Well, here we go... the 2011 season is almost upon us. Are you ready? I am a complete tennis nut and I must side with the players by saying this all-too-short off-season is ridiculous. I'm not ready.
But I'm guessing Roger and the rest of the boys are... Roger spent most of his time working with coach Paul Annacone and hitting partner Stefan Koubek in Dubai intensely preparing for the Abu Dhabi exhibition tournament and the Australian summer swing.
I doubtlessly need to remind you that Roger has a ton of points to defend right out of the gates as he is the defending champion in Melbourne - but if Roger has proved anything in his legendary career it is that it's complete folly to ever count him out. We could easily blink and he's collecting Slam #17.
Interesting to note... if he fails in his attempt to win the Australian Open it will mark the first time since winning his maiden Slam at Wimbledon in 2003 that he will not be the holder of at least one Slam title on tour.
Says Paul Annacone via Steve Flink's wonderful article: The big effect that I have as one of the guys that coaches Roger is that his playpen or toolkit is so deep. He has got lots of different clubs in his golf bag, so part of my job is figuring out how he can best use those. Today’s game is different than it was ten years ago in terms of style of play and the slower courts and the heavier balls and the different strings in the rackets. There are a lot of things that make it very different in terms of how to play offensive tennis. So philosophically for me as a coach it is different from when Pete was playing or even when Tim was playing. Roger’s biggest asset is that he can do so many things at the highest level and he still has that over everybody in the world. No one today can play the variety of styles at the level Roger does. That is just fact. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way towards Rafa or Djokovic or Murray or anybody; that is just the way it is. For me it is figuring out how to do what is best for Roger and to make sure in his mind that he sees that [aggression] as an opportunity and a position of strength versus a necessity.
From Stefan Koubek's Google translated blog entry on TennisNet: Training with Roger was, as always: a lot of impact exercises that are simply in very intense that he plays very heavy, very quickly and very accurately, towards the end a lot of points. Two players serve, one returned. Or two pure-play the ball while standing, is a right / left, that the exercises you stop playing when there are three of the square. What training with Roger so intense and so does so efficiently? That one just always one hundred percent to play. If we do not do when you badly at the ball is or is not focused well, that's just too fast, which falls immediately ... and of course, is against someone like Roger then quickly embarrassing.
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