Playback, Miami 1990: Complete like Edberg, dress like Agassi
No tennis in the Corona break - the opportunity to pull in a few classics and make plans. For example, to go online more.
by Florian Goosmann
last edit: Mar 30, 2020, 04:42 pm
No tennis in sight - safe until June 7th. And when you hear the birds chirping on the roofs , even beyond. The best opportunity to reminisce. Or even refresh them. And it has never been easier than today.
TennisTV is the key word here. The great colleagues from the USA have been opening their archives for years, there is always the "Classics" for the current tournament; it is only rarely possible to pay close attention to these in tournament operations. That is now the end.
Miami semi-finals 1990. A quick look back: Ivan Lendl was world number one at the time and thus top placed ahead of Boris Becker, Horst Skoff was at the height of his work. And Emilio Sanchez played one of his best tournaments on hard court, with victories over Skoff and Lendl. Becker lost to Jean-Philippe Fleurian early on.
Last Friday in the living room in the beautiful southern Palatinate: serve for Stefan Edberg against Emilio Sanchez , and already in the first rally you can see once again why Edberg is considered the best serve-and-volleyball player of all time. The Swede plunges a forehand return from Sanchez spectacularly, and in the further course of the match he serves 99 percent on the Spaniard's backhand.
Sanchez, who always had the feeling that he had to get more length in the stroke, play a larger stick than the Head Prestige (with a playing surface of only 600 cm²) is helpless. Edberg's kick serve on the backhand presented him with unsolvable problems. When in doubt, Edberg moved up with a high attack on Sanchez's backhand or a solid slice - and completed it.
Edberg's backhand tactic against "Poor Sanchez"
It is fascinating from today's point of view: How nimble Edberg appears on the net, thanks to his perfect kick serve and the leap forward, and usually already takes the first volley within the T-field. You know all this (if you are of the appropriate age) and are still amazed, perhaps because you can no longer see this tennis today. As "Poor Sanchez" commentator Mary Carillo describes poor Emilio, who has to feel like we are when the helpless backhand is tortured throughout. Sanchez has to play serve-and-volley himself (in order to forestall Edberg on the way to the net), which he can of course (he made one of the world's best doubles with Sergio Casal), but which is not enough for an entire match. Result: a 6: 1, 7: 5 for Edberg, which actually seemed much smoother.
So the final against Andre Agassi , who may be wearing his most iconic outfit , the Nike lava look. Agassi has lost the previous matches against Edberg, shortly before Edberg had won in Indian Wells.
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Agassi still looks like a player of the new generation, could basically keep up today. Is Agassi or Djokovic the best return player ever? How you take it. Agassi takes the balls early and takes risks, Djokovic specializes in playing the return as long as possible in front of the server's feet in order to set the ball change to zero. For Edberg, the permanent backhand tactic as against "Poor Sanchez" against Agassi would be fatal, he has to vary a little more, but comes against Agassi's service throw-in at the time when he returned to the rallies. In the end, Agassi won smoothly, 6: 1, 6: 4, 0: 6, 6: 2 and won his first Masters tournament.
In any case, his breakthrough came in 1990: A few months later, Agassi reached the final of the French Open, late summer the US Open, both ended in defeats, in Paris against Andre Gomez and a fight with his wig, in New York against Pete Sampras .
Edberg, on the other hand, wins for the second time in Wimbledon (against Boris Becker) in July and is crowned number 1 in the world for the first time on August 13.
What to take?
But what does all this mean for your own game? Let's face it: it's too late for the two-handed backhand of Agassi, and for (long) hair too. But not for a new tactic.
However, my plan for the 2020 season (when the seats are open again at some point) is clear: I want to discover the inner Edberg within me. From then on, it says. True to the motto: result doesn't matter!