The 2017 Canadian National Championship ended a few days ago. The players are now back home. Now is the time to analyze and draw some conclusions. Many players who are frequently training at LYTTA participated in this tournament: Edward Ly, Tommy Xu, Vincent Sieu, Vida Sieu, Emilia Cabrera, Luc Sicard, Nicolas Sicard, Coralline Éthier, Wenbin Zhang, Mélissa Son and Ann Shiao.

We saw many good performances during both the junior and the senior events. For example, Tommy Xu and Edward Ly got the second place in junior boys doubles. Edward Ly also won three bronze medals in singles (cadet, junior and senior). Looking at those matches, it is possible to identify some general tendencies. Here is what we saw:

• Many players had trouble receiving short. Very few players were actually trying to do it. However,for  the ones that could actually receive short, it was clearly to their advantage. This is something that most of the players in Canada need to improve.
• In the girl’s and women’s events, there were many rallies in backhand pushes. The players seemed to lack confidence in their ability to attack down spin balls with their backhand. The backhand first ball is an important skill in the game and should be developed.
• The new coaching rules seems to have a positive effect on the number of tactical changes during the match. Since the coaches are allowed to intervene more frequently, we didn’t see as many repeated mistakes. However, after the matches, the coaches need to make sure that they explain the reasoning behind the tactical changes in order for them to be able to make those changes by themselves in the future.
• Very few players seemed to be comfortable with half-long balls. Their topspins on those balls looked quite soft and the depth of their balls made it easy for the opponent to conter-attack.
• Footwork remains a weakness amongst the players. They tend to stretch their arm before actually moving their legs. They definitely need to work more on their footwork. One of the most noticeable problem was when the rally was slowing down and the player had to move forward.
• The players seemed to lack variety when they were serving. Often, at the beginning of the match, their serves were quite efficient. However, towards the end, very few players were actually able to take advantage of their serves due to a somewhat narrow range of serves.

Despite all these aspects that should be improved, the Canadian players in general have improved in terms of the quality of their balls and consistency. Even for the young players, we saw many rallies that were comparable to a senior level.

Thus, it’s time to resume training and we hope to see some big improvements at the 2018 Canadian Championship in Vancouver.

LYTTA’s coaching staff