Tough Loss

We lost today 6-1 7-6 (7-5). The first set was over in about 10 minutes. Unfortunately, I served much worse this match than the previous. Hans felt he could have played better as well, but it’s my responsibility to look at myself and my game to assess where I need to be better. I’m a strong guy, I lift 4 times a week, I’m athletic, I’m close to 6’4, I shouldn’t be having terrible serving days like the one I had today. I understand that everyone has off days, but I feel like I should be having fewer of them. I’ll need to think back to the matches I’ve served well this year and remember how I practiced them leading up to the tournament and my mindset. Once I figure that part out, I’ll be implementing it all week during this upcoming training week, and we will see how the results fare in the following week in Winnipeg . All good servers only focus on one or two specific things that work for them, and I have to continue to work to find the keys they work for me. John Isner told me that he only focuses on his toss and going up for the ball. Kevin Anderson only focuses on his toss. He said “even if other things feel out of sync with my serve, the right toss will allow me to hit my spot on my serve. “ Maybe I’m not tossing the ball in the correct spot like I think I am. I’ll have to check the match tape and see. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to check the last match tape because it had an error in saving to the ATP Livestream cloud (that happens sometimes). One of my opponents I played today served very well. He hit quite a few aces. I asked him about his mindset when he’s serving very well. He was also the one that reached the quarter finals of Wimbledon in doubles a couple of years ago. He said “when I’m serving really well, I usually don’t think about it. When I think about it too much, I don’t serve well. I feel like the most important serve is the second serve. If I hit the second serve well, I feel less pressure to make the first.” That advice is something I’ll consider as well. Chris Eubanks serves very well. He said when “ when I’m serving at my best, I normally focus on having the toss to the right, go up for the ball as it stops in the air, and throw my body weight into the ball.”

My number 1 priority is to make sure that I consistently serve well rather than only serving well 65 percent of the time. Outside of my serve, I’ll look to build continuity with Max. Max Schnur and I will try for the US Open together instead of me and Evan King. Evan is focused on mainly singles, and his schedule will take him either to Europe or Asia right before the US Open. Max is a doubles guy that was top 100 just 2 years ago. He’s a very good player, he’s very analytical, and he loves to watch film to better understand the game. I’m excited to be playing with Max for the next 6 weeks and hopefully the US Open. It will be nice to improve as a unit each day. We will be practicing together, doing gym together, doing plyometric workouts together, and we will be doing film study together. Our goal is to stay consistent with our work and trust our process of getting better over the next 6 weeks, and we will see how the results fall. I’ll post a bio of Max either later today or tomorrow.

I’m currently still in Milan, and I’m in the process of making my way back to the United States. I’ll take a train from Milan, Italy to Zurich, Switzerland. I’ll take a flight from Zurich to New Jersey. I’ll stay in New York for a day and fly to Orlando the following day. Max and I will have our training week there as it’s important for me to use the athletic trainers for treatment on my wrist. After our training week, we will play in Canada for two weeks and on the west coast of America for the next 4. It would be awesome if some of you could help me out a little with my hotel costs during my training week in Orlando. Traveling expenses are the most brutal and where we lose the most money. Literally anything towards the hotel cost would help. I look forward to informing everyone on our training week and the things that we learn along the way. See you in a few days.