omg Dean Doyle. I had no idea any video of him ever existed. I saw him play in Vancouver over 40 years ago. He was the first player widely known to use the (true, not Ovtcharov) tomahawk serve (Ding Ning, Matsudaira) random backhand/forehand side of the racquet. We see him playing it a lot in this match.
I saw him a few years before this match, I guess when he was 14 or 15. He was an all-rounder player: block, angle, drive drop, drift, chop, topspin. He came in, drifted back. He would mix all these up with no rhyme or reason, suddenly minilobbing without being pressured. He beat one of Vancouver's strongest players, well-seasoned Zoltan Patacky, who had been a Hungarian junior with fellow junior Gabor Gergley. I couldn't believe it. It's like... he didn't seem to be _doing_ much of anything and handing Zoltan these powder-puff nothingburger shots which seemed to flummox the wily Hungarian into submission. I talked to him after the match: "I wasn't scared or nothing, I just played my game." Maybe there's a case nowadays for playing that kind of game, against a sea of forehand/backhand counterloopers.
omg Dean Doyle. I had no idea any video of him ever existed. I saw him play in Vancouver over 40 years ago. He was the first player widely known to use the (true, not Ovtcharov) tomahawk serve (Ding Ning, Matsudaira) random backhand/forehand side of the racquet. We see him playing it a lot in this match.
Doyle plays like Waldner, control, hit em where they ain’t.
I saw him a few years before this match, I guess when he was 14 or 15. He was an all-rounder player: block, angle, drive drop, drift, chop, topspin. He came in, drifted back. He would mix all these up with no rhyme or reason, suddenly minilobbing without being pressured. He beat one of Vancouver's strongest players, well-seasoned Zoltan Patacky, who had been a Hungarian junior with fellow junior Gabor Gergley.
I couldn't believe it. It's like... he didn't seem to be _doing_ much of anything and handing Zoltan these powder-puff nothingburger shots which seemed to flummox the wily Hungarian into submission.
I talked to him after the match:
"I wasn't scared or nothing, I just played my game."
Maybe there's a case nowadays for playing that kind of game, against a sea of forehand/backhand counterloopers.