“There are just errors that occur for a multitude of reasons,” said O’Shannessy, a native Australian who lives in Austin, Texas. “I actually have a matrix or filters. ‘When you make the opponent miss, make the opponent uncomfortable, what are the different ways to do it?’ And there are eight ways to do it.”
The first four revolve around consistency and shots that have direction, depth and height.
“Then you go to the ball,” he said.
The two elements comprise spin and power, with the final two elements being court positioning and time to hit the ball.
“So when you look at it that way, with those eight ways to force an error, you can say that any type of point is going to have some element,” said O’Shannessy. “When you are coaching a player, you are trying to get your player to gather any of those eight in your favor. So you might hit a shot that has good depth, or the player hits a shot with good power.
“So then what if we layer two of them together? Maybe I have good court position and I took time away. Then the holy grail is three.”
