Lendl & Becker - just the tip of the Edberg?

First topic message reminder :

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/12/20/edberg-more-happy-coach-federer-if-asked

If we can just get Rafa to bring in Wilander....

Well then it's just typical journo nonsense that doesn't bear repeating. Just because it's in the papers doesn't make it intelligent.

But Julius if you hire a celebrity coach it will be in the papers    That's part of the deal. Also the papers may talk about the celebrity coaches more than the players. Ha ha! If the players are not careful their coaches may take more of the limelight than them. I wonder who is more "famous" Becker or Djokovic....  

I thought to be a celebrity you had to have eaten witchetty grubs, kangaroo bum and got yourself on the front of HEAT magazine? I didn't see Edberg on IACGMOOH so he can't be a true celeb.

However, according to the Forbes 2013 Top 100 Celebrity list, Federer weighs in at a lofty #7 so who's the daddy anyway?

http://www.forbes.com/celebrities/list/

Federer slightly "more powerful" than Justin Bieber.

...and clearly a better singer too. No way Bieber can whip up an audience like this in concert.

lydian wrote:I thought to be a celebrity you had to have eaten witchetty grubs, kangaroo bum and got yourself on the front of HEAT magazine? I didn't see Edberg on IACGMOOH so he can't be a true celeb.

However, according to the Forbes 2013 Top 100 Celebrity list, Federer weighs in at a lofty #7 so who's the daddy anyway?

http://www.forbes.com/celebrities/list/

I think that programme is for wanna-be or ageing celebrities. Ageing tennis celebrities have just discovered a new way to get a little more time in the sun   

Clearly Federer (at a lofty number 7 in the Forbes celebrity list) doesn't need any extra celebrity glammer in his team nor does he need any hints on how to win a slam (when he has so many he has to keep his excess slam trophies in the garage). So perhaps what he wants from his minor in comparison celebrity coach is the opposite of the other players. Maybe he just wants someone new to show off to in practice?

Navaratilova was on that show I think.

Yep runner-up in 2008.

"Former Grand Slam champ Sergi Bruguera to coach Richard Gasquet"

http://sports.ndtv.com/tennis/news/217548-former-grand-slam-champ-sergi-bruguera-to-coach-richard-gasquet

Blimey...just what has Lendl started?!

Dolgopolov apparently doing some work with Fabrice Santoro now too!

Granollers is working with Alan Titchmarsh

JuliusHMarx wrote:Granollers is working with Alan Titchmarsh

      

JHM sneaking in with a very late contender for Gag Of The Year!

I don't agree with the ridicule being directed towards Becker as a coach....

For starters, Djokovic can seriously improve his volleying, and Becker will be good in that respect. In fact, nearly all the current men's players could benefit from tutoring from the likes of Becker and Edberg about how and when to volley. That seems to be a lost art.

Federer taking on Edberg seems to indicate to me that the Fed is interested in becoming more aggressive, and who better to ask than Edberg?

Current volleying in 2014 is not like volleying in 1994. The young guys need help on how to play aggressive volleying. You don't see the classic transition-step volley of old these days, the top guys cant do it very well at all. Now its more of a put away shot. Guys like Nadal, Murray and Djokovic will still pass for fun at the net if players net rush too much, aided by 98-100sqin racquets and poly strings. So volleying has to be selective.

This is where the 'old' guys can teach these top 4-5 how to volley using a transition step much better than their previous coaches. Also, what they can do better is learn to serve with more variety...and then come in to volley the weaker replies. In theory they should be able to do it off heavily kicked 2nd serves too. After all, this what Edberg made a career out of...heavily spun balls...legend has it he could kick serve over your head on the old slick grass. Giving him time to ghost in, and making the returns v.difficult. The slice serve out wide is also far underused by right-handlers, and modern strings should really make this serve unplayable if someone really focused on it...Federer is still probably the best at this by far...because he learnt his serve in faster conditions when this shot payed better dividends.

This year I believe we'll see a lot more flatter hitting and outwide serve/volley combos. Also, sliced BHs are being used more too. Variety could be the name of the game after all...and that is why the older coaches are now useful given they come from a time when more variety and forecourt agility was used. Interesting times.

Murray & Lendl made sense - it was what Murray needed & Lendl turned him into an Olympic Champion and multislam winner.  

Djokovic adding Becker to his team and now Federer adding Edberg to his team just seems weak minded and ridiculous.  I can't imagine Becker or Edberg being of any significant help so I can only imagine it is "mind games" to mess with Murray's mind.  

That is I believe the purpose of Becker & Edberg is not to improve the games of Djokovic or Federer but to cast doubt in the mind of their opponents - especially Murray.   As Haddie Nuff has mentioned Nadal is totally impervious to mind games & will do what he always does.

kingraf wrote:...
I met up with cricketing great Sunny Gavaskar a few days ago. Was interesting to get his view on batting, mainly because it went so far against conventional wisdom. Had a similar run-in with cricketer Herschille Gibbs a few years ago, where he basically said unscientific nonsense like "If you're positive, the luck is with you", and "As long as you keep your head still and hit through the ball, you'll be fine".

The point of these anecdotes is to ...

... name drop. But I am impressed  

JuliusHMarx wrote:Name me a player who has hired a "celebrity coach". It's a nonsensical term. Rafa didn't use it and yet you wrote that it was what Rafa had to say "about players who have hired celebrity coaches" - the usual nonsense.

Roger Draper hired out "celebrity" coaches to revolutionise British tennis and get five British players in the top twenty in five years time from 2006 (part of his five year masterplan) ... because he hadn't a clue and that's what people who haven't a clue do.

To be fair to Hawkeye - Becker is a celebrity.  Lendl is too reclusive I think to be called a celebrity.  I am not sure about Edberg.  But as multimillionaire multislam winners they will be considered celebrities by proprietors of newspapers & magazines, advertisers etc.

Well thank you Nore Staat for being fair to me but people on 606v2 really need to get out more if they don't think the talk of the AO this year hasn't been "celebrity coaches". Even Rafa has succumbed. Apparently in his press conference yesterday he declared he will be working with McEnroe  

Celebrity is a false and misleading term though. Use the term celebrity and people may think more of a Hollywood star such as Tom Hanks or Sly Stallone etc. I mean I cannot recall Brad Gilbert or Paul Annacone being called 'celebrity' coaches. Why not? They were just like Lendl, Edberg and Becker as in ex-tennis players with an extensive knowledge of the sport. And by the way Rafa is NOT going to be working with McEnroe that was merely a tongue-in-cheek remark by Rafa.

Didn't Draper hire some of the world's most successful coaches? They were "celebrities" because they were the best. I would have said hiring the best is a generally acknowledged method of improving standards.

Nore Staat wrote:Djokovic adding Becker to his team and now Federer adding Edberg to his team just seems weak minded and ridiculous.

Don't forget though that they both did actually need a coach. Federer had split with Annacone and Vajda wanted to be on the road less.

I wasn't sure at first but, the more I think of it, the more I can see the logic.

Fed and Djoko are not callow youths with games to be built. They are experienced players who have complete games and know what to do.

An experienced mind to pick and having someone on hand before big matches who's "been there and done it" is probably all that they need.

Maybe Becker and Edberg should be called advisors rather than coaches?

Celebrity advisers?

hawkeye wrote:Celebrity advisers?

Toni Nadal falls into that category as well then since he was a professional footballer for one of the biggest clubs in the world.

All four semifinalists work with  - using HE's nice term - celebrity coaches.  While in Nole's and Fed's case the coach came after the success, it is the opposite with Nishikori and Cilic.

Does it mean that celebrity coaches are useful?  I have to say I myself considered them unlikely to be much better than any other coaches but the fact seems to be that the guys who hired them (i.e., Nishi and Cilic) are doing better than those who did not - at least this USO.