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The amazing thing with tennis is that Nadal for instance, he receives 20 balls on the trot from his opponent that are all different but he makes it look as if they’re regular. It’s quite amazing. A beginner player... they would play say 10 different strokes in their attempt to get it back. But Nadal can overcome the irregularity of the bounce and make it look as if it’s absolutely the same ball. It’s the same stroke he uses, you see, so it is amazing what people can do.

Nadal at Roland Garros
Source: sportsillustrated.cnn.com
Photo: Bob Martin

But regularity is important from the machine - because otherwise you can’t set a task properly. You’re fooling the player and you don’t want to fool him. It’s the same as a tennis coach. A tennis coach usually is very regular in his feeding. If he’s not, he’s not a very good coach.

Yeah.

And so you always know a good coach because he can encourage his player by not deliberately fooling him. I’ve just come back from France where I was watching a person help his wife. He was on court and he was hitting the ball to her and she was doing very well, but of course she wasn’t very regular in her returns. And at one stage he lost patience with the fact that he was running like a blue **** person. And he lost his temper, and so he wacked the next one as hard as he could. That wasn’t what a coach should do, but it’s what everybody feels when somebody else is irregular with things. It’s even what they do when they’re playing the game and the person is messing them around. They want to whack the ball.

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