Me vs ATP #45 in a tiebreak...

I never thought I'd have the opportunity to play points against a top 50 tennis player but after spending two days as Alexander shevchenko hitting partner I got to see how my game would stack up against one of the world's best tennis [Music] players okay so this was my fourth and final day of being being a hitting partner at the bules exhibition event and by day four it was really starting to sink in how crazy of an experience this was as the event was starting to come to the end and I had to start thinking about going back to my normal life going back coaching and playing in the tournaments that I'm playing I I really started to think how crazy it was to be able to play with and practice with all these pros at the highest level of the game and I am beyond grateful for this experience but let's focus on this session here so this was my second session with Alex Ander Eno and we actually had a practice the day before which was a super super fun session where we did different movement drills and we played some points and when he told me that this session here was going to be set up in a similar way I was super super excited and he was kind enough to let me film the whole thing so like most sessions we started off with some rallies down the middle and this angles a really cool way to see the pace of the ball coming towards me and the reaction that had off the ground and I just had to make sure that I was moving my feet really well taking small back swings and just trying trying to time the ball the best I could in the middle of the strings we then quickly moved on to a movement base exercise where I was going to be staying in the forehand corner and he wanted me to hit two or three balls cross core and then change up down the line so that he could get used to his movement moving over to his back inside and then after a few goes like this we switched it up where I stayed going crosscourt the whole time and then he changed down the line and sometimes he would just go for a winner down line or try and play Super aggressive and then sometimes he' more of rally B where I'd get behind it and try and keep the rally going a little bit longer something that was a little bit different to shevchenko compared to some of the other Pros I practiced with was the amount of back hands that he took from the middle of the Court actually um which I find pretty interesting because during my coaching sessions and um what we're kind of taught as coaches through the qualifications is to make sure players are dominant with the forehand in the middle of the court and there's been a lot of studies done about how the player who hits more for hands within Zone C on the court tends to win the match but with shevchenko his back hand was a real weapon and when he took his back hand from the middle of the Court he was able to get such good power and angle on it off the coure that most players aren't able to get with their forehand so a lot of times when the ball went slightly middle or when he changed Direction and he was going cross cour with his back hand he stepped in really early and then hit a really good sort of three quter angle with his back hand moving me off the court with a lot of pace which caught me out a lot of times as I was kind of used to playing against players who would take a couple extra steps to get the forand around the ball and of course he still does that with his forehand a lot of times and he still has a big weapon with his forehand as well as we can see in these clips here but the ability to sometimes do it with his backand and sometimes do it with his forehand I think is a real weapon and something that I've never faced before all right as we were coming to the end of this section of the practice I knew that it was going to be time to play some points out the hand in the back of the court and this was the moment that I was most excited for because it's not very often you get to see how your level compares to someone who's at the very very top of the game so this part of the session was basically no pressure for me and basically seeing how many points I could win against someone who was a top 50 level so the rules of this tiebreak were pretty simple all you had to do was feed the ball in crosscourt the next ball had to come back crosscourt and then anything went you can do whatever you wanted you could volley you could slice you could do whatever and you basically just had to do whatever you could to win the point so my plan here was pretty simple I just try to get on top of the points as early as I could because I knew that as soon as I got into defense then his level would completely outweigh mine and I wouldn't be able to turn the points around and get back in the point so whenever I had the opportunity to start attacking I just wanted to try and take it straight away and just put a lot of pressure from the start of each point this point here is is a great example of how he has the ability to use that backhand from the middle of the Court using that inside out backand followed by the crosscourt backand which is a pattern that I have never really faced in any points that I've played before but somehow I was able to take control of this point and hit a win a forand down the line and somehow I am 4 one up in this tie break and it was at this moment where I thought I might actually be able to win a tiebreak out the hand against someone who's top 50 in the world and just as I had this thought I was quickly shown who was the person playing grand slams and who was the person who doesn't even have any ATP points let's just take a watch how this tiebreak unfolded from here [Music] hey all right yeah the other one all right so there we have it after going 51 up I was not able to win another point and I could really feel the increase in level from that moment and how dominant Alexander shevchenko was taking on those balls and putting pressure on me and that was just such an incredible experience to have had and after that tie break he just warmed up a few serves and then that was it for the session and I just want to say how fortunate I feel to have been able to practice with all these guys and especially this session here being able to play points and put my level on the court and compare it to the very top of the game it was such a special experience and as it was the final day of being a hitting partner I was actually able to go and watch some of the exhibition matches that were going on so here's a few final clips from Alexander shenco against Alexander Buck hope you enjoy oh [Music]