Planning risks

Any time you have to get anything done, do anything with other organisations, you start getting into the world of planning. You ring up the plumber because your drains are blocked, and he first has to look on his calendar, even though in principal he's in a profession on call.

Have you ever thought, whilst you're watching Wimbledon, how the tennis players are coping with this?

OK, Roger Federer knows he opens proceedings on Centre Court, his privilege at being Champion, and he starts at 13 h 00. He gets all his meals and sleep organised well in advance.

When to sleep

Now he hears that it is raining. The forecast is uncertain. They have a roof, but it takes half an hour to close, but there is still the principal that these are outdoor tournaments , and the referee will do everything to keep it an outdoor tournament. Should Roger eat, or should he sleep?

Planning down the scale

At a lower level it's not much different. Your eating and sleeping is the real problem. You can throw out normal mealtimes, and sleeping can also be a nightmare. My son played a tournament this week, playing on clay under lights, and the match finished around midnight. With the drive home he finally got to bed at 02 h 15, and up the next morning for a 09 h 00 start in the next tournament.

There are many who argue, that once you start hitting balls in a series of tournaments, you just simply turn up and play, win or lose, and you are simply in the swing of things. You don't even think too much about planning your day, knowing when and how much to eat and sleep. If, in this case, you don't get much sleep, you'll be playing at least one match on limited sleep. It's true, on automatic, you can tolerate a certain amount of this, but at the same time, at a another moment, you'll be grateful for the opportunity to catch up on sleep. The same with eating.

Then there are the tournaments. Under the French system you end up playing two tournaments in the same week, and hope that your matches don't get scheduled for the same times. But sometimes they do, so you then have to negotiate with your tournament referee to change match times, which means him ringing up opponents to make changes. Referees don't like doing this, because it frequently doesn't work. It's asking players to make timetable changes at short notice. This morning we had to pull out of a tournament because we had had to change a match twice, and our opponent had had to change the time once. A lot of the players are working people, or are relying on others for transport, and they don't have unlimited periods of time to play with. The referee became a little frustrated with us, and more to ease our planning pressure than anything, we pulled out altogether.

There are others who say that you shouldn't organise too many matches at one time, in other words, risk putting your diary under pressure. Through experience, you don't get anywhere doing this. You'd end up playing half the matches in any one year than would be possible if you squash in as many matches as possible. Is there a risk of fatigue, of overdoing the match tournaments, if you overcharge your planning?

To battle

Maybe you'll overdo it, but like all of these things, you get used to it. Playing three matches of high level in one day, possibly at three different tennis centres, is a lot to ask of anyone. But once you've done this a few times, you ask yourself what all the fuss is about. Human beings are very adaptable. Playing three matches of say, two hours each, is far less tiring physically than doing four hours of hard training. In this respect matchplay should be a cinch for anyone. The mental stamina is another issue. There is no doubt that matchplay requires a different level completely of concentration compared to training, whichever way you look at it.

And now we come back to the eating and sleeping. Playing tennis matches is war. You must play at times when you are ready, sometimes at times when you would never believed you would be playing.

If soldiers can do it, so can tennis players.