[oldalum]

On coaching during matches:

I know when Stanford players have to play each other in a tournament, there is a strict no-coaching rule. I don't remember the coaches being completely absent from NCAA singles play, my impression is they are definitely more restrained about lending advice than they are during team play.  Maybe they are trying to encourage more self-reliance when the only thing at stake is their individual success, which is not true during a team match. For me, one of the most enjoyable parts of tennis is the need to continually analyze, especially at changeovers, what's working for you and what's not, what's working for your opponent and how to try to counter it. Makes it more than just thwacking a ball over a net. The most enjoyable wins are when your opponent is equally or more skillful than you at hitting the ball, but you are able to figure out during the match how to play them most effectively.

I really liked the recent pro tournaments when the intra-match coaching visits were televised, it was really interesting and informative to hear what they had to say, which was a mixture of one or two tactical things and some encouragement. It was startling to me, hearing the players talk in those visits, how un-confident some of them were--I always thought of pro players as necessarily supremely confident but I was wrong.

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The singles seemed to me to be about as drama-free as an NCAA final can be. Lord, Lampl, and Shin . . . got through the three second sets in good order. There was never much cause for real worry in those three matches. 

Probably just my nature, but I felt some drama there toward the end. Lord completely imploded while losing two games toward the end of the second set, and if she had lost that deciding point that won her the match, she easily could have lost that set (I would have expected her to turn it around in the third set, but you never know--she had two 2-set losses against that player in previous matches). Lampl starting making errors when she was close to closing it out, as did Shin. Given that at those times we were losing on two courts, and Higuchi was either getting pulled into a tiebreaker or down a break in the second set to a player that had dominated her in their previous meeting, I was getting a little tense there! Had we not won the doubles point, I would have been even more stressed then.

I think the 4-0 final score is a little misleading: had all the matches been played out, it probably would have been 5-2 or 4-3.

[oldalum]

On coaching during matches:

I know when Stanford players have to play each other in a tournament, there is a strict no-coaching rule. I don't remember the coaches being completely absent from NCAA singles play, my impression is they are definitely more restrained about lending advice than they are during team play.  Maybe they are trying to encourage more self-reliance when the only thing at stake is their individual success, which is not true during a team match. For me, one of the most enjoyable parts of tennis is the need to continually analyze, especially at changeovers, what's working for you and what's not, what's working for your opponent and how to try to counter it. Makes it more than just thwacking a ball over a net. The most enjoyable wins are when your opponent is equally or more skillful than you at hitting the ball, but you are able to figure out during the match how to play them most effectively.

I really liked the recent pro tournaments when the intra-match coaching visits were televised, it was really interesting and informative to hear what they had to say, which was a mixture of one or two tactical things and some encouragement. It was startling to me, hearing the players talk in those visits, how un-confident some of them were--I always thought of pro players as necessarily supremely confident but I was wrong.

---

The singles seemed to me to be about as drama-free as an NCAA final can be. Lord, Lampl, and Shin . . . got through the three second sets in good order. There was never much cause for real worry in those three matches. 

Probably just my nature, but I felt some drama there toward the end. Lord completely imploded while losing two games toward the end of the second set, and if she had lost that deciding point that won her the match, she easily could have lost that set (I would have expected her to turn it around in the third set, but you never know--she had two 2-set losses against that player in previous matches). Lampl starting making errors when she was close to closing it out, as did Shin. Given that at those times we were losing on two courts, and Higuchi was either getting pulled into a tiebreaker or down a break in the second set to a player that had dominated her in their previous meeting, I was getting a little tense there! Had we not won the doubles point, I would have been even more stressed then.

I think the 4-0 final score is a little misleading: had all the matches been played out, it probably would have been 5-2 or 4-3.