Farmers Classic – Fleming, Kosakowski, Smyczek

Written by: Tennischiro on 27th July 2011

Farmers Classic – Fleming, Kosakowski, Smyczek |

A Small World

Well, I got back to the Farmer’s Tennis Classic after a couple of days watching one of my student’s lose a long three set final in LA Junior Metropolitan Championships, teaching a couple of lessons at Griffith Park and lugging my equipment around Southern California to work with more kids down in Seal Beach on Monday afternoon.

Sunday, Doyeob Kim came back to win the 2nd set in that Junior Metro final, but ultimately, he made way too many unforced errors and the Westside’s Jonah Feit swept him away in the third set, 6-3. Then I had a couple of lessons with 2 brothers just learning to play. On Monday I traveled down to Peter Smith’s Tennis Academy to help out in his clinic with motivated youngsters as young as 10 years old who are spending at least 3 hours a day during summer vacation out in the sun working on their tennis games These kids are so far away from the level we see at the Farmers Tennis Classic that it isn’t even on the scale, but their hopes and dreams may not be dissimilar from the same ones these players at UCLA had when they were learning to play. And as a tennis spectator, or as a coach, certain truths seem to come through at every level. In the learning environment, no matter how many shots a kid may miss (and they usually miss a lot more than they make), when that kid actually hits the ball correctly and feels it and learns something new, the joy of that moment wipes out all the pain of all those mistakes. Every kid can walk away from that learning environment a winner if they have the right attitude.

On the other hand, the competitive environment is another story. Counting qualifying this weekend, there are 56 players entered in the Farmers Tennis Classic. Only one will walk away a winner. One of the kids in Seal Beach is Peter’s son, Tanner. The day before, he and his dad had battled through a 120 degree heat index to a 3rd set match point in the finals of the National Father/Son Claycourts in Cincinnati. Tanner made a great backhand return on match point, but his opponent reflexed the ball off the net for a letcord winner and went on to win 4-6, 6-4, 7-5. The opponents, the Morse Karzens, Sr. and Jr., had won the National Grass Courts just a week before by almost the identical score: 6-7, 6-3, 7-5. (Better check them for PERF’s – performance enhancing rabbit’s feet!) Peter Smith already has a few championships to his name, but this would have been a first for the younger Smith. What he accomplished in Cincy is tremendous, but losses like that really hurt. We can try to be philosophical all we want, but I was worried it would be a while before Tanner looks positively on that experience. But when I talked to Peter this morning in Salt Lake where he is coaching 16 Zonals, he mentioned Tanner was already taking good things from it. Peter teaches, “The more you try to control winning, the more winning controls you.” You try to do the right things and let the chips fall where they may.

And thrilling as the winners are to experience in person, there is still a lot of grief inherent in pulling for a tennis competitor because so much of the match is decided by errors, forced and unforced. I try to be philosophical about it. The match is really another learning experience. And I’m not just being philosophical; that’s true. But there is a reason many parents can’t watch their children play tennis: it is the death of a thousand cuts. Unforced errors would play a key role in the matches I was watching. I was emotionally attached to a couple of these players and I knew I was in for a tough day!

I settled in to a nice spot on the grandstand court in the shade on the south baseline. There were higher ranked players on center court (and Malisse/Gulbis would turn out to be a tremendous match), but I wanted to see the new kids on the block like Ryan Harrison who had just semi’d in Atlanta and our local prodigies, new NCAA champ Stevie Johnson from USC and UCLA’s Daniel Kosakowski with both of whom I had a small, if tenuous, connection. As I was settling in, I heard the announcer say they were honoring UCLA alum and ’79 and “83 champion, Peter Fleming.

Tennis is about forehands, backhands, serves and volleys; winners and errors and aces and double faults. But it is also about people. What makes sports fascinating is the people and it’s the people we cheer for, that we become fans of. So I want you to experience these people a little bit as I have been privileged to do over the last 40 plus years. One of the problems we have in American tennis is we don’t know enough about our players because they haven’t performed well enough to be subjected to the microscopic scrutiny that comes with a prolonged stay in the world’s top ten or a victory in a major championship. Oh you probably know who Andy Roddick and Mardy Fish are married to and that the Bryans are musicians as well as tennis players, but I doubt you know much at all about Sweeting, Russell, Harrison or even Ginepri who was a US Open semifinalist. My experience may be a little outdated, but I hope to use it to add just a little color to your vision of the tennis world. It spans the globe, but in reality, it’s a very small world.

It’s a small world – Peter Fleming.

So back to Peter Fleming. I’m 1-0 with Peter. I met Peter in the round of 16s in the 1971 Eastern Indoors. Okay, he was only 16 years old and I was probably still taller than he was, but it was a men’s open event. I got him 6-1 in the third. And as I recall, he was pretty upset. I guess I was a bad loss. I had no idea he would go on to be top 10 in the world in singles and one of the all-time great doubles players as well as the LA Champion in 1979. I would not have any significant contact with Peter again until 1987 when he partnered with Tony Forstmann, Jr, the son of the sponsor of the Huggy Bears pro-am. That was the third year of our event and we really got off the ground with a $1.2 million dollar calcutta and a $300,000 first prize of which a third went to the players. So there was big money at stake. We had terrible weather and we had to play most of the tournament indoors. I distinctly remember Tony Jr. telling me about the match. He and Peter were playing Pancho Segura (67 years old) and Kevin Curren. They lost 6-7, 6-2, 6-3. Tony had played for the JV team at Yale. After the match, he came to me and said how surreal the whole thing was. There he was playing this quarterfinal match for serious money sitting on the bench on change of sides with Fleming, Curren and Segura – just one of the boys!

The chiropractor I work with today in Burbank and Thousand Oaks, Dr. Richard Gerardo, was a good friend of Tony Jr. I had Richard come to the tournament as the tournament chiropractor the first ten years of the HB and Tony was a patient of Dr. G. He made sure Dr. G got Peter in good shape for his matches that week. Peter liked Dr. G’s care so much that he ended up bringing him out on the tour during the next year before he retired. Then, when Peter was coaching Johnny Mac, he was instrumental in Dr. G becoming John’s chiropractor and working with him. Peter has a daughter now playing for the UCLA team and to this day, when he comes to visit Los Angeles, he tries to schedule a treatment with Dr. G!

Just this weekend, Dr. Gerardo made a trip back to NY to collaborate with a doctor there on a book and visit with his old friend, Tony Forstmann, Jr. Small world, indeed.

But you really want me to get to the matches:

Kosakowski/Smyczek

The first match on grandstand was Kosakowski against Tim Smyczek, a 23 year-old American from Milwaukee who turned pro 5 years ago and was ranked 207 coming into the qualis. Both players had won three matches over the weekend and appeared to be ready for a real battle. Daniel came out of the gate fast and broke right away, but he lost his first two service games to fall behind 3-1. I had met Daniel three years ago when one of my students, Daniel Weingarten (small world- I saw Weingarten last night, he’s now a junior at Emory University in Atlanta, and I hadn’t seen him in over a year) was preparing to go to National 16 Clays at Carson. He was practicing that day with Kosakowski. I’ve followed him from a distance ever since. Just that first exposure was enough to give me the information to identify him in my earlier blog as a “warrior”. Since then I’d seen the great results he has had in junior tournaments here and across the country. But this was an ATP Tour level match, Daniel’s first. He had to be a little nervous. The kid has tremendous physical attributes and I knew he was a very hard worker. I remembered the first (and only) time I played a tour level match. I couldn’t get my first volleys to land before the first row, much less in the court. The adrenalin is pumping so hard.

As we settled into the first set, I was joined by Bong Hernandez, father of another one of my former students, Caryl Hernandez, who just happened to be a regular practice partner in Downey of Daniel Kosakowski. I liked the way Smyzcek was hitting the ball, but I was now totally emotionally committed to supporting Kosakowski for this match; that could be painful. Bong quickly recognized the problem. Daniel was not moving up on the ball and attacking from inside the baseline. That doesn’t necessarily mean serving and volleying or even going to the net, but when you have the opportunity to play a ball in front of the baseline, you need to move up and make your attack, whether or not that includes going forward to the net after your shot or not. But Daniel was hanging back uncharacteristically and Smyzcek looked solider and more consistent from the baseline. If Daniel was going to be successful at this level he was going to need to be aggressive; Tim was very sound. While Daniel was gaining the upper hand, Tim’s consistency and speed were taking their toll and he ran out the first set breaking Daniel once more for a 6–2 lead.

Daniel started to get a little more aggressive and took an early break in the 2nd set. Bong was once again quick to recognize the change, but the significant thing was not that Daniel was being more aggressive, but that Tim was changing his tactics. It’s very easy to say, “Change a losing game, but never change a winning strategy.” And Tim was now showing his nerves as he started to venture forward and be more aggressive instead of waiting for Daniel’s errors. He was pretty much controlling the flow of the match and he changed his tactics. Daniel ran out the first set 6-1. Much to his credit Daniel had settled his nerves and was improving his first serve percentage, and all his other statistics across the board.

(To see the full ATP stats for the match, go to http://www.protennislive.com/frameset.asp?year=2011&wkno=30&lang=en&tabno=2&eventid=0423&ref=www.atpworldtour.com).

Most important, whereas he had lost 3/5 break points on his serve in the first set and converted just 1/3 himself, he shut Smyzcek out on break points in the second and third sets (0/5) while himself converting on 2/2 chances in the second set and 2/4 in the third. Tennis is very much about important points.

Also, back to the unforced errors I talked about earlier. At 3-3 in the third set with the match all even and very much up in the air, Smyzcek made two unforced errors on his forehand to give Kosakowski two break points, 15-40. He gave away another to put Daniel up 4-3. Then I think Tim blinked. On the grandstand court there is no “shotspot” to review a call. There is no point in getting involved in line calls at this stage of the match. You need all your concentration to do what you need to do. As Peter Smith would say, control the things you can control. When Smyzcek hit a ball out on the far sideline from the umpire to give Daniel a 5-3 lead, Tim got mentally involved in questioning that call. It would do him no good and it didn’t help his concentration for serving out the next game. Instead, he made another relatively uncharacteristic unforced error to give Daniel 2 match points. After a long exchange, Daniel pulled off an “unusual” shot with his forehand; I don’t remember exactly, but I think it was almost a half volley; but he had tremendous topspin and though it appeared to be heading out it dove right on the line (right in front of us), at least that was what we thought and, more importantly, what the linesman and umpire thought. Tim was looking for the out call, but the match was over.

There were some great points in this match, but Smyzcek needs to talk to his coach and take a look at the changes he made at the beginning of the 2nd set that let Daniel get back into the match. He appeared to be very sound in every department, but seems to be lacking in a “concluder”. He’s just a shade away from breaking into the next level.

Daniel needs to work on stepping up to take the ball a little earlier when he gets the opportunity. He has a beautiful one-handed backhand and he is so strong, but he likes to let the ball get a little low which leaves him way back in the court. He won’t be able to hurt world class players from that far back. I also think he has just a bit too much wrist flexion in his forehand and he needs to get a little more body into that shot. He is such a strong physical specimen, he can get away with a lot, but I don’t think it will work against the best. He has to get a little more comfortable at the net. His technique looks good, but not his comfort level when he is up there. I am not saying he should be a serve and volleyer, but to be successful on the pro circuit, I think he needs to improve his ability to finish points. We’ll get a chance to see about that when he goes up against Gulbis today. Gulbis is usually either very good or … well, let’s just say, I think Daniel’s warrior attitude will serve him very well today. He also might actually be more consistent than Gulbis, but I hope he steps up when he gets the opportunity today.

to be continued…

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