Doubles Only Tennis Podcast

Fabio Molle Interview: Improve Footwork & Hit a Cleaner Ball with the Functional Tennis Saber

• Will Boucek • Episode 195

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Fabio Molle is the founder of Functional Tennis, a company that created products to help tennis players improve. Their Saber is one of the only training tools that I use and highly recommend to doubles players.

In this episode, Fabio shares the story of the Functional Tennis Saber, how it is made, and why so many pro-level players are using it including Novak Djokovic, Stan Wawrinka, Harri Heliovaara, Joe Salisbury, and more.

I personally love the Saber for my volleys because it helps me consistently find the sweetspot and hit a cleaner ball. However, Fabio considers it a footwork tool.

If you are serious about improving your volleys and doubles game overall, the Saber is a must-have product. I promise it will make you a better player.

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Fabio Mole and Functional Tennis

Speaker 1

Hey everyone, I'm recording this from the players dining area in New York at the US Open, so hopefully you can hear me okay with the background noise. This episode you're about to hear is with Fabio Mole. So in the past, if you've listened to the podcast for a while, then you've heard me talk about the Functional Tennis Sabre, and Fabio is the creator of that product and it's one of the only training aids that I use regularly and recommend that you use as well. So I have this issue on my forehand volley where I tend to miss it down near the throat of the racket a little bit closer to me, so kind of the top left part or, I'm sorry, the bottom left part of the racket if you're looking from behind. So I'm missing the sweet spot a lot on those volleys and the functional tennis saber helps me correct that. It's basically a tennis racket with a very tiny head size, so you cannot get away with missing the sweet spot. So I like to use the Sabre to warm up my volleys and then I'm hitting much cleaner volleys throughout the match. So in this episode you're going to hear from Fabio, you're going to hear his story, as well as the story of the functional tennis Sabre, which many ATP and WTA players use, including Novak Djokovic, stan Wawrinka, joe Salisbury, harry Iliovar, who won Wimbledon earlier this year, and a lot more.

Speaker 1

After we talk about the story of the Sabre, we dive into Fabio's podcast. He had me on recently to talk about the Olympics, but he's had tons of pro players and coaches on the podcast, so we talk about some of the best lessons he's learned from that and then get into a few other products that he has created as well. So there's a lot in this episode, but we're mostly focused on Fabio and Functional Tennis and his products, which, again, I highly recommend. I'm going to link to all of it in the show notes. So, without further delay, enjoy this conversation with Fabio Mole. Hey, everyone, welcome to the show. Today we have Fabio Mole from Functional Tennis on Fabio welcome.

Speaker 2

Great Nice to see you again, Matt. I hope you are well and thanks for having me on your show.

Speaker 1

Yeah, excited to talk to you today and this is kind of a unique episode for us, so we're typically having pro doubles players or coaches on, but I like your products so much that I wanted to have you on anyways and talk to people about the functional tennis saber and kind of the story behind it. But before we get to that, tell us your story. How did you get started in tennis all the way to where you are now?

Speaker 2

Yeah, like any young kid, I liked to play. There was a little tennis club beside me and I used to annoy my parents to join and eventually I got membership. Maybe I was about nine. I used to play a bit of soccer before that, so early days played a lot of soccer. But I went to the tennis club and 10, 11, 12, then I stopped playing tennis, got more serious into stopped playing soccer sorry more serious into the tennis. And I used to play with a lot of guys and girls who were older than me. So I might be 12, they were 15, 16. And that helped me get better really quickly.

Speaker 2

As a young 12 year old I think I was looking back. I was way behind already national level, because kids start at six, seven, even technique wise, and it takes like starting at getting serious about tennis when you're 11 and 12. It does make it a bit tougher. You do hear some good stories, but so anyway. So I just got to love it, played more and more. Then I got into some good squads, good squads around the country. My level went up even more and then was I one of the top players in the country. No, but I enjoyed playing and was competitive and I looked to go into the States after what you would call high school we call it secondary school here but I wasn't getting a good enough university. So decided to stay in Dublin and went to my local university, which is a great university, studied software engineering and played tennis on and off.

Speaker 2

Then in my 20s played for the college team and sort of took a weight lift, and then later on in my 20s and got serious into that. I just enjoyed that and then, maybe hitting 30s again, decided to play more tennis and I stepped it up and, funny enough, in my university the national tennis academy or the national it became the national training center and so all the top guys and girls used to hit there. So I used to go over there and practice with them and all of a sudden my level jumped again because I was hitting for like two, three hours with these every day. And I was lucky with work. I worked in a family business. It was quite flexible, so I could go over there, do a few hours and which was amazing and I played a few futures as well.

Speaker 2

Didn't do good. I think the worst thing that happened to me was winning a few qualities matches in Ireland and thinking I can go do this in foreign countries. It was a lot harder than I thought. I got a bit lucky in Ireland, you could say so, and Dublin is known to have like the futures was just on here a few weeks ago and every player would tell you it's the nicest futures in the country in the world. Sorry, they treat the players so well. The clubs are beautiful and they really run a good show here because it's our top tier event, so you know they put all their effort into it and the players get driven everywhere, and it's really nice.

Speaker 2

But anyway, in my late twenties because I sort of a software engineer background my work, though, was in catering, my family-owned catering business I worked with them, but I still had a.

Speaker 2

You know, I still want to do my own thing, and I actually set up at a app called my tennis tracker, and it was early on in the apple days, where coaches and players had an app where basically what our match journal and practice journal does now I had that in an app way back then went for okay, we used to, we had people using it, and then I had issues with the developer. There was a I stupidly had no backup of it, and our developer in the state said there was a thunderstorm, his machine blew up, there was no backup, and I was like how are we going to keep? We should redevelop everything. And I was just like I'm moving on to the next thing and that stage. I just had a christmas jumper business. You again, they're called christmas jumpers in europe and the states are called ugly christmas sweaters, and I set up an e-commerce store with a friend of mine.

The Evolution of Functional Tennis

Speaker 2

We do the friends who'd great fun, uh, going out with these jumpers. They're really hard to get and myself and one of my best pals said why don't we get our own made? So we got some designed. We set up an e-commerce store, knew nothing about e-commerce store back then and we started selling these and we did pretty well for the first few years. Then we had a pop-up store like. We were working with brands like Heineken and Mini was amazing and, uh, ultimately it was a fad. It last a few years. We did well, we probably blew all the money we made on going out nights out having fun. That's every penny we made went on that. So, looking back, that wasn't so good.

Speaker 2

But so I always had the interest in tennis and a few years after that, I set up this Instagram account called Functional Tennis, because in my thirties I'm sure I'm not sure the demographic of your listeners, which is probably a lot of 30 and 40 year olds, where you start picking up a lot of injuries they just creep up out of nowhere, be it shoulder, hips and or your arm, and I just taught on instagram. These early days in instagram, with 2016, there was a lot of people putting out good content that I thought was helping me and I was like, why don't I try? And initially I thought there's nowhere to save this on instagram and I thought why don't I create an account and just save them there so I can reference them? And then I thought this could be a benefit to other people and all these exercises be it on court or off court a lot was physios back then.

Speaker 2

There's some great physios and it just grew from there. So that was the start of functional tennis was just videos for me that I thought would help me and my body and allow me to play more tennis. And that's where functional tennis kicked off. There was never a plan to sell journals or sabers or like we're about to hit a million followers in a few weeks, so there was never any plans for that.

Speaker 2

It just snowballed in today and of course, I love tennis so it got me access to so many great players and people and, you know, getting to know people like you and other great people in the tennis world. It's really, it's been amazing what it's done for me. I've probably the only thing hasn't been good for is my tennis. I'm probably paying less tennis now than ever yeah, I'm the same.

Speaker 1

I always thought I played more tennis.

Speaker 2

So that's what the past it's really more covid. I lost a run of things because I didn't play for 10, 12 months and then I came back and the body was just broken from day one. I haven't still got. I've lost fitness, shoulders give me problems, back has given me problems, and we've had three kids as well, roughly just before the kid came, before covid. So I'm not sure if it's related to that now, but but between COVID and you know, more sleepless nights and I just haven't been able to get there. I still strive to get back there and, uh, so yeah, so luckily we don't. We don't have a YouTube account, we don't, like, I don't, say, document my work or tennis journey, because I'd be out of business if I did, because the body is broken, there'll be no tennis to show. So, yeah, so that's really the tennis journey.

Speaker 2

And along the way we created the, we first said my first product I thought was going to be, with this audience growing, I thought, okay, well, let's try and turn this into an e-commerce business, which I really enjoyed doing, and I thought, well, why don't I go back and release that app again?

Speaker 2

But it was quite expensive to develop an app and I thought, well, why don't we try and get people off the phone and do a journal? So I started with the match journal and then the practice journal came along after that and the meantime I discovered this young kid called Jonas Fortek as a 12 year old. There's a video that we posted multiple times and always did well, but in video he's using this wooden spoon and called the tennis pointer and I was like that's really interesting, that video is doing well, let me try and source this tennis pointer. And like we sourced it was made by a guy in the Czech Republic and we managed to source the. He actually had a distributor set up and we managed to find him. We got the product, we tested, I really liked it and I put it out to the world and we sold out instantly.

Speaker 1

It was crazy like and I thought okay, explain to people what the tennis pointer is. So it's like the tennis point of a racket kind of, but it's a big wooden spoon.

Speaker 2

It's like a giant wooden spoon with uh with a head.

Speaker 2

It's like a 12 centimeter diameter head on it, so it's really hard to hit the ball. It's made of European red oak. There's a lot of copies, which more or less put the Sabre out of business for me, because they were copied everywhere. Everybody said they could do their own and but it was made with this European red oak, which is quite expensive. It was cured, which means you could leave this in the rain.

Speaker 2

They would not bend, warp and, like we had some of the top pros smashing the ball with these, they didn't crack. People still have them from 2018, still your 2019, sorry, still use them now, and so the quality was amazing. So it's a big, giant wooden spoon, allows you to work on your contact point and especially, it's all about the feet work the feet, work the feet, so you get into position. But we had a lot of competition as in people, especially in eastern europe, started making their own. People in the states start making their own. Then they start appearing on alibaba for half what we were charging for, like they were on sale for less than what they were costing me and I knew I'm in trouble here at this stage.

Speaker 2

We got a lot of reviews. We got it was always in my head I'd love to do a racket version of this, and so the seeds were planted there to do the racket version. And so in the meantime we launched a camera mount, which was kind of popular, sort of made sense for our business that we'd give you a tool to record your tennis so you could send us videos that we could share, that we could share. So that's why we thought the camera mount was actually a good product for us. And then all these apps came out, like Swing Vision, and so the camera mount worked really well and in the meantime I was trying to find a team to help me develop the Sabre. We did contact like brands, like Head, and saying, look, we'd like to do this, would you like to get involved with it? And they're like, not interested. They just had no interest in training aids. They stick to match and practice rackets. That's all they want, and I think a lot of do. The brands were like that as well and so, yeah, it took me.

Speaker 2

The longest thing was probably find the team to work with, as in a cosmetic designer and then actual technical designer, somebody who's worked developing rackets before and that was it. So once I found them, eventually I spent two weeks working in excel doing prototypes, doing we'd cardboard cut it was. I had cardboard cutouts of prototypes. I remember we're living in another house at the time, there's a basement and basically two weeks in the dark there I spent and eventually I got to what I thought was happy in a cardboard shape and we we sent all we said. We sent more or less an excel sheet to china and we had a great manufacturer over there and they built some 3d models and things were changed then and then eventually some prototypes arrived. Some things were changed. Prototypes arrived and they said, okay, this is really good. And then the cosmetic designer start working on it and we had our first sample and they said, okay, well, let's put in an order here.

Speaker 2

But I kind of knew this would work because it was a better version than the wooden spoon. So I, we had it's not. We were launching this to, you know, with no audience. We'd nobody purchased something similar, so we kind of launched it to a good, odd, good, hot audience. And yeah, it was 2022. We started working in early in january. 2021 was when I put the, when I started working the excel sheet, I probably spent all of 2020 looking for a team 2021. Uh, yeah, I started working on it and the product was released in pre-order in april 22, and so my, my dates, my years, are messed up here.

Innovative Tennis Training Tool

Speaker 2

Yeah, pre-order 2022 covid messed everybody up with their years and then, yeah, they went and I remember I was in launch it when I was in greece, actually at the img future stars. I have a tendency to go away in tournaments and launch products at tournaments bad idea, don't recommend it with a bit of stress, but launch it and like yeah, we so like we sold out pretty quickly and then an x order came in. These things take time to manufacture, to get production space. We're competing with big brands in the manufacturers. So you know like we're a tiny, tiny brand and they're like no, you're pushed down the edge, so we're taking longer and then flying them in is quite expensive, so we want to get them in on the, on the sea freight, so yeah so that was that, but it was been a lot of fun and it's been exciting couple of years since we launched it.

Speaker 1

Yeah, that's amazing. I've got a lot of follow-up questions. I'm going to make a note here of a few of them. So first off, before I ask about the Sabre itself, your story you must know Dave O'Hare then.

Speaker 2

He's been on the podcast multiple times. He's hosted three shows. For me, actually, one of my favorite episodes has actually been hosted by him. But no, dave was a former Memphis play doubles with Joe Salesbury. He was number one player in college tennis. They played a bit in the pro tour together and then Dave unfortunately got injured playing football of all things in Ireland, hurt his ankle really badly and never really recovered from that. But you know, I think it opened up doors to coach from him and he still works with Joe and Rajiv now, which is amazing. And yeah, he's not around. Really nice guy, great coach, and he's still young, which is amazing yeah, yeah, he's a great guy.

Speaker 1

Yeah, I've had him on the podcast a few times and, um, uh, yeah, he's been really supportive of what what I'm doing as well, and I actually grew up in memphis where he played college, um, which I didn't know him then, but um, it's funny just how the tennis world can kind of overlap like that yeah, speaking of memphis, sorry to uh.

Speaker 2

connor gann, another friend of mine, is currently there now, and there's a guy called charlie barry there now more specializing in doubles. Charlie's a good guy, and then we've another guy, sean O'Nulon, going over there next year. So Dave's introduced a lot of Irish players to the Memphis team.

Speaker 1

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, they just got a new facility. That's supposed to be real nice. I still haven't been, but I've heard good things. So for the Sabre, so for people listening, I've talked about your product before. I've shared it on the newsletter. It's.

Speaker 1

You know, I don't use a lot of training aids. I'll set up targets, you know, when I'm out there practicing recently I haven't been playing a lot of tennis I'm kind of like you, where I'm, I'm so in tennis all day and then I get done. And I'm like where I'm, so in tennis all day, and then I get done and I'm like I don't know if I want to go to the court, I'd rather go to the gym. But yeah, I don't use a lot of training aids, but yours is one that I always do keep in my bag and I feel like for me it helps me with that contact point. Especially my forehand volley is, I guess, the best use case for me. I tend to miss on, like the bottom left part of the racket and when I'm using a full tennis racket I get away with it because the you know, it's just not on the sweet spot, but it'll still hit the strings, it'll still go over and I'll dump a volley for a winner and I just don't make any corrections because I still get away with it.

Speaker 1

But with your tennis saber you do not get away with it. You have to hit the sweet spot, which is so nice. So the first time I used it I went out and hit volleys for five or 10 minutes with it and then I played a practice set and I hit my volley so much cleaner immediately and I know that sounds like a fake paid testimonial or something, but I promise you it's not like that. That's literally what happened, because it forces you to hit the sweet spot and find that contact point. But I'm curious about the development of it. You talked about being in the basement with making a cardboard cutout. So is this literally just like cardboard that you have in your basement and you're using scissors to cut out like a mold, or what does that mean?

Speaker 2

Yeah, more or less Like we. Obviously we are shipping from that same office our previous products, so there's boxes coming in and there's always cardboard lying around but it was using. You know, obviously I worked off the design of the wooden spoon I and then I worked off some of my favorite like I use my radical heavily because that's what racket I would have used a lot myself. So I based it off those two. I'm just trying to find where the perfect sweet spot in the racket is and work around that and also try and gauge what is. What did I think was hard enough but also easy that you can use it.

Speaker 2

So with the wooden pointer it was hard to. It was so hard to hit you couldn't rally with it. You know it was more of a ball feeding exercise. You know ball feeding that it was really good for that. But if you wanted to rally with somebody with a normal racket, really hard and if you want to rally pointer v pointer impossible. So my goal with the Sabre was, yeah, we do the ball feed stuff, but you can play a match versus somebody also using a full racket or you can use, you can play somebody else with a Sabre as well. So we wanted to make it hard, but not so hard that you know every second or third shot was a shank. So we're just. I was trying to find a happy medium. That took a bit of. That's why our head size is 37 square inches. I thought that just worked perfectly, so took a while of just getting a feel and just figuring that out.

Speaker 2

Took a bit of time yeah yeah, and also we're working on racket thickness as well, working on different shapes of the frame and there's a lot of other measurements that go into it. And yeah, that's really what I was. That was really important just to get that right mix. So you go and hit balls. We've had coaches who play matches. They play league matches with it. I've had my own saber tournaments here. I know other clubs have had saber tournaments where they might do champions, breakers and uh, yeah so, and I've seen pros hit saber on saber also yeah, I think on your website.

Speaker 1

I don't know if it's still there, but I remember seeing a while back um, some video of djokovic hitting with it.

Speaker 2

Maybe, um, from the baseline funny you were saying earlier you like to keep in your bag. Somebody had sent me a sorry, a photo of djokovic with the saber in his bag. You could see it hanging out, which is quite interesting. But that wimbledon I got another phone call, a photo of Jockvidge with the saber in his bag. You could see it hanging out, which is quite interesting. But in that Wimbledon I got another phone call. A friend of mine rings and goes Fabio, fabio Jockvidge using a saber. It was on the TV and it was one of these shots that BBC had. Like you know what's going on in Wimbledon I had Novak was playing with his.

Speaker 2

I remember I actually gave him the sabre in Roland Garros. I had no intention to give him a sabre at all, it just wasn't on my radar. I know I met him with our journals. He wasn't saying endorsed, but he talked about our journals, which was amazing. I met him and he knew what it was. He knew what we were.

Speaker 2

Uh, I was in roland garros two years, was it? Yeah, two years now, and he was playing alcraz. They had a closed session and I was with uh suwan kwan, uh, just helping him out with a few things. So I was part of his team and it meant I'd also access to all the courts, and I was like, oh, jock was just playing alcraz, let me run in. It was the end of the session and I got some filmed, some amazing points. The place was empty. There was probably, like I'd say, 8-10 people there max, and it was crazy.

Speaker 2

Anyway, novak's walking out and I'm like, wait, let me give Novak a sabre. I had some with me because I never know when I might need them, but still, this wasn't the plan. And so Novak's walking out. Where you walk onto the court, he's walking out. I run down there and Novak walks through the door.

Tennis Training Tools and Techniques

Speaker 2

I tap him on his back and he doesn't turn around. I'm like I probably think I'm a fan and I'm like, well, there's no fans allowed here, so it can't be. And I tap him again. He turned around and goes hey. And I was like look, novak, I have a gift for you here. And he was like oh, I've seen that on Instagram. Blah, blah, blah. I was like here you go, that's for you. And then we was like yeah, catch you soon. And it was a really short conversation. And then it appeared at Wimbledon. Then, a couple of months later, which was amazing him a few times now at some asics events and randomly meeting him, and he's been super nice who are some of the doubles players that, uh, that use this saber obviously, uh, dave o'hare, like you mentioned, has one and he has.

Speaker 2

He's a couple of them now at this stage, but joe's always recarries one. He used it to for volleys, for strike, and I've seen video, multiple videos, of that Double Skies. Helio Vera bought one from our website.

Speaker 1

Just won Wimbledon yeah.

Speaker 2

Just before and he bought one about a year and a half ago and Henry Patton, funny enough, after he won Wimbledon somebody sent me a video and I was like oh, this video, I had it, I hadn't sent it to yet.

Speaker 1

During Queens.

Speaker 2

He was using one in Queens, which was amazing. He won Wimbledon with him. So good, like that's great. I've seen Jamie Murray hit one, bopana has one, uh, others, yeah, the doubles. They're the doubles guys. I can think off the top of my head who have them. But there's definitely Lloyd Glasspool. I've seen videos of him hitting with it in Wimbledon, all of them. I've seen doing volley stuff with it. It's been absolutely amazing. And then there's I'm not sure if you want me to name the singles guys. There's been plenty. There's been Stanford Rinker he was the first, obviously with Novak. Recently. I just saw a video yesterday of Pavel Kotov, who I'm not sure is ranked. Is he top 30? I'm not sure his exact rank.

Speaker 1

I don't know. Singles is outside of my scope.

Speaker 2

Karatsev used to use a wooden spoon and he wanted a saber. He uses those training aids. Her cats love it. His coach had to tell him to stop using it because he was using it too much. I've seen cam nori strike with one upcoming french player, gabriel debru, who genie bouchard's been striking with one, marta kostiak, suan kwan and, uh, arthur ferry has one. I've seen a picture of taylor fritz with one in his hands, cat mcnally yeah like they're the ones I know of. There's probably someone forgetting, but there's probably.

Speaker 1

There's probably more that you don't yeah so it's really impressive.

Speaker 2

These guys use it or have it or they have in their bag. They probably don't use it all the time, but sometimes they want to zone in on something and they'll take it out and try and dial in yeah, yeah, yeah, it's such.

Speaker 1

I mean it just speaks to the quality of the product and like I feel like for club players which is most of our audience listening today a lot of us struggle with like finding that sweet spot right, and I think that's maybe like the most important thing for a club level player to learn is like it's great to learn how to hit with top spin or how to learn how to hit harder and increase your racket head speed or whatever it is, but if you don't find the sweet spot, like everything else is going to be more difficult. But if you can find that sweet spot, it's going to be a lot easier. I'm curious what sorts of like doubles clinics or are there any specific drills that you've seen done with the saber outside of kind of what I talked about a little bit earlier? Um, I like to just volley with it with my opponent back at the baseline and I'll just volley back to them. But is there any other kind of specific drills for for doubles that you've seen done with it?

Speaker 2

Just before I answer that. I think a lot of it comes to like figuring out the contact point. Sometimes you've got to work on the contact point, just understand where it is, and we've been told many times. Obviously people use it as a focus tool. Somebody has to dial in, really concentrate on what they're doing, but it comes down to the feet and if the feet aren't moving you might compensate a few times for the contact point, but then unforced errors start happening and be it your racket or be it a saber, so it really is a footwork tool.

Speaker 2

You have to work your feet so hard, get in position all the time so you can rotate properly, so you can strike the ball properly in the right place. So we've been told by so many people about that, so I see it heavily as a footwork tool now and never really even at the start didn't really occur to me with a wooden spoon as much, but it started appearing more and more there and even with the saber I sort of reset a little bit and then we see footwork, footwork coming out a lot more. So that's what sort of tool? Regarding drills, I sort of famously don't give drills for many, for a few reasons.

Speaker 2

One, every coach has their own way of doing things yeah no, I find, and a lot of coaches don't like what other coaches do as well. So I never wanted to put out drills and say, and I've worked with coaches to do drills, but we decided not to put them out there. We just said, look, we let people figure out what to do with it, how to figure it out themselves, because so many times a coach tells a player to buy one, or a player works with a coach and and most of the time you just work on the same thing. You work with a normal racket. You just substitute it in for the, the saber. It just makes it harder. It makes you work harder. That's why you go back to normal racket. It's easier.

Speaker 2

So is there any specific drills that I recommend? Not really. I just recommend do what you normally do when you're working on specific stroke or what it is, and just sub in the saber. You don't want to complicate it too much and we let coaches go out there, do the wrong thing, enjoying it. We try and be not opinionated. I think that's been good for us not to be, because I actually don't think we may have even grown on instagram as much if we were heavily opinionated. I know places like twitter. You have to be opinionated out there with. You know, the more wrong you are, the better it is for your.

Speaker 2

You know you grow more with yeah, I just thought for more, yeah I just wanted to put out thoughts out there and see what people come back with yeah, I like that.

Speaker 1

Yeah, the. The idea that it's a footwork tool is interesting. I haven't heard that until literally. You're just telling me now, um, but I, I think that makes a ton of sense. Um, and then by like contact point to clarify for people, um, I imagine you, you mean like how your body is spatially in relationship to the ball so you can make contact a little bit later. You can make contact out in front more. Um, you've got to find that right contact point. Is that right?

The Importance of Tennis Knowledge

Speaker 2

yeah, yeah, just understand where exactly you should be hitting the ball. And again, you're working with your coach to find what's for you. Like, obviously, the famous defender is a straight arm. Most players are a little bent arm, but it's just out in front to you and just helping you fight with this with the small head. You have to find where it is exactly. Yeah, or else you're going to shank the ball and, yeah, we see many players maybe lower level hit the ball very close to their body. I'm still a little bit guilty of that. Where you get a bit lazy and you're hitting the ball close to your body, you lose a lot of power and I think you're also a bit less consistent. Maybe a coach can correct me on that, but I feel you're definitely losing power and you're going to break down a bit more.

Speaker 1

Hmm, Interesting. So I want to move on to your podcast, so the Functional Tennis Podcast. We recorded an episode recently and talked about doubles in the Olympics, but you've had a ton of different guests on from the tour. What are some of the best lessons that you've learned from the podcast? Either doubles lessons or even mental lessons as well it's been a lot of good things.

Speaker 2

We're plus 230 guests. I'm not sure many you've had, but you definitely start forgetting some of the earlier yeah, no, I do 100, sometimes like wait, have I had them on the?

Speaker 2

we'd recently conan island on the podcast. I'm not sure if you know conan island. He was x. He's x2 ncaa in the states. He played for berkeley, then went on to be ireland's number one. He got to rank in about 130 and a great player.

Speaker 2

But he recently released a book called racket and it talks about the struggles of playing tennis from early days. Great book, by the way. I normally don't read books that quick and two days, two flights had it read. But anyway I was asking him connor, have you been on this podcast before? I can't remember and he had been on it before. I was like like oh God.

Speaker 2

But more recently actually it wasn't me who hosted the podcast, the episode was Dave O'Hare and he had Brad Stein on and Brad Stein had some good points. Basically he said you can't bullshit tennis players. If you want to be a good coach you got to know your stuff. You know they will see through your crap and they even like said matt little we had in the podcast talks about when he goes to andy murray and I've heard this mentioned to other people working with top pros, when you go with something you better have facts to back it up, because they will not do anything unless you're giving them the exact reason why and the benefits.

Speaker 2

So it just means you know when you're working with something. Don't just pick something up off the internet and say, oh, let's do that today. You got to really research and see what are the benefits of it and uh, so that that I've heard. You know sometimes you hear patrons true, I'm sure you've heard them yourself where you know people working with top players. They all sort of the same mind. You know you got to treat them the same way. You got to respect, obviously, but also know your stuff or else you're going to be out of a job pretty quick yeah, yeah, I like that um, having the the facts to back it up.

Speaker 1

it's something that I'm like, you know, when I did scouting for the olympics or when I'm working with a pro player, I'm always like, before I send them a scouting report the Olympics, or when I'm working with a pro player, I'm always like, before I send them a scouting report or an assessment report of their game, I like the last thing I do is double check, like all of my claims that could be opinionated and I make sure I have actual data to back it up. And sometimes I catch myself doing that because I like I'm getting a little bit lazy and I'll say like, oh, you need to be serving down the T more often because of your partner's not able to get involved at the net anymore. And that's something that, like, a lot of coaches just say right, it's better to serve down the T because it takes away the angles.

Speaker 1

But I always double check those things to make sure I actually have the data. And when I do catch myself, I it's a really good reminder of like, okay, like, stay on this, because if you start getting lazy then you're not providing as much value and they are going to see through it for sure.

Speaker 2

Yeah, the top guys will definitely see true, but yeah, so I think if you somebody's going to listen to an episode, the Brad Stein one is really out there and you know it's topical and but it's true. So it's really good, really good With somebody like Pablo Andlaher on the podcast who was really open, transparent, about how hard it is for junior tennis players and what's committed from the parents and from the kid and how one day they have to decide I'm doing this, I'm going all in and they have to decide I'm doing this, I'm going all in and they have to change their, obviously, their mindset, their life and they, they got to know what to have to give up. You know their friends and parties and whatnot. Like it's really. It just shows how hard like to be a top, to be, to get on the road to being a top tennis player, with no guarantees you have to give up so much. Obviously, if you make it, the rewards are great. So he just gives a really good insight into that, into what's, into what it takes, which is really good.

Speaker 2

Uh, like I've said, the connor nile and one's really interesting just getting his insight from a junior. We did push. I have been maybe the last year pushing the junior angle a lot more, like parents we had, like chintzy jovinko, who is uh what her child has just two kids who are really, really good, and it just gives insight into their career, her struggles growing up, having to move country, help out in the academy and uh just, you just learn all the time. Every podcast is slightly, episode is slightly different and you're picking up new things. So, yeah, sometimes people ask me what's the best one, because that changes from time to time.

Importance of Doubles Tennis Strategy

Speaker 1

Like yeah, for sure. Um, so I wanted to talk a little bit about, uh, doubles, so we chatted very briefly before the show. Typically I end with how can we make doubles more popular? But since you live in Europe and you're so involved in tennis in Europe, I'm always curious about the differences between doubles in Europe and doubles in the States. So we can talk about it maybe from an adult club level player perspective as well as a pro perspective. I know a lot of players I talk to say you know, indian Wells is one of the best attended tournaments for the doubles courts. I know some countries in Europe love to attend the doubles matches and others don't as much, like, I think, the Italian Open. Unless it's two Italians on the court, like most pros I talk to, like they don't get a lot of fans at their matches there. So what? Let's start with, I guess, the adult club level player. How common is doubles at that level versus singles? How common is doubles at that level versus singles?

Speaker 2

It's extremely common. Okay, because as a club level player, obviously one. It's a bit more recreation, it's recreationally a bit more fun playing with your friends and I think it works well to most leagues. We hear like we've winter league, summer league, like like senior league bloodlet league. They all involve some sort of doubles. Some are doubles only, some are half doubles, half singles, and as you get older there's more and more doubles.

Speaker 2

So doubles is really, really important and I think a lot of times people don't work on these skills enough.

Speaker 2

But I do think we find, like some of my friends who would have went to scholarship in the States states they're just so much better doubles players than players who don't go to the states.

Speaker 2

So whether you're a great club level player, whether you're a great national player that decided to quit tennis, you know to not go pro. And then there's those that go to the states and then they may quit after they go to the states. But and then and then there's the pros, the 18 year olds who goes pro, like the kids who go to the States and do their scholarships, and great universities always come back Great doubles players Like I love playing doubles with them. They tell you what to do, where to stand, you just execute on what they say. So the skills that they learn in college tennis is amazing. For doubles, which I I'm always excited to play with somebody who's played college tennis, yeah, and they and the guys go straight to tour don't necessarily be good double, they're still lost in the alleys, like I find when even girls yeah, well, you see, like the, if you look at like the top 50 on the men's and women's side in doubles, a lot of them played college A ton.

Speaker 2

Way more than singles obviously.

Speaker 2

They definitely learn a great skill set by doing that, and I think that then, more on a recreational level, by being a great doubles player I don't think I am, by the way, and I think I miss out on opportunities by being a great doubles player, you're going to win more matches, you're selected for higher teams. I think if you work on those skills, there's definitely a lot of opportunity. But, yes, doubles is played a lot and I know in the UK there's a lot of doubles as well, but I can't speak for Europe, but I can't see why there's not a lot of doubles either at the club level.

Speaker 1

There was somebody I talked to like probably a year or two ago who lived in Germany and they said they played like adult. It was like recreational but competitive and like decently high level, but not like they were never pro or anything like that and they were on these club teams where they would play in this league and they'd play these matches and I don't remember the exact number, but they played mostly singles. It was like maybe five singles matches and then two doubles matches or something like that, and then it was like best of seven overall. In the States here the most common league format is three doubles matches, so you have six players playing doubles and then two singles matches, and then the higher or the older you get, they're starting to just filter out the singles. So they've got a lot of leagues that are three doubles matches, so six doubles players and you only play one singles match, which is four total matches. Then they do it like you know, if you split to two, whoever has the most sets wins or whoever has the most games or whatever.

Speaker 1

What's the ratio on most of y'all's leagues?

Speaker 2

Well, no sir. Well, no sir, just to say, like the, oh, let's say the lower class leagues where older people would play, normally, they tend to have the older people play the doubles and then, if there's two or three singles, also to get in younger kids for that that tends to happen a lot, but uh, so what do you mean by your question? What's the ratio?

Speaker 1

so are most of the leagues like three doubles matches and two singles matches, or something else. I'll tell you now.

Speaker 2

So, starting now, in September there's a senior league, that's three doubles, six on a team. There's also a thing called Floodlit League, and that's how many's on a team. There's five on a team or just three, I think. Sorry, just four on a team, and it's drawn on the night whether you play one of two singles or doubles, that's a, it's a random. Then in January, february, there's winter league, that's three doubles, and then in summer league there is the big one. Sorry, in summer is summer league, where there's three singles and two doubles. That used to be years ago, two doubles. That used to be years ago. That used to be six singles and three doubles. You play singles and then doubles first, but I think they thought it was taking too much time so they stopped it. So now you'd have a seven on that team with the four doubles and three singles, and that's it. So you can see it's heavily, it's by yeah, that's a lot of doubles doubles.

Speaker 1

Uh you're, you're gonna go far so what about it at a pro level? I know you attend some pro tournaments in europe. What's your perspective on, like, the doubles crowds in europe? Um, is it true what I'm saying? Like the attendance is a little bit lower and most of the european tournaments, or?

Speaker 2

um, yeah, I haven't been I haven't been to every term, but the ones I've, I don't. I don't really go to them myself. I'm there normally working, so I'm there all day getting content, and I honestly tend to go there before the tournament starts. So I'll go practice the few days before they practice so I can get practice content all day, and then when the matches start, it's harder to get the right place in the court. So I I don't get content so I tend to leave. But if I stay, normally the doubles hasn't even started, because they start a day or two later so most times I go to tournament.

Speaker 2

I don't watch doubles, nor do I watch singles. I may get the first day of singles and my flight is usually like, let's say it starts the monday, my flight could be mond Monday night, so I get a bit of singles and then I leave, or Sunday, and so I can't answer that. But in general, at a pro level, I've watched enough TV to know there's a lot less. There's a lot less people watch doubles, which is unfortunate. I did enjoy the Olympics where obviously the singles guys were only playing best of three sets, so that allowed them to play doubles. I think that's an interesting strategy where if slams were reduced, you'd like to think they play more doubles. And which you do get, like you do get more singles guys playing doubles at maybe not the masters well, some masters events because some of the guys have never.

Speaker 1

The double guys aren't happy about that where you've a rank in a 30 and you may not get into the main draw, which can be terrible like uh, so and they withdraw in like the second round right, like a lot of the singles guys yeah, I think that's absolutely terrible.

Speaker 2

And to be like the 30th rank I'm not sure the exact number to be the 30th best in the world at your sport, at doubles, and not to get into the main draw, I think is a joke, by the way. So yeah, so I think having more singles players is good for the you know we'll get more people watching it but is it good for the doubles guys, who that's their bread and butter?

Speaker 1

I don't think so yeah, you gotta be careful they don't complain too much it's a?

Speaker 1

um. Yeah, it's a good point. I think you see more of the singles players playing at the majors, on the women's side, I think, because it's two out of three in singles, right? So if the men did switch to two out of three, which I, I don't know, I mean, that's a different debate, if you like, best of five or whatever, but if they did, I would imagine more of them would play doubles. So, fabio, this has been a lot of fun. Any final requests or comments? For the audience, for people listening, we'll link to everything in the show notes. Of course, we'll link to the Sabre as well as some of your other products. Any final requests or comments, though? No, if there are any questions regarding the functions of the Sabre, let me know Some people as well as some of your other products.

Speaker 2

Any final requests or comments, though? No, if there are any questions regarding the functions of the state, let me know Some people. The biggest question we get, usually with two questions we get, is one do we ship worldwide? Yes, we do. We can ship quickly to the state and there's no import duties or anything. Because you're very generous, your government over there. They allow you guys to import 800 a day without any extra vats, taxes or duties, which is amazing for me as a business running from dub and ireland. That's amazing shipping into the states. And also, does it come strong? That's always the biggest. That is the biggest question we get.

Speaker 2

And yes, the saber arrives strong. We always thought it would never work if the saber arrived to people on strong because one you know, they might struggle to find somebody to string it. They may not have a usual stringer for some recreational players. So it arrives strong, ready to go and it can be easily strong by. We videos on our website for all that. So they're just the main concerns, but any questions they can reach out to me directly on Functional Tennis Instagram account. I answer all the questions there.

Speaker 1

Awesome, Fabio. Well, thanks a ton for coming on again and thanks everyone for listening. I'll link to everything in the show notes and I will talk to you all soon.

Speaker 2

Thanks Will, Pleasure being on.