The definitive story coming out of the 10 days at Indian Wells is not that Naomi Osaka overpowered an error-prone, perhaps tired Daria Kasatkina in an anticlimactic final that belied the playmaking and sometimes drama of the matches they played to get there. The defining story is this:
Paraphrasing Bob Dylan:
The line it is drawn
The new time is cast
The young ones now
Are ever so fast
And the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'
And the first one now
May later be last
For the times they are a-changin.'
The massacre of the top-ten professional women tennis players in the world at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells 2018 will not soon be forgotten. Seven of them fell to opponents with an average age of 19.5 years. Two 20-year olds took out five of them. One 22 years old took out one and a 16 year-old took out another. Five of the seven were Grand Slam Champions. Four of the five were multiple Grand Slam Champions.
We saw them coming and we knew they were going to hit sometime and at Indian Wells they all hit at the same time - a splash that is still reverberating throughout the tennis world. Who are they? If you were following the tournament, you know. If not, here they are:
Daria Kasatkina:
Coming into Indian Wells Daria Kasatkina was ranked #19 in the world. This young Russian player wasn't new on the radar screens but when, at St. Petersburg, she beat the newly-crowned #1 Caroline Wozniacki, fresh off her first Grand Slam victory at Melbourne Park, and then took down, in Dubai, Aga Radwanska, Jo Konta, reigning Indian Wells Champ Elena Vesnina, and then the reigning Wimbledon Champ Garbine Muguruza, her blip on the radar screens got substantially more robust. But these were just warm-ups for her performance at Indian Wells. In straight sets, she took out the reigning US Open Champion Sloane Stephens, Wozniacki again, demolished Angelique Kerber, and then in a thrill-packed 3-set semi she outlasted an exhausted Venus Williams to put herself into the final. She took out 3 of the top ten - 4 Grand Slam Champs. She's 20 years old and is now ranked #11 in the world.
Naomi Osaka:
Everybody knew that Naomi Osaka had a big game. She came into Indian Wells ranked #44 off a quarterfinal run in Dubai and reaching the second week at Melbourne Park during which time she toppled 3 top-20 opponents. She wasted no time displaying her power in Indian Wells taking out Maria Sharapova, Aga Radwanska, Karolina Pliskova, and Simona Halep, the reigning #1, among others. She took out 2 of the top ten. She's 20 years old and is now ranked #22 in the world and is the Champion of Indian Wells.
Sachia Vickery:
World #3, Garbine Muguruza, up a set and 3-0, 40-0 got caught in the turbulence of a turnaround that was so fast even her zoned-in opponent Sachia Vikery seemed bewildered by it. But the zone held on to the 22 year-old who posted her first top-ten win. This young lady can hit and with consistency. She was the 2013 USTA National Junior Champion. Vickery's performance at Indian Wells elevated her from #100 to #89 in the rankings.
Amanada Anisimova:
World #9 Petra Kvitova had been on fire with a 14-match winning streak that was emphatically extinguished in two sets by 16 year-old Amanda Anisimova who came into Indian Wells ranked #149. She was runner-up at the 2016 Junior French Open and is the reigning Junior US Open Champion. She is now ranked #130 and moving up fast.
Those were the top-ten slayers. But there are others. 19 year-old Aryna Sabalenka took out Svetlana Kuznetsova, another 2-time Grand Slam Champion. 18 year-old Sofya Zhuk beat Alize Cornet and Magdalena Rybarikova. 19 year-old Caroline Dolehide beat Dominica Cibulkova, and the old lady of the bunch at 24, Danielle Collins, who moved into the top 100 at #93, stopped Madison Keys.
We can only wonder what the top-ten list will look like a year from now. But as a writer of the WTA tennis scene, I will not prophesize, but I will keep my eyes wide.
Again, paraphrasing Bob Dylan:
Come tennis writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin.'
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin.'
Anyway, that's how I see it.
Monday, March 19, 2018
Monday, March 5, 2018
John Farley Spotlight WTA: Fitness from the Inside through Transcendental Meditation
A Total Fitness Program
Fitness from the Outside
In July of last year (2017) the National Center for Biotechnology, which is part of the United States National Library of Medicine, a branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), published a study entitled "Injury Epidemiology of Tennis Players at the 2011-2016 Australian Open Grand Slams." The researchers found that female tennis players experienced more injuries than male players with shoulder, foot, wrist, and knee being the most commonly injured regions among females. In both sexes, upper arm injuries and "in-event treatment frequency" (medical timeouts and treatments during sit-downs), increased by more than 2.4 times over the 5-year period. Also in both sexes there was a greater than twofold increase in stress fractures over the 5-year period.
In another "Slam" study, in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in an article entitled "Tennis Injury Data from The Championships, Wimbledon, from 2003 to 2012," published in April of 2017, researchers reported that "Muscle and ligament injuries are the predominant type of acute injury in professional grass court tennis and, despite annual variability, appear to have increased in female players during the study period."
As these and many other studies show, the increasingly jam-packed tennis tour is taking its toll on the players. Factors that may contribute to this toll on the players' minds and bodies include:
- Not enough healing time between matches and tournaments. Outside of the slams there's not even a days rest and if the player goes deep into a tournament, there's no time to recover if she's scheduled to play the following week, especially if the next tournament isn't just down the street. (Caroline Wozniacki wins the AO and then hops on a plane for a 9,000 mile flight to play in St. Petersburg the next day. What were you thinking Caroline?)
- Cumulative fatigue, workload, and playing on 3 different surfaces throughout the year.
- The squeeze players experience during the off-season trying get in some rest and the intense training required to get ready for the extreme conditions at the Australian Open. According to Michael Davison, the managing director of the sports science and rehabilitation group Isokinetic, "This acute spike in workload puts them at risk. The absence of a properly balanced off-season makes players especially vulnerable to injury in the first three months of the year." (A good example of this phenomenon is Garbine Muguruza's having to retire in the early rounds from the Brisbane International at the beginning of the tennis season each of the past 3 years (2016-2018) including in 2018 a withdrawal from Sydney in the third round.)
- The recurrence of injury. According to the American surgeon Dr. Richard Burger who operated on Del Potro, "Once a player has suffered an injury, there is then a serious risk of recurrence. The demand they are placing on the joints and the high level of performance makes them more vulnerable to a recurrence, and they don't have enough recovery time once injured. It's amazing how much it erodes the confidence of a player because they worry that if they have continued pain, they may be causing damage."
- The relentless drive of recovering players to keep moving up the rankings makes them more resistant to rest and puts them back on the court too soon.
- Financial pressures. According to the recently retired Australian pro Sam Groth in an interview with Sporting News, his one-year tour expenses, which included flights, hotels, meals, coach's salary, medical bills, and the high tax rates around the globe ran between $250,000 and $315,000. Groth reached a ranking high of 53. I assume these figures would be similar for the women on tour with those lower in the rankings with little financial backing feeling the pressure even more.
How then can a player stay fit, play a full schedule of tournaments, and at the same time get enough rest so the body can remain strong and continuously heal during the tennis year with all these challenges?
The Sports Science and Medicine (SS & M) branch of the WTA has the charge of keeping the players fit on tour. Its website provides an abundance of information regarding many aspects that bear on player health and fitness from eye protection to ice baths, from massage to monitoring health metrics, from hydrating to handling the psychology. Outside of nutritional advice which includes recipes for cookies and soups, immune booster juices, links on carbohydrates, food facts, grains, staying healthy on the road, and the ubiquitous Usana supplements, most of the counsel concerns keeping the body fit and strong through various exercises like beach volleyball and boxing. Actually, the site provides excellent advice on increasing core strength and stability, using the three metabolic energy systems for complete body management, and practicing yoga postures for flexibility.
All of these approaches to player fitness fall into a category I call "Fitness from the Outside," which means the application of these approaches to improve the players' performance and fitness both mentally and physically comes from the external environment. While invaluable for creating a certain level of fitness and therefore, performance, it is only a part of a new Total Fitness Paradigm that includes "Fitness from the Inside."
All of these approaches to player fitness fall into a category I call "Fitness from the Outside," which means the application of these approaches to improve the players' performance and fitness both mentally and physically comes from the external environment. While invaluable for creating a certain level of fitness and therefore, performance, it is only a part of a new Total Fitness Paradigm that includes "Fitness from the Inside."
Fitness from the Inside
"Fitness from the Inside" is created by accessing the innate, inner intelligence of the body through the technique of Transcendental Meditation (TM), a Technology of Consciousness. During the process of transcending during TM, conscious mind becomes consciousness, the deepest level of our own being. It is from this deepest level of our own being where we can most profoundly enliven this inner intelligence that conducts the evolution, development, and healing of the entire physiology. During TM the mind expands, becomes more alert, while the body simultaneously gains a deep state of rest during which time deep stresses are dissolved. This is a state called "restful alertness" - mind fully awake, body deeply rested. The continued practice of TM cultures the nervous system to maintain this state of restful alertness experienced in meditation outside of meditation, even, for example, during the most dynamic activity of a tennis match. The mind of the player will be totally alert, awake, a condition that enables the mind to slip into the zone at any moment, while the body is deeply rested. This is "Fitness from the Inside."
So what we have then is a Total Fitness Program - "Fitness from the Outside" through the application of the techniques of sports science and "Fitness from the Inside" from the practice of the technology of TM which accesses the inner intelligence of the body for the most profound strengthening and healing of the entire physiology. This is a new Total Fitness Paradigm.
Earlier I asked the question: How then can a player stay fit, play a full schedule of tournaments, and at the same time get enough rest so the body can remain strong and continuously heal during the tennis year with all these challenges? Now we have an answer - by adopting this Total Fitness Program. I encourage the Sports Science and Medicine arm of the WTA to adopt this Total Fitness Program by integrating this technology of consciousness, TM, into their offerings to the players. All tennis academies should consider adopting this Total Fitness Program as well.
This is the third blog post I have written on TM and tennis. If you have not read the other two I encourage you to do so. They are:
Anyway, that's how I see it.
In this appendix I include three links:
Research on the Transcendental Meditation program:
https://www.tm.org/research-on-meditation (Higher Levels of Brain Functioning, Reduced Stress, Improved Intelligence and Creativity, Improved Integration of Personality, etc.)
Introductory Talk by Bob Roth:
Interview with Lawrence Eyre: (The screen is off center, but don't mind, just give it a click. It's an excellent interview.)
So what we have then is a Total Fitness Program - "Fitness from the Outside" through the application of the techniques of sports science and "Fitness from the Inside" from the practice of the technology of TM which accesses the inner intelligence of the body for the most profound strengthening and healing of the entire physiology. This is a new Total Fitness Paradigm.
Earlier I asked the question: How then can a player stay fit, play a full schedule of tournaments, and at the same time get enough rest so the body can remain strong and continuously heal during the tennis year with all these challenges? Now we have an answer - by adopting this Total Fitness Program. I encourage the Sports Science and Medicine arm of the WTA to adopt this Total Fitness Program by integrating this technology of consciousness, TM, into their offerings to the players. All tennis academies should consider adopting this Total Fitness Program as well.
This is the third blog post I have written on TM and tennis. If you have not read the other two I encourage you to do so. They are:
- Tennis, Peak Performance, and Transcendental Meditation
- Combating the Toll of the Tennis Tour - A Performance Enhancing Technology (PET)
Anyway, that's how I see it.
Appendix
In this appendix I include three links:
- Research on the Transcendental Meditation Program
- An introductory talk on TM by Bob Roth who has just published a book on TM entitled Strength in Stillness: The Power of Transcendental Meditation, which was an instant New York Times Bestseller.
- An interview with Lawrence Eyre, who was named "National High School Coach of the Year, " for 2009, talking about his experience coaching the tennis teams at Maharishi School in Fairfield, IA USA, all of whose students practice TM.
Research on the Transcendental Meditation program:
https://www.tm.org/research-on-meditation (Higher Levels of Brain Functioning, Reduced Stress, Improved Intelligence and Creativity, Improved Integration of Personality, etc.)
Introductory Talk by Bob Roth:
Interview with Lawrence Eyre: (The screen is off center, but don't mind, just give it a click. It's an excellent interview.)
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