Ruud Wins 1st ATP 500 | Struff Not Titleless Anymore | Rybaqueena Gets Porsche | MMTR

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In this week’s Monday morning tennis rant, I discuss Ruud winning his first ATP 500 title in Barcelona, Struff winning his first title in Munich, Rybakina winning the title in Stuttgart, American players on clay, Sloane Stephens winning in Rouen, Coco Gauff’s forehand, Tsitsipas’s backhand and more…

0:00 Great Ambassador for Tennis
1:02 Popularity of Tennis
2:41 Nadal in Barcelona
5:40 Tsitsipas Backhand
8:05 Coco Gauff Forehand
12:08 Barcelona Final
12:27 Struff Wins First Title
14:15 American Men on Clay
16:09 Rybakina Wins Stuttgart
17:54 Sloane Wins in Rouen

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#intuitivetennis #mondaymorningtennisrant

hey guys welcome to another edition of
the Monday morning tennis rant and I’m
going to start off with the tournament
in Barcelona and finally Casper Roode
wins a 500 I talked about him being
dragged on social media for being a
player that only wins 250s which is
complete nonsense why because this guy
Not only was in the final of Monte Carlo
last week but he was also in the final
of the World Tour finals he was in the
final of three grand slams two French
opens he is one of the best clay Court
players in the world and it was only a
matter of time until he won a bigger
tournament and I was so happy to see him
take the title in Barcelona which is a
500 because there couldn’t be a better
Ambassador for the sport of tennis than
Casper Roode now the ATP recognized this
and gave Casper the ATP Stefan edberg
sportsmanship award in 2022 alcaraz won
it in 2023 both of these guys are great
ambassadors for the game of tennis and
so is Center and I do want to say that
tennis is in such a great place right
now I heard an insane stat from Italy
that during the semifinal match between
Center and sisip Pasa Monte Carlo there
were three football matches or for the
US audience soccer matches going on
during that match and Tennis beat out
soccer in Italy which is unbelievable so
tennis is blowing up in Italy it’s
unbelievably popular but it’s popular
pretty much everywhere yes it’s true
that pickle ball courts are being used
more in the United States compared to
tennis but despite the fact that jokovic
is not playing right now he just pulled
out of Madrid Nadal is on his last leg
so to speak feder retired I thought it
was going to be Doom and Gloom for the
ATP but it’s quite the contrary tennis
is as popular as it’s ever been and I
think partially what’s responsible for
this is social media because on
Instagram and even on YouTube the ATP
Tour the WTA tennis TV the Tennis
Channel they’re producing a lot more
content whether it’s short form content
whether it’s long form content it’s on a
daily basis and this content gets a lot
of traction I’m keeping tabs on this and
there’s always great engagement
sometimes hundreds if not thousands of
comments on every single post which
tells me that there is a lot of interest
in the game of tennis and tennis is
doing quite well and again I did not
think it was going to be like this I was
foreseeing bad times for the game of
tennis but I’m happy to see that this is
not the case now the big highlight of
the tournament in Barcelona for me
because I’m such a huge Rafa fan was
that Rafa finally played a tournament
and he beat Cabo in the first round he
played really well in that match and I
thought that he was going to beat diau
and he did play well in the first set
especially but a lot of people people
have reached out to me and asked whether
I think that Rafa looks slower and I do
think that Rafa is a step or to slower
on the court now Rafa did say that he
was going to go all the way at the
French Open so maybe he wasn’t going all
out and don’t misunderstand this it’s
not like Rafa was not trying his best he
was but there’s another level that you
can go to where you’re disregarding your
body and you’re going to the absolute
limit not caring what happens to you and
I think that’s what Rafa plans to do at
the French open give it one more goal
and go all out he definitely wasn’t
doing that in the match against dimin
hour there were several Drop shots that
he didn’t attempt to run down and when
he was running down Drop shots or moving
laterally yes he did look a little bit
slower also he was serving extremely
slow in the first round against caboi
averaging around 100 Mil hour he did
ramp it up a little bit later during the
match so there’s something going on with
his back or his abdominals and the hip
injury does not appear to be healed by
any means because when Rafa is moving to
his right side his backhand side
definitely doesn’t look like the old
Rafa because he’s a little bit slow on
that side and he does slice a lot more
back hands than he normally would
however I will say there were some
vintage Rafa moments in those two
matches there were some unbelievable
backand that he ripped and this was
always something that I couldn’t
understand in Rafa’s game was the fact
that he doesn’t always play
the two-handed backand as aggressive as
he can I am going to make a video on the
top five one-handed backhands and the
top five two-handed backhands in my top
five stroke series and I’m not going to
tell you whether I’m going to put Rafa
in there or not but fact is that Rafa
has one of the best backhands in the
world and there are different levels to
his backhand where yes he can spin it in
and keep it in play all day long but he
can also absolutely clock that back and
flatten it out and go for these insane
winners either crosscourt or down the
line and I did see a few of those in
those two matches of course the heavy
Top Spin forehand is always going to be
there for him but even there there were
more mistakes than usual and deau for
example didn’t appear to have as much
trouble with the forehand of Nadal as
players have in the past so Nadal is
playing in Madrid it’s going to be
important for him to get more matches he
is planning to play in Rome and we shall
see what happens at the French Open I’m
not going to make any predictions I
don’t want to jinx Rafa I very low
expectations but I am very grateful as a
huge Rafa fan that I get to see him play
possibly one more time at each one of
these uh big play tournaments now how
about sitti pass with the horrible
backand he made another final and I do
want to clarify the video from last week
that was titled cipas does not have a
bad backand I stated the following in
the video from last week you believe
that it’s absolutely impossible to have
these type of results to play tennis at
the very elite level with technical
weaknesses on the forehand and the
backhand so what I said was technical
weaknesses I’m not talking about
weaknesses in general because of course
players are going to have weaknesses
even the best players let me give you an
example of Rafa I just talked about him
when he used to play feder now everybody
knows that feder has one of the best if
not the best one-handed back hand in
tennis history but it was obviously the
side that was weaker in fact the vast
majority of professional male players
have a weaker backhand than forehand now
in this particular context with Nadal a
oneand the back end is very vulnerable
against a Top Spin forehand coming from
a lefty so it was so obvious that
especially early on in the Rivalry
between Nadal and feder that Nadal would
hit the vast majority of balls with
heavy spin to Federer’s back and and
there wasn’t much that Federer could do
so that was a weakness from feder that
Nadal exploited now you understand that
we’re talking about superlatives here
there’s absolutely nothing wrong with
Roger Federer’s backhand obviously but
did Nadal exploit a weakness in that
circumstances he absolutely did so when
I talked about stipas last week I wasn’t
talking about the fact that his back end
is not not a weakness it is absolutely
the weakest link in his game and that’s
what gets attacked by players that’s not
a secret everybody during the Monte
Carlo tournament that cispus won was
trying to attack sisip pass’s backand
either with the serve or from the
Baseline so of course compared to the
rest of tas’s game the back end is
weaker it’s also the reason why tsipas
runs around his back and every chance he
gets which is something that by the way
all players do with the exception of a
very few for example benoa pair so it’s
important to understand that something
especially when we’re talking about the
superlative level can be weak and
fundamentally sound at the technical
level at the same time now you’re
probably asking yourself Nick how is
that possible well I’m going to give you
another example of a player who was
active this week in stutgart and that’s
Coco go very similar to tipas there’s
tons of people that are still despite
the fact that Koko won the US Open still
write that Koko has a horrendous
forehand now just like I did for tipas I
studied coko forehand and I didn’t find
any technical flaws if I would have
found technical flaws on the tipas one
handed backand or on the cook golf
forehand I would have made a video about
it like I did several times on my
channel for example I talked about some
technical flaws on the Cameron Nory back
end on the IGA Shan serve or on the
arena sabalenka serve the reason why I
don’t make more videos like this because
to find technical flaws at that level is
something that’s extremely rare and my
point in the last video was that
instinctively I knew that you can’t
achieve the results that cipas had on
both clay and hardcore and also you
can’t achieve the results that Koko golf
had with technically deficient ground
strokes it’s a little bit different on
the serve and it’s a little bit
different we’re talking about men and
women you are more likely going to find
technical deficiencies on the woman’s
side and you’re less likely going to
find technical deficiencies on the men’s
side but fact is that cpuz doesn’t have
any technical flaws on his one-handed
backand and Koko goof doesn’t have any
technical flaws on her forehand now I’m
not saying that Coco gol’s forehand is
not a problem it is absolutely a problem
and it was a big problem prior to the
hard Court swing last year then Brad
Gilbert came in made her feel a lot
better about her forehand the confidence
went up that didn’t do any technical
changes but after the US Open the
results started to decline a little bit
and now we are again seeing problems on
Coco Go’s forehand side so what I’m
telling you is something that you might
find confusing because Coco go has big
problems on her forehand right now
despite the fact that there’s
technically nothing wrong wrong with her
forehand and let me just give you one
example in the match that she played
against kostuk in the quarterfinals she
was down 62 in the third set tie break
and often when you’re down by this much
you have lost the match mentally and
there’s a relaxation the pressure goes
away and often players start playing
more freely and this is what happened to
coko she hid two blistering forehand
winner one from behind the Bas Baseline
and then one from a little bit inside
the Baseline saved two match points with
forand winners she continued to save
another two match points and then at 6
all the pressure was back and guess what
happened Koko had the easiest forehand
in the world kostuk was at the net Goff
had a sit her forehand inside the
Baseline and she dumped it into the net
so the reason why she dumped it into the
net wasn’t because of her Western forand
grip it wasn’t because of her WTA
takeback it was simply because of the
fact that there’s a lack of confidence
right now on her forehand and for the
fact that she tightened up going back to
cipas it’s true that sometimes cipas can
get a little tight on his backand and
the backend can be a little bit loopy a
little bit short it’s not as extreme of
a problem that cipas has on his backand
compared to Coco Go’s forehand where the
forehand is often a little bit tight a
little bit jammed and a little bit short
so again these are not technical
problems these are confidence problems
lack of trust in other words and the
solution to these problems is quite
complex now back to the Barcelona final
it’s possible that CPAs was a little bit
tired because he had some really tough
matches going into the final he saved
match points against FIA aosta he had a
tough match against liovic as well but
this is not taking anything away from
Casper rou who played a phenomenal match
I want to talk about one of the most
satisfying Tournament of Victories that
I’ve seen in a long time and that’s Yan
Lenard this is the perfect player he’s
got a huge serve he’s got a very heavy
forehand he’s got a great two-handed
backhand he’s a power Baseline player
that can blow you off the court he’s a
very strong guy and hits the ball very
big he’s also very athletic and can come
to the net in fact last year when he
made it to the Madrid final he was
serving voling a lot and giving a lot of
players trouble so you have a player
like this who has it all
and yet this player who’s already 33
years old has never won an ATP title
which goes to show you how tough it is
to win one title guys we often talk
about these records and Novak jich and
Nadal and feder how many tournaments
they have won and then people will of
course talk about CER and alcaras and
speculate how many tournaments they’re
going to win and you don’t realize how
competitive and how tough the ATP tour
is when a player of yan Lenard’s caliber
never won a single tournament now he was
in a few finals in fact he was in a
final of that same tournament that he
won in Munich in 2021 and then of course
he reached the Madrid final as well and
he did win four doubles tournaments but
this was so nice to see that despite the
horrible weather and Germany and by the
way for you guys that don’t know I grew
up playing tennis in Germany and I don’t
miss the weather at all you see the
spectators during the Munich tournament
everybody was wearing hats and jackets
and it was looked like it was absolutely
freezing cold but this is a phenomenal
tournament in Munich and a perfect place
for stru to win his first title it was
also good to see Fritz in a final and I
have a lot of respect for Taylor Fritz
I’m going to tell you why every year
Taylor Fritz shows up in Monte Carlo and
then he plays a ton of clay cord
tournaments leading up to the French
Open now all
the other American players need to
realize that they are not Andy rodic
because Andy rtic one of the greatest
American tennis players in history
skipped a lot of the tournaments in
Europe for a reason why because he had a
legitimate chance to win Wimbledon every
year and he also knew that he had a very
small chance to do well at the French
Open so he would put a huge training
block right after the tournament in
Miami and prepare himself for Wimbledon
and he he did really well in wimbl
almost won the whole thing so this makes
a lot of sense for Andy rotic but it
doesn’t make sense for everybody else
because andic unwillingly started a
trend where now all American players and
when I say all there are a few like ca
and Shelton who have showed up in some
of those early tournaments but many
other Americans don’t show up in Europe
until Madrid and how in the world do you
expect to do well on the European clay
if you don’t put in the hard work and
you play the entire clay CT season if
you listen to the served podcast you
know that the Brian brothers were on
last week and they were telling
unbelievable stories and the Brian
Brothers won the French Open many times
and you know what the Brian brothers did
well the very first tournament in Monte
Carlo they never missed it they played
the entire clay Court season so when it
comes to American tennis on Clay the
tournament in Houston doesn’t count it’s
not even the real clay it’s going to be
a different Fe feeling when you play in
Europe if any of these guys wants a
chance to do well at the French Open
ever they’re going to have to show up a
lot sooner than Madrid I already
mentioned that Koko lost to kostuk and
riina played EA and I was very surprised
that EA lost this match yiga also had a
tough match in the quarters against ruko
who’s playing a lot better she won a
couple of matches in the Billy Jean King
cup so the confidence is coming back
slowly but surely for raducanu but I
regard EA as someone who can break Chris
ever’s record for the most French Open
titles and I was very surprised that
rakina took her out in the semi-finals
of stutgart but this is a testament to
rakina who has the capability of blowing
anybody off the court she’s the ultimate
power player and seems to be more stable
compared to somebody like sabalenka
who’s also a phenomenal player but
possibly even at the mental level rakina
is very calm and doesn’t let the highs
get too highs or the lows get two lows
in fact when she wins a tournament the
size of stutgart where you get a porsche
in addition to your trophy and your
Winner’s check she barely cracked a
smile and this is also true when she won
Wimbledon which I think is a good thing
because she’s absolutely not letting the
highs get too high now if you want to
get to know rakina or other WTA players
more on a personal level you should
check out the YouTube channel what the
vog and rubaka is actually completely
different off the court than she is is
on the court she has her game face on
she’s a little bit emotional less but I
think this is a good thing and she’s
going to be taking many many titles and
it’s only a matter of time until she
knocks EA off the number one spot I
still think that EA is the favorite for
the French Open but when we’re looking
ahead at Wimbledon and the Hardcore
Season rakina has the chance to do a lot
of damage there and reach the number one
spot I want to finish this Monday
morning rant with one of my favorite
players Sloan Stevens s similar to
rakina Sloan has a completely different
personality off the court and she does
on the court and look she might not be
the most powerful player out there but
it is not a mistake that Sloan has won
Charleston Miami the US Open and was
also in the final of the French Open
she’s of the highest of a caliber of
player that you can possibly imagine and
her forehand is so versatile because she
has the ability to flatten it out and
hit winners but she also does something
that’s super effective on the WTA which
is put a little bit more height on her
ground strokes now she’s not Moon
balling okay but she’s putting a higher
heavier Top Spin type forehand mostly to
the back end corner of the opponent and
she causes a lot of damage with that
shots