Andre Agassi and Great Analysts

I really enjoyed last night’s Federer-Roddick match. For one thing, it was pretty amazing to watch Roddick play his absolute best and still lose to someone who is capable of raising his game to ridiculous levels. (How does someone make returning a 140 MPH serve look that easy!) This was a feast of really high quality tennis, and that, too, served with an excellent side-dish: Andre Agassi’s commentary.

Andre was fantastic. What I loved most were his numerous strategic and technical tennis insights. Here are some of my favorite nuggets:

On Strategy: Agassi made it clear from the outset that Roddick would have to consistently serve and hit big, staying on the attack as long as possible and limit Federer from transitioning from defense to offense (the last of which being especially hard to do). That’s what Roddick did, and that’s why the match was so close, at least in the first two stanzas.

On Technique: Agassi’s discussion on what makes a good two-handed backhand was simply awesome. Roddick’s backhand has been criticized by many as being a bit of a weakness. What makes his stroke so different than, say, Marat Safin or Rafael Nadal’s? Agassi contends that two-handers that use stroke the ball primarily with their non-dominant hand (in Roddick’s case, his left) have weaker and less reliable strokes than those who strike primarily with the dominant hand.

Now I know why my backhand sucks.

On Boris Becker: Agassi pointed out that there is a strong correlation between the position of Becker’s tongue during his service ritual and the ultimate placement of his serve. This is why Agassi had such success returning Becker in their pantheon of great matches.

Agassi’s commentary reminded me a lot of ESPN stalwart and ace football analyst Ron Jaworski’s work. Jaws’ stuff is excellent fare: he breaks down the game play with deep insight that both serious and casual fans can really enjoy. Lucky for us, Jaws will be doing Monday Night Football this year. Hopefully, we’ll see more of Andre in the booth as well.

There is an additional benefit to listening to commentary from people like Jaws or Agassi: it really allows us to get into the mind of a great analyst and follow their chain of thought. I think following an analyst through the chain of logic is great in that it forces you to think through the problem as well and, as a result, helps you build your own analytical skills.

That’s why I loved my very first economics class, taught by Duke’s Allen Kelley. The whole course designed to improve our analytical skills and practice employing economic tools and reasoning. The recent spate of blogs and popular press books on economics (see links) purport to do the same thing.