Cool feature/interview with Coach Craig. Thanks to Curtis for posting.
I spoke with Kardon late last week
by phone. Despite Ivanovic’s predicament, he sounded upbeat about the
prospects for Ivanovic to eventually move back to the top of her game.
“I really think Ana is a champion,” he says. “She can do really well in
this game but she just needs some direction. Ana is young. She’s only
21. I believe she has a very good career ahead of her. She is still
getting used to her own game, getting used to competing as a
professional day in and day out. I am more of a patient, long term
thinker. Young professionals at Ana’s level want it all right now,
every week. Ana is very hard on herself, almost too tough on herself.
She expects to win every match every week, which is both good and bad.
But I have worked with some other champions, and that is how they
think.”
As he recalls his initial conversations with Ivanovic after they started working together, Kardon made certain that she realized precisely how he felt about the state of her game. As he puts it, “Basically the first thing I told her was that her game is fine. It does not need to be fixed. What she needs is confidence. She needs to believe that what she has is good enough. She just has to make the weapons she has better. I told her she needed to trust her game.”
Having said that, Kardon knew he could also encourage her to add some elements to the already advanced structure of her game to more thoroughly exploit her considerable strengths. “I tried to change a few things,” he clarifies. “I wanted her to come to the net more to recognize the opportunities she creates for herself with her big forehand. Ana has got one of the best inside-out forehands in the game. It is a bit of a flat shot and a lot of coaches and critics argue that she basically hits the ball too flat. I don’t think so. Every professional athlete has a style of their own. You can criticize that style or you can shape it to make it a little better. I am just trying to shape it to make it better.”
Coach Kardon has also been grooming Ivanovic to make her superior at the net. As he explains, “I have tried to solidify her volleys a bit more. We have worked on her volley technique to make her backhand volley more solid and to help Ana get more under the ball on her forehand volley. She has pretty good technique already, but I wanted to make her even more solid to where she is hitting crisp volleys and not just kind of carving the ball so much.”
As he recalls his initial conversations with Ivanovic after they started working together, Kardon made certain that she realized precisely how he felt about the state of her game. As he puts it, “Basically the first thing I told her was that her game is fine. It does not need to be fixed. What she needs is confidence. She needs to believe that what she has is good enough. She just has to make the weapons she has better. I told her she needed to trust her game.”
Having said that, Kardon knew he could also encourage her to add some elements to the already advanced structure of her game to more thoroughly exploit her considerable strengths. “I tried to change a few things,” he clarifies. “I wanted her to come to the net more to recognize the opportunities she creates for herself with her big forehand. Ana has got one of the best inside-out forehands in the game. It is a bit of a flat shot and a lot of coaches and critics argue that she basically hits the ball too flat. I don’t think so. Every professional athlete has a style of their own. You can criticize that style or you can shape it to make it a little better. I am just trying to shape it to make it better.”
Coach Kardon has also been grooming Ivanovic to make her superior at the net. As he explains, “I have tried to solidify her volleys a bit more. We have worked on her volley technique to make her backhand volley more solid and to help Ana get more under the ball on her forehand volley. She has pretty good technique already, but I wanted to make her even more solid to where she is hitting crisp volleys and not just kind of carving the ball so much.”
And of course, there's the little part that has Ana fans frazzling:
"Obviously the pressure is on her
and she is feeling it for the French. Right now I am not sure if she is
even going to be able to play the French Open because of this knee
injury. I know her confidence is still pretty high and her level of
play is good enough for Ana to win it again. That being said, we are
looking at a bit of a hiccup [for her] after losing from 4-0 up in the
third in Rome, and she has got the injury problem. But that might take
the pressure off her going into the French if she can play it. That is
how I would approach it with her. With a player like Ana who has won
Roland Garros and made it to another major final when nobody expected
her to, and then reached No. 1 in the world, there are a lot of
expectations that people put on her. She just has to keep building her
game and letting her game grow. That is how I am looking at it.”
In the final analysis, Kardon is entirely optimistic about
where Ana Ivanovic is going from here. Making a long term prognosis,
he concludes, “She just needs to not be too tough on herself and she
will be fine. She can win a few more Slams. I really believe that.”
No argument from me on that last part. And for the record I have no doubt that Ana will play RG. If you can walk on it, you ain't withdrawing from a Grand Slam, especially where you're the defending champion.
Besides, if she withdraws then she won't do the draw ceremony with Rafa. So you *know* she'll be there.
