all to the same spot. His middle was wide open. (You then lost the point when you didn't step all the way over for the fourth shot.)
    =>SOLUTION: In serve & attack drills and in games, focus on attacking the middle.
  3. On receive you usually move, but sometimes you sort of jump the gun with the wrong movement. For example, see the point at 10-10 in first, where the opponent served to your wide forehand and you were already stepping in, and so missed the loop. Or the first point in the six-point sequence given above in #1.
    =>SOLUTION: Practice this more in games – focus on that first step. You have more time then you think, so wait and make sure the first move is the right one.
  4. Your serves are often too simple. Too many of them are obviously simple backspin serves, no threat to the opponent. Throw in more tricky motions and fake other spins.
    =>SOLUTION: We'll work on these motions in future sessions.
  5. You dominated when you served long, often following your serve with a backhand smash, or opponent missing the serve. (These are just two example of a number of them.) Your backhand is very strong against the soft topspins you often get. But you held back on them too much. Challenge players with deep serves if they don't have strong attacks off them. Also serve long to the middle (elbow). At the higher levels, deep serves don't work as well. Below 2200, they are a must, especially big breaking sidespin serves that are often missed or rolled back weakly. (I toyed with putting together a series of links of all the points you won with long serves, but I think you get the idea.)
    =>SOLUTION: This one's pretty simple - serve long more often.
  6. You missed way too many loops against serves, both wings (though more backhand attempts since he mostly served there). Keep loops against serves simple, focus on consistency and depth only, less power. Shorten the swing, control the ball, don't overpower it. Wear the opponent down with consistent receives and challenge the opponent to make a strong shot off your consistent ones. Only loop strong off a serve if you read it really well and are in perfect position. You did make some strong loops off the serve, but you probably missed as many as you made.
    =>SOLUTION: You can practice this in games, but we can also do a drill around this, where your partner mixes in short and long serves, and you soft loop the long ones.

RIP Marty Prager
News broke last night that the great coach and USATT Hall of Famer from Florida had died. He was a former USATT team member from the early 1960s, but became better known later as a coach. I had the honor of coaching against him in many matches at big tournaments throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s. More on this probably tomorrow.

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Here's the video (25 sec). 

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Happy Groundhog Day!
Here's Pingpongatawney Phil. (Note the signature on the lower right – yep, I'm the guilty party.)

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