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7 Shot Tennis is "Information You Can Actually Use to Improve Your Tennis"
Episode 427th May 2025 • GoTennis! Podcast • Shaun Boyce and Bobby Schindler
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Season #25 Episode#:42 Shaun Boyce & Bobby Schindler

In today's episode, you'll discover more about UTR as well as 7 Shot Tennis founder, Dave Howell. Have a listen and let us know what you think.

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More about 7 Shot Tennis: https://www.7shottennis.com/

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Shaun Boyce USPTA: shaun@tennisforchildren.com

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Bobby Schindler USPTA: schindlerb@comcast.net

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Geovanna Boyce: geovy@regeovinate.com

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Transcripts

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[Music]

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Welcome to the GoTennis Podcast.

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Our conversations are uniquely engaging and our tips will help you to win more matches.

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Our mission is to keep you well informed, give you what you need to improve your game

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and help you save money. We invite you to become a GoTennis Premium member and join our community today.

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[Music]

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Hey, hey, this is Shaun with the GoTennis Podcast powered by Signature Tennis.

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Check out our calendar of Metro Atlanta Tennis events at LetsGoTennis.com.

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And as you're listening to this, please look in your podcast app where to leave a review and do

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that for us. We would love to earn your five-star reviews. And now let's get into our recent

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conversation with Dave Howell. Dave was the creative force behind UTR and is now involved with

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Seven Shot Tennis, an analytics and match charting system used at every level. Have a listen and let us know what you think.

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[Music]

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Who are you and why do we care? Good question. I don't know why you care except if you have an audience who wants to get better playing tennis.

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We may have something that they can find useful, other people are finding it useful.

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And something I think that cuts across all levels of tennis. But anyway, so who am I? I'm a recovering, retired teaching pro.

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Yeah, yeah. People ask me from time to time. I said, "No, I don't teach anymore. It would be malpractice." But anyway,

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at a long career, I've talked to 37 years in the Southeast Virginia area. I had some nice jobs.

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One of the things, there's some things that happened along the way. I think put me in situations that

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turned out to be really good situations. The first one was about 15 years into my teaching. I charted

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my first match at a nine-core indoor facility in Aurora, Illinois. And my kid was on court number five.

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I had to figure out a way to at least keep score. And so I had a pad of paper. One of those times when

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you hear a songwriter say, "Gee, I wrote that song in 10 minutes. Well, I had some things in my mind."

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And we talked a little bit about that. But that was kind of a huge thing. I had a five-year period of

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time where I traveled with a really good junior player whose parents had enough money to do

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take me all over the place. So that was great. We'll come back to that. When the second one was,

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I had a chance to go to France for a big 12-in-1 tournament. And when I got to France, I learned about

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how they rate slash rank players. A little bit different than the NTRP that was the only thing at the

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time here. And then five years later, I was looking at 10 of scores in the newspaper. I don't know

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how many hundreds of scores, but you remember the old days when they would print scores in the

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newspaper? Yeah. It struck me. I've been looking at these things for you, but it struck me that the

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most frequent score on the page was 6-0. Next most frequent score on the page was 6-1. There's

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just so many matches that weren't close. But there were a lot of matches. And I came to find out that

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more kids play high school tennis than play sanctioned junior tournament tennis by margin, but that's

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three and a half to one. And so that was really the birth of what Game Be Known as it is known as

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Universal Tennis or UTR. Collected a lot of data and ultimately came up with a way of

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distinguishing levels of play. And I got very lucky with the right people showing up at the right time.

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I had a guy that I was working with, Miguel Rosa introduced me to Alex Concato, who was both a

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software developer and a math, very proficient in math. And he took the basic idea of what's a competitive

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match, what's a decisive match and what's a routine match and put it into what you now see when you

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go look at UTR ratings. That was a long haul. Other guys, Steve Clark, Darrell Cummings,

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Salmon Bader. And then I was introduced to Dayfish, go to Harvard University for like 40 years.

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And the big thing about Dayfish was he was just hooked into a world that was way beyond the world I

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was hooked into. At 40 years of Harvard tennis players, I was Rolla Dex. And next thing we know,

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we're talking to the ITA Intercollegiate Tennis Association. And we get in with them.

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Being from the Mid-Atlantic area, I knew getting in the Mid-Atlantic was going to be

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probably the last thing that would ever happen in my life. So the next good thing was

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Northern California came into my life. 3,000 miles away, they got it. First to name Amy Jensen,

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or for the USDA, NorCal. And she started doing stuff in Northern California that was fantastic.

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It still is, I think. Following her, we picked up Midwest, Southern California, South West,

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and finally Texas when we ended up at some point attracting some money. That's a whole different thing.

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Let me ask you, "Cut your fuel, quick. When did this, what was the timeline? When did you,

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when did it all start?" Started in 2005, 2006. We got to the ITA in about 2013 or '14.

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And for me, Mark Leslie showed up in 2017 and said, "You guys are so dysfunctional. I'm going to

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buy you out and put you out of your misery." And he did. And I got to buy a nice red truck.

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I was going to say, "You don't make it sound like you're done after that." So it wasn't a buyout that says,

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"You get to live on a beach, huh?" No, no, I wasn't that. It wasn't, no, no, not living on a beach.

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But then that did send me back to the situation back in the mid-80s where I started charting matches.

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And I went back to that. And that basically is when Steve Clark was the algorithm guy at UTR for a number

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of years. And I continued to work and would be working on. So I had to tell you, if UTR was all

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about what the scores were and being able to put people into levels so that they would have better

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play, that was a whole intention of the thing. And a byproduct of that was, you have girls pointing

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against guys, man, playing against women, junior, flading against adults. And we tested all that stuff

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for about four or five years in our area here and then realized we had something pretty good.

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What Seven Shot Tennis is about, well, what did you do in that match you just played? And so that's

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where we get more to the granular part about, you know, how points came to an end, what happened

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getting to the end of the point. And putting all of that into something that if people go to our app,

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which is seven shot tennis app.com, you can go into the classic matches and look at some of the stuff

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we have there to get an idea of what we do. We work, we'll work with anybody, but we have a target

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out against some trying to get more college folks involved. And we're currently working with a

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couple of kids who are from different areas who are good enough to get to Caledazoo and

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they just both finish playing winter nationals and we put together four or five of their matches and

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turn around and feed them back information. The key thing that has really moved us along with

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Seven Shot Tennis was when you go to what we call the breakdown and you see all these numbers and

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you say, what do we do with all this stuff? What you got to do is click on one of the numbers and

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if you want to go look at videos for what those numbers represent, you learn very quickly what's

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going on. And so to back up a little bit, take a step back. I've seen this, Bobby's had a brief glance

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at it, but I know he wants to dive further into it. What is the three sentence version of what is

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Seven Shot Tennis? It's match charting. Okay, the basic philosophy to Seven Shot Tennis.

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Okay. And the first thing was what, how did the point come to an end? And it's either a plus or

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a minus. One of the things that drives me crazy is watching matches on TV and they give you all the

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stats at the end of the set or a match. And you added all up and said, wait a minute, there's a lot

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of missing points there. Yeah, you gave me all the winners and all these aces and everything and

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you gave me some unforced errors, but you're missing about a third of the points, most of which

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would be points that you had to make a decision. Was that a forced error or an unforced error?

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And somehow this is stymied the people that do this sort of stuff. And we think, well,

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if you don't agree with this, just tell us what happened to discussion and that would probably

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be pretty good to have a discussion. If you think that was forced and you think it was unforeseen,

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we thought it was forced. That can lead to a good discussion. But most people will like the idea

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that they get credit for hitting a good shot even for one of the winner. And there are more of those

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in most cases. In most cases, probably more of those forcing type shots than outright winners.

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So the philosophy is that it end as a plus or a minus minus being an unforeseen plus forcing shot,

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winner, fluke, that chord, that sort of thing. Then the next thing is, well, who did it?

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Who did the plus? Who did the minus? And the next three things, well, what was the stroke?

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Anybody can identify four hands and back hands. But the next thing is we'll worry to go.

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And that's where when you get our website, you look up and see, gee, there's this quarteter that has

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one, two, three up the middle and four, five, six over on the sides and what we call singles

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alleys. And then there's this touch zone up at the neck, what we call the seven.

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It doesn't take very long to figure out that if you're a pretty good player, you hit closer to

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the baseline than the service line. And if you're a really good player, you hit most of your winning

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shots into the singles alleys, cross-board, deep, short, or down the line. That's the four, five, six.

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And if you're good luck at you, in an occasional good drop shot that lands in the seven.

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If you're just mediocre, you're living your life in the two. You get it over the service line,

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but it never comes anywhere near the baseline. And there you are. So how can you improve your gain?

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First thing you do to improve your gain, take advantage of the technology that's out there today.

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There's a lot of it. Put a camera or a phone up on top of the fence,

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behind the court, make sure it's angled appropriately and video you're matched.

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You can figure out a lot of stuff on your own. Send us the link to the video,

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we can break it down and give you. I'm not too difficult with looking at it, but there's all kinds

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of ways you can filter things. And so within this complicated scenario, what your offer is,

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what you do for the tennis player is if I send you a video, you're going to chart my match.

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And the way I'm simplifying is say, but you're going to not just chart my match with what happened.

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You're going to chart my match with exactly what happened that also essentially includes advice.

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Correct? Excuse me. I'm sorry. Advice. Meaning here's where you can improve. Here's what.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah, we put together a game plan. Okay. But the big thing is every point we chart gets

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linked to a video for that point. So let's say a match has 140 points. That's 140 videos, all of which

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we'll have a caption that says this was a plus. And so I can clip, I can clip to any, I can, you link to

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every clip. And I say, well, this is, it looks like it went to the only one that went to seven. Cool.

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What happened there? And you will show me that point. Exactly. Exactly. That's cool. And then, yeah,

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you, we have a score card, which I think is really neat, but most people want to go straight to the video.

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But you can, you can filter all kinds of things. You know, I want to see all four hands and back

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hands that went to the four thing out for this one or for both players. I want to see all, you know,

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I see a lot of kids who and I said kids college kids as well. I haven't got a clue.

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Gee, I had a great four hand, but you know, I hit 11 backhand errors and eight of them were in the net.

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Not a very good correction if you're aware of it. So where is the person? Yeah. And in that case,

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it's something that isn't in every obvious match charting system because, well, the conversation,

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you made an error on your back, on your back. Yeah. So the conversation here where we talk about your

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uniqueness that says, okay, you've got it, it's not just match charting. It is match charting with

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better information, more specific information as though it's coming from a coach instead of a computer.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. There's another part of what we do that goes hand in hand with that,

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which is we tag points. And what I mean by that, usually I use five tags. The first one is what we

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call impact serves. Now that's my way of saying serve plus one. You know, with that term,

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yeah, the sort of high enough impact that the next shot or two that you got, you were able to

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feed off of that and win the point. So then you have impact returns. One of the things that we see

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a lot of and some of the other people who are in this this world, players who are developing go crazy

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thinking they're going to hit great returns as serve. I'd really rather see the player get through a

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match with maybe one good return in one air or something like that. Whether they're getting the ball

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back in play and now can you really play tennis. So then we look at impact shots that were shots

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beyond the serve and return. And sometimes the player makes a really significant defensive play.

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I like to show that to players and they can feel good even if it's awesome. Hey, you really play good

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defense. You stole this point from this guy. And then the fifth category that I use a lot lately,

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particularly with some of these kids that we see going to Calviz, some of the college kids is

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what we call points of interest, which is usually where I was saying you should look at this point.

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These points figure out what you did that you shouldn't have done. Like

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macho returns, we discovered that a little bit with return of serve, but there's also the macho attack,

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which is very, very popular these days, which is I'm going to hit the ball as hard as I can. I'm

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three feet behind the baseline and I'm going to run to the net as fast as I can.

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And whoops, the guy hit it back at my feet. I'm not even at the service line yet.

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And I pop it up and this guy gets a passing shot. That's the macho attack. Whereas when you're

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a little bit more than say two and a half three feet inside the baseline, you get the same shot,

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you get in, you probably win the point on that out right or you got a pretty simple volley or overhead.

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That's a tactical aspect of things. And so we we we filter things by tactics.

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The eye in the baseline neutral and deep. I'm not really sure what neutral was anymore, but it's

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an old term that you can use it for a long time. People understand it. Yeah. And in front of the

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baseline is maneuver, attack and conclude maneuver trying to get the other player out of the

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middle to court, attacking the player, trying to get to the net, including winning the point.

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All along the way you could be put on defense anywhere in there and make adjustments to the

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data. No, and that's good. And I'm fairly familiar with it. So I hope I'm not missing something. Bobby,

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I'm sure you've got questions. No, I mean, the same thing I'd like to just simplify. So coach,

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if you're somebody comes, you said, what's the you want to improve your game? What's the number one

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thing you do first before you do anything else? What do you do from a tactical game standpoint? What would

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you tell them? The most frequent error we see. Just a general question. I mean, the general question,

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you're trying to hit too many good shots from the wrong place in the court. You make, I'll go back

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to the first time I chart a match. The kid that I was working with made 51 on forced errors.

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Most of those were from behind the baseline into the net. The kid she was playing made 39 on forced

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errors. That's a lot. So the score was something like five and four. Went home, we looked at all the stuff.

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This was long before video. And we worked and we worked and we worked. Six weeks later, she played

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the same kid. There was no significant change in her strokes other than she wasn't hitting the

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ball in the net anymore. She wasn't hitting them straight down the middle long to enough spin to

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get that down. And the score was 6061. And she was often running and became one a couple of

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gold balls was in all American in one year and then decided to turn from. It was not because of my

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great understanding of the game. It was what the game was telling us when we actually wrote stuff

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down. And then that created understanding a communication between the two of us. So this is

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largely what we're trying to do now with Savage Odd is help players and their coaches communicate

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with one another better. It has a language to it. And Bobby, this reminds me of a similar conversation

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we had recently where the number you can't you can't argue with the math, right? Can't argue with

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the numbers. I mean, players will don't give me wrong. I'm sure Dave has seen that too. But to be

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able to as a coach go to the player and say this is the problem and point to it as opposed to I feel

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like you didn't do this enough, right? It's no longer about feelings. We have the data. Yeah.

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You know what, sweetie? You hit 51 balls in the net. You can figure out why you lost. So let's get

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to work. Yeah. You hit it right on the head. And it's as simple as that. We're trying to do a lot of

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things with what we do have. We're trying to aggregate matches and give them over a four or five

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match period. You know, what will be your aggregate stuff? And you can go right to the video and see

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that. That's coming out in a couple of weeks. This I think college coaches appreciate because

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they can see how to have my player playing now six weeks into the season versus where we had the

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player at the beginning of the season. And the same thing. And Bobby works with more high school

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players than I do, which I think should be should be prime for this, right, Bobby? So how do you get them

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from your point of view to say this is this is going to be good for your development? Well, I'm with Dave.

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I think essentially you've made the college coach's life unbelievable eases between UTR and now do I

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mean to me the analytics is great, but if the college level if they still need to be told, we have

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bigger issues. I would love to see this started at a younger age, you know, and just because of

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high school tennis, you have such a, you know, too many times the coach is not what you call a

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qualified coach. He's the band instructor. He wants to make a couple extra thousand dollars a year.

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Down here, he plays out there. So he has some familiarity with how to score a tennis game. So

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boom, we're going to make him the tennis coach and, you know, all the bad habits just continually get

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reinforced. How do we make this part of a package to a school to say, Hey, look, you know, we're going

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to do how many matches for you or just one match because I would think you, you know, as you said,

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first time you get it, things are not dramatically different from the last match they played. Nor will

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they be dramatically different from to the next match they played. Other than we're giving you a

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benchmark in now's the time to try to improve in the next match. Yeah, high school tennis, it's an

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area that I want to crack into a little bit more. The kid that maybe so many high school players are

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not as committed as the kids, the small percentage of kids who play all the big tournaments and everything.

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But you want these, I mean, over my period of watching this stuff, a lot of times is that kid that's

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still playing 20, 30, 40 years later, as opposed to the big star, this is, yeah, no, I don't want

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anybody beating me that would never would have beaten me. So I'm like, I'll play anymore. Yeah, I don't

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play anymore for that reason. Yeah, yeah. Well, there you go. You understand what I'm saying.

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Keep my record intact. Exactly.

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But we're marketing to what we've proven, especially the division one player, quits.

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Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For some of the players never pick up a rocket again. So we're introducing them to

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something that ends with them, unfortunately. I just think if we got the kid, and I was very fortunate,

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I don't know whether I was a pitcher in baseball and undersized pitcher in baseball. So I wasn't

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overpowering anybody. I had to get out people out by hitting spots on the on the plate, always changing

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speech. You know, there was from the day I started, my father, you know, taught me different things

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because he's like, you're not going to be big. So we got to figure out different ways. And I took

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that to tennis and I could see little things of balance and that always, you know, seemingly we're

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natural to me that I didn't realize I had a big advantage of other people. I just didn't have the

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stroke repetitions that I needed. But I would love to interject this to the kids because I always talk

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about with the chess idea that, you know, you're not winning too many times with a pawn. And what I was

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going to do is, you know, simplifying the game to the look, hit it deeper, like you said. And the two

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most important shots of tennis are get your first serve in and put pressure. Again, not like you said,

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don't even say hit a winner. Put pressure on your opponent's second serve. And if you can do that

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effectively, you probably have a very good chance of winning. So let's start by simplifying it and

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here are the numbers that prove what I'm saying. You got it. That's that. That's that's exactly

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the same thing we're seeing. And it's not rocket science. People people think they're going to get

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some intricate plan of, you know, hit the over here and hit up high to the back end and hit all this stuff,

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you know, you got to learn your, you got to learn yourself first. What do you do? And now you can

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start thinking about, you know, learning the opponent. Then you're, you're pretty good at that point.

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So we try to help that along. That's that's our whole reason for being.

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I like the idea because it also puts a accountability with the coaches who are teaching blast off.

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And, you know, I get the kids I call them, they go from crazy to lay, a lazy to crazy, you know,

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they don't move their feet and then you get on them a little bit and now they're swinging from,

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you know, and hitting the fence. It's like, whoa, we're trying to now go the locks. Where's,

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where's just right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I like it. Just hit the two extremes. How do we get you to

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just right? Yeah, that's, um, as is, well, as a former teaching pro and you guys are still at it.

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I'm still trying to think I'm in the education business. This is what you're trying to teach people.

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How you can become better and in your performance, it just, one of the things I do really feel good

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about UTRs, you could lose a match. But if you had a good score against some guy that maybe was supposed

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to beat you worse, you got better. Well, same thing in this sort of thing, your performance, losing a

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match, you might be the best you've ever played and you should know the things that you did well and

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continue to work on those things that, yeah, that's where the, that's where the data matters,

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especially as a coach to be able to go to a player and say, yep, you lost, but look at this,

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look at the improvement, look at all of these things that have changed for the better. Yeah,

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and I like your example of UTR. You can take a loss, but your UTR goes up depending on what was

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expected to happen in that match. And I think with data like what you have and the advice that

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comes with it, like I said, it's not just charting from a magic app where it does it automatically

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and it's not just charting from your mom and dad, clicking the right buttons in the app.

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It really is advice. It really is coaching that comes with it that says, these are the,

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these are the mistakes, but they're also a choice. It's a targeted mistake that you're able to go

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through and you offer the service. So if I send in my video, you offer the service that you will go

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through it as though you are my coach and you will tell me which shot went where. And then I can also

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hire you to essentially be my coach and we can talk about it. Is that all? We like talking to

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parents. We like talking to their coaches and just let's just all get on the same page. I kind of

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want to understand, you know, what are you guys thinking about and what are we seeing and how does

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all that match up? Yeah, sorry for the leading question. We have your seven shot tennis system

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in our shop online. We already promote it. So I gave the leading question there to make it a

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little obvious like I didn't already know. But in this case, we really like the concept because

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it can help a coach like Bobby because he really knows what's going on within that information to

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be a helpful player. But it can also help the band instructor tennis coach at the high school

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that doesn't know too much because just by experiencing this information, he's going to know,

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he or she you're going to know more. That's very well said. Absolutely. All right, I'm hired.

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I'm hired. Bobby is hired me to be a sales guy. I love it from the perspective also, especially with

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high school coaches that the kids usually have other coaches. And then this is one of my big

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drives. I know I wish we could figure out how to do and Dave, you seem very successful at this.

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So hear me out on this and come up with your next great idea. How do we, you know, in a basketball

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game, the kid does something that the coach doesn't want him to do. You get to call time out or the

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next whistle. You get to say, son, come right over here and sit next to me for a while. And the

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kid gets to know what he did wrong. And if you don't want to do it my way or the right way, per say,

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this is where you're going to be continually sitting until we do make that adjustment.

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Tennis match, you got kids come in from other coaches. So the high school coaches dismissed.

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Why am I my full time coach? I think it could help the high school coaches credibility. Number one,

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to say, hey, look, this is an outside body telling us this. And it's a great way to try to interject

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that sense of you're not doing this. It's the old you're blowing it kid. It's my favorite line in

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in boxing history when Angelo Dundee looked at Sugar Ray Leonard into 12th round or the 11th

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round said, you know, you're blowing this kid Tommy Harnes is beating you in the next two round

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Sugar Ray went out and he's from close to you Dave. So, you know, in Maryland, but, you know, and I

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just remember that and I love that. And I feel like tennis misses out on so much of that interaction

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with this could help, you know, help solidify a coach play a relationship. And by the way,

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Sugar Ray got involved in tennis too. Yeah. Sponsoring some players up in our area back in the day.

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Anytime you can collaborate with someone else, you got to keep one thing in mind of Bobby and

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and well, maybe this is only my experience. Every teaching pro I've ever met and almost every college

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coach I've ever met, you got to understand they're absolute geniuses.

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Yeah, we've met all of them too. They're they're they're total experts. So be prepared to try to

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absorb the pearls of wisdom that are coming at you. And I was afraid you were going to say that.

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Yeah, and well, I'm going to key in on the word collaboration because that's where that's what

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go tennis wants to be is a force for good for tennis, but a force for collaboration. Say, guys,

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why don't we all realize we're all geniuses. So let's treat each other as though we each have

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something to say or we've we each have an expertise or as a coach, you know what? I don't want to chart

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this kids match. So let Dave do it. Yeah, yeah, right. Get the information work together because,

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you know, seven shot tennis isn't coming for your job. They're there to help. And I think people need

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to hear that. I love it for the perspective also to get the kid back on the court. And I agree with

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some Dave said earlier, you know, a couple of the most what it it wasn't just tennis specific,

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but events where I quote unquote lost. I walked off feeling damn I did a pretty good job. And I

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think that's a great way to show somebody, you know, hey, look, you know, and we had it in baseball.

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I pitched a two hit or I lost six to four. How the heck do you pitch a two hit or lose six, you know,

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give up six runs or a lot of things went wrong that day. So you still walk off of there saying we did a

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lot of things right. We're building in the right direction. And instead of being so myopic,

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you know, I we deal with this with parents of 12 year olds. We're getting ready for the orange

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ball. And I'm like great. He's 12. What, you know, maybe shouldn't we shouldn't be worried about the

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orange ball and oh, by the way, and I'm going to say this out loud, we might have to delete it.

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Your five foot three and your wife is five foot one chances are your kids not going to be playing at

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Wimbledon. I don't want to be the, you know, the downer on this Debbie downer, but these are just facts.

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You know, let's let's get them to 16. Let's see how nature takes over and give them the best chance

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to succeed rather than feed, you know, just kill kids with wins and losses. I'm not Dave. I'm not

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cutting that out. I am absolutely going to crop it out and I'm going to make Bobby the most famous

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Debbie downer. But I do want to jump rule at the end here. I want to jump to my favorite question

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if you don't mind Dave and you know it's coming. So I'll jump right into it. But if you were king of

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tennis and we've talked about a lot of things and a lot of people have their own expertise, their own

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mindset, you come from a match analysis point of view. It doesn't have to be from that. It can be

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completely different. This can be professional college, junior, social, anything, anything in your

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in your mind that you can come up with. If you were king of tennis, is there anything you would do

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or change? Yeah, I just want to see tennis be more fair for everybody. And I think there's some

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things that I hate. Please don't cut this out. I hate 10 point matchbreakers. Okay.

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Only for the purpose of shortening things up for the provider who's running the event. I don't like

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no ad because there's a lot of luck involved. I mean, it's not that so much luck. Usually the serving

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player is going to win the no ad, you know, the the time breaker point. But I think there's other options

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where if you, if time is of the essence, short it down to many sets, but let the kids play

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the real one, but then you split or you can do something I call a micro set instead of a timebreaker.

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You know, let's just play play. Go someone breaks serve two more games, you know, get to

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play and see if somebody can hold break serve and hold serve and that's going to end it. But if you

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get to two all, I will come up with some kind of way to break it. Four point tie breaker works very

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well. Let's just get to it. So that's that's a far with the king. There would be no 10 point tie break.

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There'd be no 10 10 game process, no eight game process either standard tennis.

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Many sets if you want to do the eight game just do two, too many sets.

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Sets is so much, you know, a chance to reset. You know, you can reset when you get to do it. You can

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reset at the end of the set. And let's just do that. Okay, if everybody do that, I'll be happy.

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I like it, Bobby. He came with a solution. It isn't just a thing that he doesn't like. He also says,

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here are the alternatives, which we appreciate with the King of Tennis.

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Well, there you have it. We want to thank reGeovinate.com for use of the studio and signature tennis for

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their support. And be sure to hit that follow button for more racket sports content. You can go to

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See you next time.

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