CAMELOT FANTASIES

I was thinking about Andy the other night and his essential debacle at serving a more consistent serves - both 1st and 2nd and I realized one thing but let me give you the background first. Quite apparently, his 1st serve suffers when he is not feeling confident and we all know his 2nd has always been his biggest liability.

If you pay attention you will see that his return game is one of his most consistent strengths regardless. At least 90% of the time it's very consistent and it does not follow any specific pattern neither does it lack confidence, even when he's coming off an injury or in the midst of it etc. etc. etc. It's there like one of the 5 pillars in Islam and never really breaks down as a whole.

So why this very guy suffers from a fragile mentality and lacks confidence when it comes to the service department and yet his return game seems to stay intact regardless? Why does his confidence vary between his own weapons? I realized that it's only because it's the way he has modeled his game while growing up watching Agassi a bit much if I am to be honest. Now I know most British people hate 'servebots' and they hated Sampras and adored Agassi in the 90s. And frankly, Andy is no different than those. In fact, I  will go on record and say that most of the British players will be like Andy in the future and will focus far more on the return game than the service game. And it will not give them or produce a player who will break all records or at least half of them set by Sampras, Laver, Federer etc.

Because, as much as they hate it, best service game will always trump best return game. This is actually one of the great reasons why Americans are so much more successful in general than the British, because they tend to focus on the right weapon - a weapon that is effortless and yet most effective. I mean look at Federer - the main reason he's still in top ten and still going strong is because  he wins a lot of cheap points off serve and it keeps him alive for a longer period of time in a tournament even at this stage. It's also one of the prime reasons why he's a very successful player on tour. So unless and until Andy has a change in his mindset about the serves, it will be always very frustrating to watch him in general and watch him get broken umpteenth times. At least both Nadal and Nole can offer a far more consistent and effective sets of serves.