I have to overcome my inadequacies in public glare: Sania

April 10, 2006

A lot has been said in recent times about the need to cut down on my unforced errors.

I have to agree with this point of view. However, the problem needs to be understood in proper perspective and is best left to my team, which obviously is in a better position to analyse, deduce and to come up with a solution.

First, let me assure you in most cases, the figures for unforced errors that appear on tournament sites and hence lapped up by most enthusiasts and writers rarely match with the far more detailed point-by-point figures recorded by my coach sitting by the courtside.

The reason is simple. The tournament official mechanically adds on to the figure of unforced errors for every shot that a player hits out of court or into the net as long as he has got his racquet onto the ball.

He just does not take into account that the error may have occurred after the player was made to move around the court by the opponent from one corner to the other or tricked into misreading the length, speed or trajectory of the shot, forcing him to mis-hit the ball.

This goes down in my coach's book as a forced error. There was one match where the official site said I had 85 unforced errors and my coach had that figure at 43 in his notes (which, incidentally, is still way too high!!).

One must also understand that having a minimum number of unforced errors does not guarantee you a win, at least in professional tennis.

If you were to decide not to make any errors and just push the ball back, the opponent may hit a winner off every one of those balls and the points may not go down as unforced errors on your part, but you would still lose the match 6-0, 6-0!

What happens on a lot of occasions at the professional level is a player uses different methods to try to make the opponent ‘go for more’ on his shots and induces errors from him by forcing him to take a lot more chances.

If I hit a dozen shots in the safe mode, say 5 ft inside the line and with plenty of topspin for safety and find that the opponent is hitting a lot more deeper, flatter and harder to take control of the points, I would be forced to go nearer to the lines and with a lesser safety margin over the net.

If in so doing I miss the ball, to the casual bystander, it may appear as if I made another unforced error, but the more informed spectator would see that the opponent had `forced' me to go for more and hence, the error.

I also believe that in analysing the negativity of unforced errors, one needs to take this figure in conjunction not only with the higher number of winners that the player hits but also with the number of unforced errors the opponent makes, because the latter may well be a result of the pressure the player exerts on his opponent by threatening to go for the more risky strokes.

Having said this, I would be the first to reiterate that my own number of unforced errors needs to come down substantially, but the solution is not as simple as some would like to believe.

In my case, one must also consider that my biggest strength is the power in my groundstrokes and this comes from hitting a lot flatter than normal.

In order to generate this kind of power, I need to take a few more risks and clear the net with a lesser margin than someone who plays more defensively.

It is also a fact that I use a lot more wrist in my strokes and it is always more difficult to maintain consistency in movement of the wrist than it is to be consistent with the upper arm.

This is a style that has brought me to a career-high of 31 in the world. To believe that by merely becoming a lot more safer in my approach and by changing the way I hit the ball (at this stage of my career) I could get to top-10 would be very naiive.

The more practical solution is to reduce errors by improving my physical fitness to reach more balls in a better position, a better choice of strokes at critical junctures and by technically trying to improve shots that cause the maximum number of errors (including my serve). All these can take months and years to perfect and there are no short-cuts in the brutally competitive world of international tennis.

This is where the Sharapovas of the world have an edge over players like me. While they have been trained for a decade on these aspects and fine-tuned with the best technical guidance and methods in the quiet and safe pastures of their training grounds at a time when they were still developing in their formative years, I have to quickly overcome all my inadequacies under the blinding glare of the whole world if I am to survive at the highest level!