By Don Henthorne | Friday, July 17, 2015
Coach Mark Bey touches on a wide variety of topics in part two of our interview.
TN Interview: Mark Bey, Part I
Bey is the CTA Coordinator at the Glenview Tennis Club in Glenview, Illinois, a member of the USTA's national junior competition committee, a contributor to the USPTA's instructional video series and a long-time coaching consultant to the Bryan brothers.
In this second part of our interview, Bey discusses the USTA's player development programs, what recreational players can learn from the pros, his work with the Bryan brothers and the potential of African American players on the pro tour.
Tennis Now: Is there anything from a pro tennis player’s game that the average person watching can incorporate into their own game?
Mark Bey: I think there is something one can learn from watching any touring pro out there, the problem is the game is so fast now and people are getting enamored by stylistic things and not looking at fundamentally what is important.
TN: So they are not noticing maybe the preparation going on before they even hit the shot or the footwork involved during a point?
Mark Bey: Yes, a return of serve at the highest level is very simple—split step, make a unit turn, hit an open stance off the outside leg, lunge, and hit the return up the middle. Now you watch juniors, you’ll see everything under the sun, they’ll go backwards, they will take a big swing, and try to step into every ball—make a lot of mistakes. So the simplicity at the upper level is a lot more important than people realize.
TN: They minimize what can go wrong.
Mark Bey: They have fewer moving parts. The other thing is the fitness level has changed so much. Think about what players like McEnroe and Connors would have looked like hitting with their shirts off back in the day, compared to what players like Grigor Dimitrov or Gael Monfils or Andy Murray would look like now hitting with their shirts off.
TN: So if you want to play now you have to hit the gym and get a physio and a nutritionist.
Mark Bey: Yes, Murray’s fitness is just now starting to pay dividends on clay, all the years that went into getting him here to this point.
TN: Let’s shift gears and talk about the USTA. What do you think of the Martin Blackman hire? And what do you think of the critics that said Patrick McEnroe was a little over his head and trying to juggle to much?
Mark Bey: Well, Blackman has got enough of a pedigree to fit the job description syllabus, the challenge with the job is to galvanize the entire country and foster the relationships on the ground floor with all the foot soldiers that are doing the work, so whoever is in that job has to have people who respect them and the work that they have done, but is also able to empower the people on the ground floor to do more. And that’s a tricky skill set. I met with Martin after he got the job and congratulated him and told him I’m available to help him in any way he needs and I hope he reaches out to me and the others of us who are out in the trenches, he obviously was Top 150 in the world, played at Stanford, worked at the College Park, Maryland program that did some incredible work with juniors that generated mass numbers of American juniors that are doing well now and had his own academy recently, so he has slaved over a hot stove but obviously you also have had guys out there who have had 20, 30 or 40 national champions, who have their purple heart if you will, who might say he doesn’t have the same street cred, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t do an excellent job, so in my personal career I’ve had almost 60 kids finish top three in nationals, so that is something you take pride in because you have built those kind of numbers from scratch and I think the new head of player development for the country is going to have to find new ways of defining success and find ways of keeping everyone in the country motivated, so I don’t have any personal jealousy of who was hired I just want to see America do well.
I just want to help in any way I can, and have given Martin my word and hope others will do the same, and not question him, or be jealous, or think about what part of their resume might be stronger, it’s about making American tennis better. But to be fair to Patrick McEnroe, he thought he could empower others and be more managerial but the truth is in a job like this you really have to be on the ground floor a lot more and it is a lot harder to do that when you are in the booth.
TN: Do you feel the USTA is making some inroads with what they are doing, such as the new $60 million facility they are building in Florida?
Mark Bey: Frankly, that new facility scares me, it’s a big project, I think it’s great if we can get a lot of functionality out of it. It’s dependent on how well it’s programmed and I’m hoping whoever has that responsibility and skill set will take the time to make an amazing center. You have to get bodies there and pied pipers there and synergize it by getting the right clusters of people. I just came back from a nice event, one of the students I coach named Elysia Bolton got invited to a playoff with some girls who are trying to compete and make an international team for the USTA, and travel to Wimbledon and for some Futures, we had 16 girls playing on clay for a whole week in Florida playing matches, it was a healthy positive experience we were able to get the peer group together and let them battle it out and let the strong survive, to me those are great, little off shoot things and you just have to understand programming, a normal junior development guy that works from 4 to 7 every day and tries to make kids better every week—we are under a lot of pressure, if our students don’t perform or if we don’t have a really fun and engaging product, we are out of business, people leave and go someplace else.
The challenge the USTA has had, no matter if their heart has been in the right place, is the private sector kind of controls performance and achievement and client retention etc. so to have people with six-digit salaries that are not bound by results, puts everybody in a tough position, it’s much more about what can we do now to get a whole bunch of guys to perform well. I read the New York Times article about Frances Tiafoe and how he had to unfortunately, part ways with his coach of nine years who got him there, that’s a challenge, finding a way to do the right thing but keep the inclusion of the private coaches.
TN: In that situation does the USTA come in with a heavy hand and kind of take the kid away?
Mark Bey: It’s hard to say, but I know if I am a young pro and I play in a Challenger and I lose in the finals and it’s $5,000 and I have food and travel and hotel expenses and I have a coach and have to pay his way as well, I’m in the negative, even though I just reached the final of a Challenger, so what’s happening is the USTA in recent years is able to help a young player by having someone come in that is on their payroll and it can give the player a bit of a kick start because economically their money is being dropped into their bottom line instead of being dispersed all around. So when Sam Querrey was working with David Nainkin and Nainkin was on the USTA’s tab it was helpful for Querrey and now that he is one of the best players in the world he can afford to have his own coaches and support staff, but initially when someone is just trying to break through it is a huge cost savings to have the USTA help support you.
TN: Do you think that helped someone like Donald Young where he got a lot of help from the USTA initially, but then some felt that maybe he wasn’t appreciative enough of what was done for him.
Mark Bey: That is a tough call, I was involved with Donald ground floor, when he was 7 and 8 he played in the group lesson I ran at the Hyde Park Athletic Club sponsored by Prince and he played doubles at 12 with another client of mine, so I spent a fair amount of time with Donald in the early stages, the problem with Donald was something that no one would have forecasted that at 14 he would be number one in the world in the 18s, I mean his success curve was so steep and primarily his parents were a great deal of that success so how do you just blindly take yourself out of that equation and say that someone else can do it better. That is a tough call. The most important thing when teaching younger boys who seem like they might have some success is to go and watch pro tennis and see the physicality and tactics and see what it takes to win matches at that level, because if I’m going to be successful at the pro level I’m going to need to know how I’m going to earn 60 points against the best guys in the world week in week out and what does that portfolio look like? I think people are to result consumed, he won this, so he must be good, but in reality you must size yourself up to what the current level is, because so many people are being misled, he won this tournament and that tournament, so now he is the next coming and it’s not necessarily the case.
TN: We touched on Tiafoe and Donald Young but there also seems to be even more success with African-American girls lately, I’m thinking of Sloane Stephens, Tornado Black, Taylor Townsend, Victoria Duval, Madison Keys. Is there any reason why they are becoming successful sooner than say some African-American men?
Mark Bey: Sure, there’s no professional women’s football, women’s basketball is just OK, Serena William’s when her career is over will be the winningest female tennis player that’s ever touched a racquet. So when you have someone like that at the top it sends a message down and more importantly tennis is a great way for a girl to perhaps go to college for free or make money, so it would be just as smart to put a young girl into tennis as any other sport, softball, basketball, etc. For guys, it is completely different it is only four and a half scholarships for a college team, and there are a lot of international players, so how good do you have to be for a boy to get college money, it is just a dramatic [difference] between gender opportunities I mean Sloane Stephens is a great athlete, Madison Keys great athlete. I mean Serena’s got the strength, power… her serve, you can use her serve as a model for both men and women. There are lots of young African-American girls in the pipeline because of her.
TN: Tell me about your relationship with the Bryan Brothers. I know you are also good friends with their Dad, Wayne.
Mark Bey: Well, the first couple of good boys that I coached played Mike and Bob in national tournaments and Mike and Bob would win and I would just go, “Nice match Wayne, congratulations.” After a couple of those times Wayne would go, “Let me buy you a burger.” We would shoot the breeze and talk tennis and agreed that we were both similar in philosophy and we both just became friends on the tournament trail. He invited me to the house to practice with the boys and bring a few of my students there before big tournaments like the Easter Bowl and we would work out there and play mini Davis Cup like competitions. He gave me private housing and let me be a guest coach. That was back in the early 90’s so I have been involved with them for a long time. Now on the tour, they have an excellent coach—David Macpherson from Australia who has been with them since 2004 then before that it was Craig Edwards and Phil Farmer, they have always had more left-handed coaches than right-handed coaches.
TN: Is that by design?
Mark Bey: No, so one of the things I do with them when I am with them is return of serve practice. I can mimic the speed and angles of most of the right-handed servers, so I am like a batting practice pitcher, so that is important, in addition to helping scout and give Dave support, sometimes we will both go scout a match and sit together, but scout independently and compare notes at the end. My eye has been helpful.
TN: Seems like maybe they also like just having you around.
Mark Bey: Yes, knock on wood. I’ve been a part of over 20 titles and some mixed doubles titles and all the U.S.Open titles, so it is a rewarding opportunity to have the best seat in the house for the best ATP tennis and it helps make me a better coach and the guys have been great to me, I mean we swept all the 2014 events that I coached with them, honestly if I continue to help them have success like that, I think they will continue to keep me around. I think I am the longest standing coaching influence on their tennis outside of their parents,
TN: Tell me about being with the Bryans maybe the evening before a big match at the U.S. Open? Would we see all of you sitting around talking strategy?
Mark Bey: No, we would just be having fun, we would work hard during the day and then leave the work on the court. In the evening we would relax watch a movie or listen to music, or now that Bob has kids, we would play with the kids. These guys are incredibly meticulous about their work on the court, Dave has intel on all the other doubles teams and the brothers have routines that they have learned from their parents and then when we know who they are playing in the next round, in the afternoon, we have drills and situations based on who they are playing next. The Bryans never look ahead, they don’t even look at the draw - never, never, they just go one match at a time, that is one of the reasons why they are the most successful team in history, I mean Jimmy Connors has 109 titles and the Bryan Bothers will soon pass him.
TN: They seem like great ambassadors for the sport, very generous with their time and with kids and signing autographs.
Mark Bey: They sign everything and it’s endless, they are always giving, Their parents instilled in them their roles as professionals and to appreciate how privileged they are and the lives that they have and they know at some point there will come a time when they are just in their rocking chairs hanging out and they won’t have 10,000 people calling their names, and when that time comes you can just look back and know that you had a great influence on the sport and you gave a lot and you gave as much as you got back. They are beyond great ambassadors, they are great people.
TN: What would you say are a couple of the keys that make the Byans so great and what are a couple things that they still have trouble with when playing certain players or teams? And how many more years do you think they would like to play?
Mark Bey: They are just rally good at fundamental traditional doubles, they play doubles the way it was traditionally thought to be played. They understand angles and coverage—whether it is inate or learned, their handiness is there, not a lot of people would encourage playing backhands on the outside but they do and they do it well, their professionalism is a key, if they lose a set you wouldn’t know it, they come right out in the second set and you have no idea they just lost the first, they go right back to work setting goals and building, their complementing skills mesh together and it’s incredible, so you might say Bob is one of the best servers of all time, you might say Mike is one of the best returners of all time, you might say Mike is one of the best first volleyers of all time you might say Bob is one of the best poaching volleyers of all time, it is an interesting dynamic, just back and forth back and forth back and forth. It is almost like their parents scripted it like that.
Their adaptability is important but you also have to understand the level of coordination that is going on out there. There are a lot of teams out there that can serve so well that they don’t even have to play a lot of points, which in no-ad scoring can make you dangerous so if you just fed a ball in from a teaching cart and told other teams to play the Bryans that would be a different ball game, it would be hard for most teams to keep up with them. There are some teams with serves 135 mph-plus that might be able to close their eyes, especially in no ad scoring, and beat them 4 and 4. There is some trickiness now to the tour. And as they are getting older and young players keep hitting harder and harder, they might start to be challenged but at this point their volley technique is still the best, the presupposition is that the volleyer is supposed to best the baseliner in high level doubles. In juniors and college that is not always the case, the baseliner can sometimes get the best of the volleyer especially in this Luxilon era, but they still take on the best baseliners in the world and still deliver the goods, so to me, they are still going to stay on top of the sport, there has been some talk about playing the 2016 Olympics, but we don’t talk about the end, we talk about the now. I am just so fortunate to have been a part of it this long and I hope to continue with them until their ready to hang it up.