Tennis Acumen (TA): Tennis Acumen here at the Columbus Fall Challenger 2022 with Tennys Sandgren.
(photo credit: Karl Corbett)
TA: Sang, it has been a while. Nice to see you again. I'm doing I'm doing a series on college players that turn pro. So, I would like to ask you to just step back in your memory. Give me anything you can about the differences between the college and the professional tour. You know, just hold forth on the transition. I'd love to hear it.
Tennys Sandgren: Well, the level of play isn't much different. There's a couple of things that I always notice when I practice with the college guys at MTSU (Middle Tennessee State University). The Tennessee State guys are good. They're not highly ranked college players and they're good players. But do they know what happens when the points get going? One difference between college and the tour is court position. In college, court position stays pretty deep in the court. Nobody's particularly great at taking the angles by moving forward.... and second, there's just the level of drop off in matches. You see ebbs and flows in matches and you see college players, when they're not at their top form, and stay off track for a game or two. With the high-level pro guys, there are only very small windows, maybe just a minute here and there, and they are back to top form. College guys can take a set hiatus, they can go down a break in the first set, and that might be the day. So, it's just that mental flexibility, bend but not break and it's all about that level of concentration. You know, everybody has different levels of ability. And you're out there for 2 hours, 3 hours. It's a long time to stay focused. It's a long time to keep your mental energy up, to stay energized. It's a skill in and of itself: How well can you actually stay focused on the task at hand and how long does your mind drift? Do you get negative? Do you not believe in yourself? How long does that happen? Because you're not at your best when that's happening. So that's another thing that’s just different from the tour. It's not like the level of play is worse. It's just little factors that come into play when you're playing matches that really make a big difference.
This interview is broken into four different ‘quick reads’ that will be posted here over time.
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