Annacone wants Henman to be more aggressive
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Your support makes all the difference.Paul Annacone is determined to make Tim Henman live up to his "Tiger" nickname. Annacone, who spent most of his coaching career with Pete Sampras, wants more aggression from the British No 1.
"Parts of Pete can be put into Tim," Annacone, 40, said. "Pete went into matches knowing that you must possess a weapon if you are going to attack. I want Tim to get more pop on his first serve and aggression on his second. If he double-faults a few times, no problem."
The pair are at present undertaking an intensive 10-day training session before the start of the new season, and Annacone added: "Technically, there's nothing wrong with Tim's serving motion. We will need to work on a more aggressive philosophy. I watched Tim play Pete in a couple of Wimbledon semi-finals and know his serve can be a big weapon. His greatest strength is being a natural serve-and-volleyer."
Henman attempted to change his serve under his former coach Larry Stefanki in order to be more consistent, but taking the pace off his first serve merely made it easier for opponents to return and break serve, particularly at Wimbledon.
"We both feel that it's important for me to be able to hurt my opponents and dictate matches as much as possible," Henman said. "That's one of the aspects of my game that I was most pleased about in Paris [where he won the Masters Series event in November], and it's certainly something that we've been focusing on over the last few days.
"We've been working on some subtle changes that will hopefully help me on the match court."
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