It's not the game itself that is the issue.. Kerber's style is great for Kerber.... it's about playing your most natural game, the one that flows for you. You should always thrive to make your weapons bigger and your weaknesses smaller, develop your shots and learn others. But developing your game and giving it more dimensions should never come at the expense of your weapons and your natural flowing game. That's the real issue. It has been proved, time and again.. and again.. and again.. that whoever tries to completely change their playing style ends up not being able to play well at all. Take JJ.. when she got to number 1 in 08, she tried to buff up and add muscles so she could hit harder and play more aggressively. She failed.. and lost herself for a while, before trying to go back to basics. But much was lost in that attempt to run away from her most natural flowing game. Maybe had she taken her base game, and gradually added shots she could trust, she could've managed to play more aggressively, without losing her whole style of play in the process. Take another example.. Caro. After she got to number 1 in 2010, playing as a literal human backboard, she got together briefly with a bunch of coaches who tried to make her play more aggressively. Failed. She is still searching herself, and never got to play as well as 2010 IMHO. Those are two so called pushers who were better off not attempting to play a BBB game. Both of them tried to alter their games by completely changing their style of play and ended up losing their tennis along the way. So the issue here is not to be a pusher or not.. its about improving while keeping your flowing natural game. Kerber herself is an example. A couple of years ago she fired her coach Torben and got together with this other guy. He tried to alter her game. She lost a bunch of first rounds, failed to qualify for YEC even while playing a whole bunch of tournaments.. then she decided to go back to basics and got her old coach back. He got her back to her flowing game and she started to improve. They continued on in that direction and instead of altering her game, her technique and so on, they worked on perfecting her natural shots and making her own natural game more effective. She has today to show for all this hard work in the right direction. Yes.. because hard work is not what pays off and shows results. A lot of really talented people work super hard but have no results to show for their efforts. 90% of the time this happens because these people are working hard in the wrong direction. Sometimes it's even better to not work hard at all than to work hard in the wrong direction for YOUR game. Your game is in bold letters, because what is the right direction for a player is often the wrong direction for other and so on. And that's the thing with Ana.. while I think she didnt work hard at all for most of last year.. I do think she worked sort of hard in this off season.. but she has nothing to show for it, and won't have anything to show for any effort because she has been working on the wrong direction for HER own game. Tennis is not about having a thousand shots, tennis is about being super effective. Maximizing your strengths and minimizing your weaknesses. Playing the kind of game Ana is trying to play might work wonders for Kerber, but it will just never give Ana any results, no matter how hard she works and how focused and committed she is. Simple as that.. this game negates her biggest strengths, her FH, that is now being transformed in whatever it is, which makes it more of a liability than a strength. And greatly widens her weaknesses.. movement and BH. Since she is trying to hit with more spin and margin, players have all the time in the world to redirect shots to her BH or to make her run around the court until they have an easy ball on top of the net to putaway. Even if Ana is fit as hell, she doesn't have the natural speed to never miss a shot and get everything back. Does anyone honestly imagine Ana running down some of the balls Kerber got on court today? Let alone be able to make every passing shot? Ana has zero natural anticipation, so she would often be caught off guard by going in the wrong direction to begin with. She was surprised as hell every time Madison Keys would get a FH DTL and would often be completely out of position to retrieve it, even though she did it all match long 200000 times. That's just not the game that will ever work for her. It didnt work when she tried it from 2011-2013, it doesn't work now and it will not work in the future. There is a reason she did so much better in 2014 than in 2011-2013, and it was the use of her natural game. Ana had other issues in 2009 and 2010.. but in 2011-2013 she was actually mostly dedicated to tennis and working hard... yet those were limbo years that she wasn't able to do anything of relevance at all.. at all (1 final in a made up lame tournament in over 2 years? Rovering around top 30? Poor...). She was simply working in the wrong direction, and as soon as she put in some work in the right direction again, she had 4 titles and a top 5 ranking to show for it. But then again.. going back to the wrong direction also got her back to falling down the rankings and being unable to reach a single final in over 1 year)... incredibly predictable to be honest.
It's one thing to try to improve and adapt your game, it's another to ditch your natural flowing game to use one that is simply unnatural to you, which is what Ana is trying to do. Take Serena.. she has improved over the years, added shots to her game. But today she tried the idiotic tactics of going to the net every 2 shots and was terrible. Bricked I don't know how many easy volleys, got passed another number of times.. and ended up even losing confidence in her rally shots, making wild wild wild errors from both wings. Still, had she been able to serve just slightly better, and had she been able to volley a couple of more balls inside the court.. she could still have won even playing subpar against an inspired opponent playing the match of her life. Why is that? Because aggressive offensive tennis is still what determines the outcome of a match. Letting every single match you play be decided by your opponent is a huge risk, because you will mostly lose if your opponent plays well. But to do that while playing a game that is completely unnatural to you is simply suicide.