Being able to anticipate a player’s movement on the court and the type of shots they will probably play is key to securing victory, which is why someone as unpredictable as Alcaraz is so hard to play against.
Most players fall into familiar patterns of play and studying those becomes important in attempting to secure the edge.
“Gabriel Diallo is a guy I work with and he was playing in Majorca recently, and for his match with Jaume Munar I sent a detailed game plan to him on how to face him,” says O’Shannessy.
“Things I’ll usually show will include where the serve’s going, what kind of serve he likes to hit, and then where on the court he’s more vulnerable to make errors, particularly forehand errors. Because they happen more often than anything else.”
Another important battleground can be the warm-up.
Rather than being – as it may seem to those watching – just two players getting ready for the match, it also presents an opportunity to see how the opponent will react to certain types of shots.
“In the warm-up you may want to disguise the type of shots you want to hit,” adds O’Shannessy.
“I think it’s probably more of an advantage at the club level because you don’t necessarily know the opponent or have scouting on them.
“So it’s a really good time to hit them some different balls, some high balls, some low balls, some fast balls, some slice, and then monitor where they hit that.”