Finally, after 3 years of
waiting, Simona Halep's teams seem to realize the value of a good serve
and hard forehand, but they are moving too slow. Do you think they have
adopted the best/proper weapons, the platform serve (used by Sampras,
Federer and Henin), and the ATP forehand, demonstrated to be as such by Justine Henin, who had a genius coach,
Carlos Rodriguez, or Samantha Stosur, another GS champion of small height? Nooo - they continue to procrastinate. Henin, at the
same height, generated 9 mph more on serve. Just compare Simona's best
forehands and serves with Justine's in the QF match with Serena at the 2007 US Open won by Justine 7-6 6-1 - Simona's are visibly weaker, unfortunately. Justine is really smacking
the ball with those weapons, to beat Serena of all. The issue is not the
arm, Simona has a great one, but the inferior technique used and the
coaching. This was a major factor in her being exhausted by the final of
the 2018 AO. Hey, Simona, it would take me only two weeks to get you to
speed with those shots. You cannot allow to lose GSs or to have a shorter career as a result by exhaustion, because of inferior
technique.
Speaking of weapons, this is optional, but switching to another racquet (still from Simona's sponsor, Wilson), Petra Kvitova's racquet (Pro Staff 97), might be also recommended. For one thing, it uses the same materials used in Federer's racquet (which is truly exceptional in terms of ease of swinging), and it is more head light than Simona's current model, something that would definitely help her at the net, where she says she wants to go more, like she did in 2014, or more.
Also, eroic effort on Simona's part, but the result was caused much earlier by a
failure on the part of Simona's team to convince her to wear the kind of ankle supports that Andy Murray does, even though she has a very bad
history with regard to ankles. She's using only taping, it seems. Since 2011, when
Murray adopted his supports, he hasn't had any tears any more -- he had
many before. The lack of such supports led to her injury in the 1st
match at the AO.
By the way,
- the thread I created four years ago at the Tennis Talk forum, dedicated to Simona, is here.
- the thread I created in the same forum, but dedicated to Mihaela Buzarnescu, is here
You are most welcome to contribute to them 🙋
