When is an athlete at their peak?

Interesting read...shame you can't publish it to broader audiences.
I liked  Durrell's quote.
I'm in the sighing him phase...

Tennis is a unique sport and skill ages differently to body.

Again, with Federer, throw all that out of the window. He has a prodigous talent which is essentially bodily: his extraordinary hand to eye coordination.

He can simply do things others can't. However much they try and practise.

He is now battling hybrid athletes, fighting chemistry, technology...pilgrim in a foreign land kind of thing.

It is difficult to answer your question as we are not dealing with clean sport any more...as a result, it has become bland just like tasteless genetically modified fruit.

Even strawberries in Wimbledon were rubbish this year...they actually had to coat them with sugar to give them some flavour...I suppose they Andrew Castled them

Ha, I loved my free strawberries and cream this Wimby.

Yes you picked up on it exactly.
A lot of those names I mentioned I think are on drugs, so it's am almost unanswerable question as it is probably still evolving.

I may tweet it out to journo's...

Hi LS,

do you have any (strong) views on SBH? (i.e. DBH)

Since you are starting to move on journalistic circles, why don't you get the ball rolling, see where it takes you...

Dopers will continue to rot and flourish so no cigar there I reckon.
Banning DBH is the real deal!

Get passionate about it!!!

I taught myself to play a shbh. No prizes who inspired me to do it  . So I am a sucker for shbh on the whole, bar robredo, lopez etc.

The thing is nitb, some of my fave players over the years had/have a dhbh.

Nalby, Brown, Dolgo, fognini, goffin and a lot of toher players I like who have that shot. 

I don't feel as strongly about this as you, so I wouldn't want to ban it.

But I think the decline of it could be interesting. A potential chat with coaches, lta etc.

I really wanted to talk to an umpire but couldn't get hold of one. I'll look into it as I hunt for jobs.

luvsports! wrote:I taught myself to play a shbh. No prizes who inspired me to do it  . So I am a sucker for shbh on the whole, bar robredo, lopez etc.

Exactly!
And who is going to inspire in 5-10years?

People like winners, and talent is not winning any more, so SBH will die.

luvsports! wrote:The thing is nitb, some of my fave players over the years had/have a dhbh.
Nalby, Brown, Dolgo, fognini, goffin and a lot of toher players I like who have that shot. 

Add Paire, Mannarino, Simon to that list for me...of course there are some wonderful DBH players and I am sure they'd've been just as good with the SBH, their games even more exciting!

So why did they switch to DBH?

I read that Sampras and Edberg actually did the opposite.
Can you imagine Edberg with a DBH?!!!!

luvsports! wrote:
But I think the decline of it could be interesting. A potential chat with coaches.

Good idea!
I talked about it to Pouille's coach (who turned out to have also coached Llodra and Santoro).
He is a well respected coach and I wanted to know why France, the only school of tennis that still nourishes talent and does not manufacture players a la Bolletieri, does not teach SBH any more.
His reply was: the return, you can't return with a SBH in these conditions.

(Which then puts Fed's and Stan's slams on an even higher pedestals now).

luvsports! wrote:
I don't feel as strongly about this as you, so I wouldn't want to ban it.

Saving single backhand is a good cause worth fighting for! Imagine tennis without it...

luvsports! wrote:
I really wanted to talk to an umpire but couldn't get hold of one. I'll look into it as I hunt for jobs.

Did you go to Wimby qualifiers this year?
Umpires are walking around freely and relaxed and are very approachable and friendly.

It's a good article LS. As SOS says you will probably confuse many readers though.

But I agree that the difficulty in finding out what age is peaking in tennis resides in technology and technique progress AND diet/doping progress of course.

What we are seeing now is a stabilisation of technology and technique progress increasing the peak age or money being a string factor favouring players who have accumulated money and can buy the best fitness team. Probably a bit of both.

It seems however clear that shot makers make less UEs as they age (Fed, Stan, Gasquet, Tsonga, Berdych , etc....). They know better when to attack or more so how much power is needed to pull a winner as opposed to going for broke consistently when younger.

However with age recovery from a match becomes harder.....unless you use the right drugs. This is where we lack data clearly. It seems someone like Froom (at 30)  will not feel the effort of yesterday's race as much as a clean racer I guess.

One thing I worry about is stagnation in the game.

I know you are confident that DJoko and co have 2016 and then they will get overtaken (right?).
But with "medicine" improving, conditions not changing and at present no big surges from the youngsters, I worry that Djoko will stay at the top for over a year!

Save.Onehanded.Shots wrote:

luvsports! wrote:I taught myself to play a shbh. No prizes who inspired me to do it  . So I am a sucker for shbh on the whole, bar robredo, lopez etc.

Exactly!
And who is going to inspire in 5-10years?

People like winners, and talent is not winning any more, so SBH will die.

luvsports! wrote:The thing is nitb, some of my fave players over the years had/have a dhbh.
Nalby, Brown, Dolgo, fognini, goffin and a lot of toher players I like who have that shot. 

Add Paire, Mannarino, Simon to that list for me...of course there are some wonderful DBH players and I am sure they'd've been just as good with the SBH, their games even more exciting!

So why did they switch to DBH?

I read that Sampras and Edberg actually did the opposite.
Can you imagine Edberg with a DBH?!!!!

luvsports! wrote:
But I think the decline of it could be interesting. A potential chat with coaches.

Good idea!
I talked about it to Pouille's coach (who turned out to have also coached Llodra and Santoro).
He is a well respected coach and I wanted to know why France, the only school of tennis that still nourishes talent and does not manufacture players a la Bolletieri, does not teach SBH any more.
His reply was: the return, you can't return with a SBH in these conditions.

(Which then puts Fed's and Stan's slams on an even higher pedestals now).

luvsports! wrote:
I don't feel as strongly about this as you, so I wouldn't want to ban it.

Saving single backhand is a good cause worth fighting for! Imagine tennis without it...

luvsports! wrote:
I really wanted to talk to an umpire but couldn't get hold of one. I'll look into it as I hunt for jobs.

Did you go to Wimby qualifiers this year?
Umpires are walking around freely and relaxed and are very approachable and friendly.

I couldn't go unfortunately and the umpire I was able to contact didn't want to talk.

luvsports! wrote:One thing I worry about is stagnation in the game.

I know you are confident that DJoko and co have 2016 and then they will get overtaken (right?).
But with "medicine" improving, conditions not changing and at present no big surges from the youngsters, I worry that Djoko will stay at the top for over a year!

Well it's a good concern. I however would be very surprised if the big servers/hitters were not to shorten Djoko's career soon. Look at Kokki, he is only 18 and his serves and ground shots were already giving Djoko some trouble...imagine after another year of hard training and exposure to the tour.

Anderson will feel more confident next time they play knowing he can run him close. Djoko, like Nadal, is more vulnerable when facing a dBH. Nishi for instance has certainly the weapons to take Djoko out if on form.

In a year time many things can happen...look at Nadal in 2013 and look at him now.

I still think a fresher Federer woudl have beaten Djoko last Sunday. Unfortuantely they are only likely to be meeting in Finals.