Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Friday, September 05, 2003 Watching tennisI watched Andre Agassi play Guillermo Corria at the U.S. Open and looking to see how the two players differed.Corria is 21 and Agassi is 33. I figured it'd be a good opportunity to try to see how an experienced athlete compared to a young athlete. I'm interested in how some older athletes can continue to compete at a very high level. I only watched about 5 or 6 games and didn't take any notes. I can't really be sure what I was seeing. But, I had a definite impression that the players took risks in different ways. Trying to hit a winner is risky. A safe shot is to try to hit the ball deep but not at an extreme angle. A risky shot is to hit the ball very short or at a sharp angle. The risky shots might win the point. The safe shots usually just keep the ball moving and give each player another chance. It struck me that Corria would take risks when he saw the chance regardless of the score. But, Agassi took risks depending on the situation within the game. Agassi seemed to be more aware of the score and the importance of each point. For example, Corria might go for a winner when he was down 15-30. If he lost the point -- and since going for a winner is risky, he often did -- the score would be 15-40 and the game was almost lost. On the other hand, Agassi seemed to take risks when he could afford to lose the point. Agassi certainly took some risks, but he seemed to be much more careful in when he took a chance. Agassi, the old player, took risks but carefully considered the overall context. Corria, the young player, took risks almost at random. If you compared risk-taking between young orienteers and successful older orienteers, would you see the same pattern? I think you might. I bet Peter Gagarin takes risks, but only when the payoff is high. I bet John Fredrickson takes risks even if the payoff might be small. Maybe not. It is just a theory. posted by Michael | 8:01 PM 
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