Fans, parents and rookie coaches often have a totally different view of what is going on in a court than I do. I was involved with a video a few months ago for a coaching friend and I showed him how a well meaning rookie coach lost the match for his student. He coached his athlete to beat on his opponent’s weak forehand. Every drive serve went there and in the breaker, the opponent won. Watching the tape I saw said opponent jump on every serve hit because eventually the opponent did not have to worry about the serve going anywhere else.
The glass was on the backhand side. The court was regulation 40x20x20. But the opponent played on a 40x20x10 when he received serve. Rookie coach did not expand the court by using all of it!
Case #2-I was involved in a match years ago and a parent came running to me telling me his child should lob the opponent’s backhand. He told me his child beat this player by lobbing their backhand in a tournament at xyz club. A few problems with that strategy-
1. His child had not practiced and could not control a lob much less a lob nick. Also the player won on panel were it is easier to hit a lob nick and we were on cement so it would have been setups.
2. Another fact was the opponent had the type of backhand that could crush a lob but not a garbage style serve.
3. Said opponent had been practicing and was not the same player my kid played six months before.
All of these things raced through my mind in .5 seconds and I had to make the decision not to follow the parent’s advice. My perspective was different. My kid did lose but it was very close and we had little to work with because the main issue was not me; it was lack of practice on the part of my athlete!
Here’s another one unrelated to racquetball. One of my high school racquetball players played softball and was an all league pitcher. I watched her pitch a game and watched her father go ballistic. He said her coach was stupid because she could blow all these hitters away with fastballs and instead she was throwing changeups, and breaking balls. I understood totally and explained to the Dad that Coach wanted her to practice those pitches for the next games where she would not be able to blow hitters away with one pitch and would need all of them. Fans, parents and other “experts” do not see the game the way a coach would.