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Both Bernard Tomic and Nick Kyrgios have been knocked out of Wimbledon after losing to 32nd seed Lucas Pouille in a thrilling five-set contest, and tournament favourite Andy Murray in straight sets respectively.
Both Tomic and Kyrgios have the natural talent and ability to eventually win grand slam singles titles being up there with the best male tennis players Australia has ever produced.
However, there are noticeable gaps in their games, some technical, but mostly on a physical, mental and tactical standpoint.
Here are my thoughts on their individual games, and how they should improve going forward into the future.
Bernard Tomic
Bernard Tomic is 23 years old, turning 24, and is at the point of his career that he must start to take great steps forward in his game if he is going to justify his undeniable talent.
First of all, Tomic must significantly improve physical fitness as a tennis player.
He lacks the explosive power in his legs and hips compared to top players, and doesn’t have the physical fitness to play long, extended points back-to-back.
Being an outsider looking in, my theory is because of his diet and eating patterns.
As a professional athlete, not just a tennis player you must be meticulous with everything that you do, and be aware of everything you do to enable yourself to perform at the very best of your capabilities.
At this moment, Tomic lacks in this aspect of his approach in spades.
Tomic must also learn to trust his tennis intelligence quotient and believe in his own game. If you have one of the best tennis minds, as recognised by many former players and experts of the game, then why don’t you trust it?
To help this process, Tomic needs to get a former player that had a similar playing style to you to come and coach you.
My pick to coach Bernard Tomic would be Miloslav Mečíř.
Mečíř in his career during the mid to late 1980s made two Grand Slam singles finals, won the 1987 World Championship Tennis Finals tournament, and won the singles gold medal at the 1988 Summer Olympic Games in Seoul. In a short career, where he won 11 singles titles he played a similar game to what Tomic is trying to execute right now.
I don’t know what Mečíř is doing in his life, and whether he would want to coach a player like Tomic, but it seems like a perfect fit.
However, for Tomic to make himself an attractable proposition for Mečíř, he must show consistently high levels of mental fortitude.
Late in the final set against Pouille, Tomic subconsciously gave up. Better concentration and a will to win is needed, along with body language to your opponents, to show no matter what happens the mentality of ‘you can never beat me’ is in play.
Against Pouille, Tomic defeated himself by never realising how much trouble he was in, and when he did, the match was over.
In terms of technical and tactical improvements Tomic should make, his grip when volleying should always be a neutral one, and he must improve his game around the net, particularly his game approaching the net.
He should take a much more aggressive position returning serve, on both first and second serves, and must look to take the ball on, always trusting his tennis IQ.
Nick Kyrgios
Nick Kyrgios at 21 years old is a player who has a prodigious amount of natural talent and athletic ability, and someone who is built on the philosophy of attack, attack, attack, and when he needs to defend, attack, and attack some more.
However, there are some key areas that Kyrgios must work on if he is going to achieve his full potential.
Kyrgios must work on his physical fitness as a tennis player.
There is nothing wrong with his movement, or his explosiveness off the mark, but if he is going to compete and defeat the very best players in the world, Kyrgios must improve his intensity level through improving his physical endurance so that he can keep his level up for longer periods of time.
Kyrgios must also look at his mental side of the game.
At times, he has shown himself to be uninterested, both on and off the court, and has a lot of anger, resulting in big outbursts of usually negative emotion towards officials, his supporters and even himself.
This is different to John McEnroe in his career, when he use to fire up at officialdom, usually, as a way of motivating himself to perform at much better levels on the court, and to his credit, he did exactly that.
Kyrgios must find motivation inside of him to compete at the best of his ability every time he takes the court.
However, the solution to controlling his verbal outbursts isn’t as easy to solve, and probably the only way to solve this problem will be for Kyrgios to get a new coach who understands what he is going through, and knows how to solve this problem.
There are a few former players who could be perfect.
Those players are Boris Becker, Andre Agassi, and even Ivan Lendl, but if Kyrgios doesn’t like the look of these options, Australian Davis Cup captain Lleyton Hewitt would be a good one to have in his corner.
In terms of his tactical approach, while it is quite sound, and there’s nothing dramatically wrong with it, Kyrgios should invest more time learning about the tactics, and how he can beat his opponents through tactical superiority.
This, of course, rather that just trying to bludgeon all of his opponents off the court. He must learn to be more patient, and not to go for the big blow before the opportunity arrives.
Kyrgios must work very hard to achieve his potential, but he must be realistic that it might take around 18 months for his full potential to come through.
Final thoughts
Both players have the ability if they want it enough to reach the very top of the game but must be willing to take on the advice given to them, and believe in themselves to ensure they achieve to the level that their talents suggest that they should.
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