Ground Shots Continued ...

1.   Critical Observation.  This is the first 'proof' I would like to present to drive this point home. These are just my observations. So these are only heuristic and anecdotal evidence on the criticality of the ground shots. Later I will present more rigorous argumemnts to establish the critical nature of the ground shots. The current top players are all baseline players. Witness Nadal, Djokovic, Federer and Andy Murray. They only charge the net when they see the opponent in trouble due to a strong shot on their part or when they can afford it in terms of a favourable score or for testing an idea ( Federer does this kind of experimentation a lot against players that do not require his full repertoire) . The returning ball is usually a weak one and can be killed easily. The top players also differ in the degree of net charging they do but none the less thay are esssntially baseline players. In particular Djokovic and Nadal prefer not to go to the net at all. But Federer gets up there quite a bit and is quite comfortable there. This is logically equivalent to saying that if you are a net player then you are not a top player! This is a shocking thing to deal with and all coaches should take note of this and the players should heed this. But a visual evidence proves it. The players that seem to charge the net a lot following a strong serve you would think would be some top players. But that is not true. The classic examples are:

More ...