Dictate Play: AKA Design a Game You Can Trust

By Boak Ferris, WPH Certified Coach/Sports-Psychologist 

            Fairly asked, how can competitors possibly “dictate play”?  One or more of the following conditions would have to apply.  1) You are better offensively and defensively than your opponent, or you are tactically more experienced than your opponent; 2) The equal or superior opponent is out of sorts, for injury, or for undisclosed psychological or physical issues, including training, diet, illness, fitness, exhaustion, cramps, distractions, and so on; 3) You know “enough” more than a physically equal or superior opponent knows; 4) A large audience is pulling for you against an equal or superior opponent.  [While audience-support isn’t really you ‘dictating play’, such support can interfere with your opponent’s focus and concentration, allowing your standard play to achieve more effectiveness, unless, of course, the opponent takes delight/strength in overcoming an audience’s opposition.]   

            With these variables above in mind, allow me to offer two approaches toward dictating play, the first for today, and the second for a later time: The rational TGO Method and/or the supernatural Musashi Miyamoto Method.  Furthermore, may we assume that to “dictate play,” we can ignore condition one from above, being obviously better than a competitor? Which means dictating play involves competing against an equal or better opponent.  And, as a further definition, “dictating play” basically means you direct the rallies, or, perhaps better stated, “You direct ball- and opponent-traffic during the rallies.”

David Chapman: TGO Dictated Play: Background

            When David was twelve he did not have adult power, nor did he have adult foot speed.  He tasked his dad and his coach Lew Morales with how to respond to adult opponents who massively hit the ball or who fleet-footedly tracked shots around the court—or who could do both.   

      Lew said, “It’s not about this opponent or that opponent. The right shot is the right shot against everybody.  Yes, the opponent may have weaknesses, or a bad off-hand.  But the court is HUGE.  If you can get the ball into the farthest corners or spaces away from the opponent, without leaving a setup, the opponent cannot beat you.  For each shot, you must hit the right shot.  What that means is: a) you must know/peek where/how your opponent is moving to and from at all times; b) you must use the court against the opponent; c) you must interrupt the opponent’s skills and timing, by exploiting the court with your shots, and by using your time to make the opponent play at your preferred tempo and foot-speed, d) you must do all this using less energy than your opponent over the match, or even over an entire week; e) you must know what your opponent does well and not well; and e) you must learn all the shots.” 

            Coach Lew’s advice taught David not to “personalize” an opponent, but rather to see winning a handball competition as controlling the “geotemporal” domain, the territory of space and time. Winning for TGO meant using court-space and time as his prioritized tools in competition.  To put it another way, TGO visualized the Court and Opponent Movements first, before contacting the ball.   

      Also, Lew added, “A perfect shot does not have to be a hard power-shot. A slow-pass, or kill, if lofted at the right height and angle, is just as effective as a power-pass or kill at a lower height, to get the ball to the best distant corner.  A ceiling ball against an opponent who constantly overhits ceiling-returns is money in the bank for a backwall opportunity.  Every player can develop the perfect backwall shot.  The ball is already going toward the target.”  Lew added, “You will also need to perfect your shots for both hands at the three heights: low, waist-high, and overhand—from the center of the court.”  Lew added, “Remember exactly what each opponent can do and not do, not only overall, but in the match that day, and learn your opponent’s shots, in order to implement or adapt a match-long game-plan.  If you don’t use your memory, you ‘throw the control away.’”   

      [By the way, knowing and remembering opponents’ skills-sets and exploiting those are NOT the same as personalizing opponents.  For example, when he was young, David used to say “Bike hits so hard! His low-power pass to the left beats me all the time.”  That kind of thinking personalized Mr. Bike.  Later, after he practiced Lew’s advice, TGO stated, “I know X’s shots, and where X likes to hit those from,” X being any opponent on the pro tour.]  For David, competitor X came to represent special “denial-codes,” a simple brief list of specific-speed-shots and shot-heights and foot-abilities to deny to that specific Opponent X.   

            By the time David was 14, he had mastered the perfect pass-height for his juvenile-strength shots; while, in turn, those of us who competed against him at that age recall chasing his endless passes that never left a setup around the court.  By age sixteen, he had developed consistently reliable shots with both hands at the three heights.  And he made very few, if any, hand errors, through superior eye-hand contact. He knew exactly which part of the ball he needed to hit, to achieve directing a specific shot at a deliberate speed to a predetermined part of the court, depending on the opponent’s predictable movements.

      In each rally, he aimed to keep each opponent completely off-balance, while he maintained his constant return to center. He defined this center, which changed, by how his shots moved his opponents toward the corners, and by where he needed to move to make the fewest steps to answer the opponent’s next predictable shot.  His main rule, learned from coach Lew was, “Always place one foot down in front of the restraining line, just as the opponent hits.”  Ordinarily, this spot might be the very center of the court in front of the restraining line, but with Chapman’s anticipation and memory for his opponent’s proclivities, he would cheat this step-down to right or left of center, though still in front of the restraining line, depending on which side of the court he expected the opponent to “pull” the next loft, pass, or kill.  By the way, he always knew where the restraining line was without looking.

      David never tried low-percentage shots, except when well behind on the scoreboard.  He learned never to prolong any matches, especially over a long tournament weekend.  And yes, while some of his matches seemed long, he used less energy than his opponents by returning to center, with practiced discipline, and by directing traffic. When he was in control and directing traffic, he did not tire—as he was having too much “fun,” or, call it “success,” if you prefer: FOCUS.  To paraphrase Matt Hiber and Jon Kendler, who once agreed on the Collegiates Finals video for 1994, “Everything that is happening is just as David wants it.”

      But, to understand “best” how David dictated play, let’s simply sequence the advice Lew gave him, and put up for review (below in the appendix) some historical evidence of how TGO’s methodology for dictating play worked.  When David walked onto the court against a known opponent, he experienced two visualizations at the same time: 1) the 3D size and dimensions and peculiarities of that local court coupled with 2) his specific opponent’s native ability for movement during offense and defense in that same 3D space (how fast that opponent could move from A to B, and how much time it would require.) This knowledge added a 4^th dimension of time-understanding to David’s handball wisdom.  What that meant was David knew exactly where and at what speeds he wanted his shots to carom on the walls, ceiling, or floor, for that one opponent. 

STEP ONE: Respect and Learn and Memorize the Opponent’s Strongest Skills-Sets ► Devise a Game-Plan Based on Denying Those Particular Skills ►Stick to that Game-Plan; and Adapt if the Opponent Brings New Skills Today to be Denied ► Execute the Game-Plan in Each Rally While Always Knowing If You Are on Offense (served) or on Defense (received serve) ► Maintain Center with a Foot Down in Front of the Restraining Line Relative to Your Opponent’s Hitting Position Taking the Fewest Steps ► Know Where You Are on the Scoreboard  

      For the sake of brevity, please consider the table in the appendix which encapsulates TGO’s game-plan methodologies for his famous wins/losses in Singles prior to 2010.  (Not enough space exists in this article to add his methodologies in Doubles.)  Please note with importance that David’s game-plan always required him to start with lob serves and overhand two-wall drive serves on his service innings.  When I asked him why, he told me, “Too many guys are great at waist-height, and the low serve requires lots of bending, and tires me out.  If I miss by a little, I lose my service, while it takes a toll on my legs.  With the lob or overhand drives, I know I’m getting an error, an overhand return, or an overhit backwall setup on the next shot.  From there it’s just three slow steps to center, while I keep him in the rear corners, unless he errs, and I can dump or shoot on offense.”  David actually had a name for his lob serve, which was not really the best lob serve ever seen in handball, but it worked for him, because even when he missed it away from the side wall, it still unnerved his opponents, as they feared his anticipation and follow-up.  He called his lob-serve, off-screen, “The Dominator,” a name he learned from one of his beloved adult mentors, Chuck Schildmeyer. 

      Also, please note that when David received serve, he had one mission, to get that ball up to the ceiling, or to hit a perfect-height bounce-pass that would not yield a backwall setup, and not yield a fly.  The only time he altered these game-plans was when he was well ahead on the scoreboard, had broken his opponent, or he was too far behind on the scoreboard, and then he would “pull out a reserve shot” he had not shown yet in a match.  He religiously practiced a quiver of “reserve shots” designed for different scoreboard situations, such as a “dump-rollout to the same-side corner, sidewall-front-wall, to answer a low hard ace to the right or left.”  When I asked him about this shot, which he used maybe once or twice against ace-servers per difficult match, he explained, “If I am well behind on the scoreboard or coasting, the opponent does not expect it, and cannot see it, since from the front court, the opponent cannot tell if my paddle-shot will contact the sidewall first or not.”

Step Two: Develop a 93-100 % Offensive Scoring Shot (and Name It: the Lightning Bolt, the Ka-Blam, or the Pointilicious) for Your Service Innings that you can strike with your strong hand from anywhere in the court. ►Work Your Service-Inning-Rallies to Get the Opponent to Hit the Ball to Your Strong-Hand for This, Your 95% Guaranteed Scoring Shot. ►When in Doubt about Which Shot to Develop, Practice and Develop the Backwall-Setup Conversion/Execution, Since Most Opponents Cannot Keep the Ball off the Backwall. ►Once You Have Internalized this Consistent Scoring Shot, Develop a Second Scoring Shot Off the SAME MOTION! That you can also hit from anywhere on the court, and Name It Also. ►Be Willing to Run Around Your Weak Hand to Hit the Bolt. No Need to Overplay Your Off-hand

      By naming your shots, you condense into one word the full biomechanics necessary for execution:  “Now is the moment to hit my Lightning Bolt!”  Executing at 93% + means you can hit this shot 9+ times out of ten, after throwing it to yourself off the walls in practice.  Count and repeat.  TGO’s first Lightning Bolt that he developed was executing a backwall-setup-rollout with his right hand during his service innings. (He didn’t need to name his nonpareil shot; he simply knew it would give him the rally. (“It gives me the rally.”)  The rest of us mere mortals might want to think, as we execute it, however, “Ka-Blam!,” or “Lightning Bolt!”).  Naming shots keeps us amused, engaged, light, breathing, and free from opponent’s psych-out efforts.  I watched David drill. He would pick a shot, and hit it ten times in a row.  If he missed, he started over.  Then he’d go to the opposite hand, for the same shot.  He also reminded me, “When you step on court for a match, hit five of each shot at the three heights with each hand; and convert five backwalls with each hand.  Forty practice shots total.” 

      It’s important to remember that he relied on the one-inch-high rollout version to score—only when he served.  Otherwise, he mixed in two-way shots off his backwall opportunities, during receiving serve, so as not to give opponents free points on defense.  You can see outrageously perfect examples of his backwall shots slo-mo-ed in the 1995 USHA National Singles. No one in handball has mastered the backwall setup the way he converted it, to this day, and he could alter the way the ball came off his hand, for hops or passes or both. He visualized “his scoring Bolt” as the low rollout. 

      Note that he did give names to his secondary offensive/defensive shots off his same backwall motion, and called them all “Two-Way Shots.” He had names for many of the second, third, fourth shot-options he practiced and evolved off of any single motion arising during tactical-shot-selections in routine gameplay.  A name he had for one of his best two-way shots was “The Paddle-(Rollout),” which he would mix in with a “Punch Drive.”  Giving names to shots is like calling for favorite tools from a toolkit, or requesting implements from a surgical tray; or like calling favorite family members in to help.  These are old friends, helping you design a game, while giving you control over your creations: yielding a totally dictated game.   

      How his names apply to us is to remember, as we defend against a server trying to score, and as we move to address a shot, and as it’s a tactical situation, we can “mentally call out” or name our next necessary choice, “Hit the Two-Way Shot,” “the Paddle-Kill,” “my Punch-Pass,” “time for the Slow Overhand Loft,” etc.   

You can go with your first choice, if the opponent is in the wrong part of the court, or go to the second choice, if the opponent moves to cover your first choice. Naturally, you will have to know where your opponent is moving to, though.  So, during friendly skirmishes you may also need to practice your proprioceptive abilities, hearing the opponent, peeking with peripheral vision, feeling the space, visualizing the milliseconds being used by you and the opponent, as you execute your, “Punch-Bounce-Pass!”  TGO could convert/leverage backwall two-way setups from anywhere in the court, even with his butt parked on the left wall, as he was never ashamed to do. You have no real need, other than pride and showing off, to overplay your off-hand.

Step Three: Develop a 93-100 % Defensive Shot (and Name It: The Neutralizer) for Your Service-Receiving Innings that you can strike with either hand from anywhere in the court. ►The Neutralizer Must Move the Opponent to Back Court, Not Leave a Fly Opportunity, Nor Go Around for a Backwall Setup ►Only One Shot Can Accomplish This: A Controlled Punch to the Ceiling ► Or You Could Try Lofting the Ball Two-Wall Across the Server’s Forehead on the Return, if this return does not have too much speed to go round the back.   

      TGO owned a consummate Neutralizer, the punch to the ceiling with his right and left fists.  He practiced this punch so he could meet it at the floor, meet it at knee-height, and meet it at rib-height, the secret being to bend his back knee and then rise with the back leg as he punched the ball up toward the ceiling target. He named it simply the “Punch,” which he never hit hard. He integrated a punching motion with a throwing one, through much practice, to send the ball so as not to leave a backwall setup.  (“I use my Punch.”)  He once told me, “It’s the best ‘Spacer’, (spaces opponents out and back away from him), but most players don’t have a punch, because it hurts their knuckles or cuticles.”  So, in that convo, he suggested a good name for this defensive tool, though I never heard him call it directly, “The Spacer.”  (I really like that word.)  By the way, note that he reserved a two-way shot off his “Punch,” as well, and instead of going up to the ceiling, he could mix in a punch-bounce-pass-drive, depending on the server’s anticipated movements, or breakdown during the match.

Step Four: Take Ownership of the Game Tempo 

            Coach Lew taught David, who was concerned with being slow of foot, that the game-tempo belongs to the slower opponent.  Lew himself was a great runner, and could go all day, but he was not particularly fleet of foot.  So Lew became a black-belt master of slowing a game down to an almost zero passage of time, as Lew’s opponents griped and grieved, and he won, if not on skill, then on sheer imposition of will and frustration on those who were perhaps physically superior opponents.  He could stretch a 75-minute match into a three-hour exercise in frustration.  For example, when he was out of timeouts, he simply looked up and questioned a referee’s in-game call, while the ensuing argument got him the two or three minutes he needed to break the opponents’ concentration.  He certainly didn’t need a breath.  Referees usually felt too defensive to call Lew for a technical for wasting time, and often took time to explain their calls.   

      A part of Lew’s reasoning was sound, because he understood players’ protections built into the USHA rules.  Lew transferred this frustration-weapon to David Chapman:  The server has ten seconds to serve; while the receiver has ten seconds to achieve the ready position.  The receiver has to wait, if the server takes the full clock; while the server cannot really ever rush a receiver, if the referee cannot call the score until the receiver is perceived as in the ready position until the ten seconds have elapsed.  Except for Alan Garner, not a single one of TGO’s opponents had enough patience to answer David’s stalling.  When the patience indeed drained out of their buckets, TGO started scoring and receiving free points and side-outs on unforced errors. Hmm, why would that be? 

      While David was serving he could use any or all of the ten seconds, and stretch it to a bit more, if necessary. —His lob and three-wall specialty serves take more time to get into or around the court than a typical power serve, for example; while against a speedy server, he could drag his feet getting to the receiver’s position, and find other ways to disrupt his opponents’ tempos, which he ALWAYS did.  Some of us, who knew Chapman well, called his walk to serve, or called his crawl-return to the receiver’s position, “The Chapman Shuffle.”  (Dessie Keegan jokes about Chapman’s psychologically-effective slow tempos.)  But TGO could certainly cover court when a rally started! 

      Not only did he leverage those 10-second rules, but he used his serves and shots to defy the opponent’s hitting the ball at their preferred tempos.  He deliberately played specific tempos against well-scouted opponents seeking to hit their favorite shots. This tempo-manipulation, friends, is crucial to dictating play, and purists or idealists of the sport will have to surrender hopes of ever dictating play, if they won’t alter or adjust their tempos.  Even Musashi Miyamoto discusses tempo as a necessary weapon, in a book that Fred Chapman loved, The Book of the Five Rings, and I once heard Fred directly discuss advice and quotes from this book with David, prior to a Finals for the California State Handball Championships in the 90’s.  TGO was going to face T. Silveyra, and Fred reminded David about controlling the match tempos, so as deny the powerful speedy Tati his favorite and preferred rhythms.

      Most top pros are speedy heavy hitters who want to get in and hit the ball hard, and boom a kill or a pass.  So, David simply denied them their tempos, by giving them perfectly lofted “pace” to the four corners that rarely allowed his opponents an opportunity to speed in, get set, and then, from a stable balanced position, blast the ball.   Now you might be able to rush an opponent with speedy serving, and with fly shots, and fast pacing, but you can’t rush an opponent who knows the rules, and exploits the full clock.  In short, forcing an opponent to accept a faster tempo only works if the opponent is unknowledgeable or inattentive or mindless; and this article does not address any such competitors.

Step Five: Get Fit; Stay Fit; Maintain a Competitive Daily Lifestyle, Diet, and Training Routines. ►Dictating Play Depends on Lifestyle Choices Made off the Court between Tournaments. 

      TGO dictated play, even when he lost, such as in 1994, 1997, 2001, and 2003.  He beat Brady and Alvarado Jr. in the USHA National Singles in 2004, and then his career declined, largely for lifestyle and health-related reasons.  Later, during his comeback years, he won matches, even out of shape, because he still knew how to dictate play.  What that all means is that he always went for the right shot, when serving, or when receiving serve, even as he fatigued or as his correct shot choices became ineffective during a match.  For example, in 2001, losing against Munoz, he came off the court during a timeout, and admitted to me at courtside, “I’ve got to get the ball to the ceiling, but I can’t bend my legs,” which was so necessary for his defensive game.  Note, however, he was still trying to get the ball there, but they weren’t going, just as his correct pass shots in the USHA Finals of 1994 started ending up in the center of the court, in the tiebreaker against Silveyra.  He rectified his loss to Munoz in 2002, by resuming total control of tempos, heights, two-way-shots, with a masterful game-plan.     

      He lost those other matches, largely because, as he admitted, “I was out of shape,” or “I stayed out all night,” or “I may have drunk too much, last week.” 

How is this dictating play, you might ask, since TGO lost those?  Well, that’s one main point.  Dictating play doesn’t insure a victory; all it insures is that you know what you are doing on each shot; you have no doubts, no indecision, and are calm and under self-management; that you are hitting (or attempting to hit) the right shot for each situation; you are attempting to induce the opponent to hit what you want the opponent to hit, and so you are, in effect, at least in control of yourself carrying out the opponent-specific game-plan.  This calm, by itself, grows to a huge tactical advantage.  You are directing your side of the conversation, even if you are ineffective today.  If your shots aren’t working, because of lifestyle or other factors, you know why, and you never really feel pressure or stress. You dictate the play, even if the match turns to a loss.  You simply have self-knowledge, about hitting the next correct shot, to direct the opponent, the court-traffic, or both.

Step Six: But Wait!  What if I Do Not Know My Opponent? ►Exploit the Early Game to Learn and Respect Your Opponents’ CLOCKS. ►Learn the Clock Method ►Then Seal the Court 

            Yes, indeed, Steps One through Five assumed you already knew and respected an opponent, and so no scouting was required.  But what about an unknown opponent?  If you view the draw ahead of time, and see a new opponent challenging you, you should invest some time to learn that opponent’s skills, so you learn what to deny. I, for example, playing Luis Cordova for the first time, would do everything in the world to NEVER gift him a ball approaching his waist near his right hand between the short line and the restraining line.  Giving him (or Chapman, for that matter) that setup is equal to my committing an unforced error for a free point or sideout for him.  Online-available video-analysis reveals Cordova consistently executes a deadly sidewall-front-wall flat rollout with his right from that 3 O’clock position, (his waist), while he can also mix in a perfect “Squelch-Two-Way Bounce-Pass” up the right wall, if the opponent races in to overplays the front court, expecting his elite rollout.  

            Lew taught David and me about The Clock.  Every player has (an idiosyncratic) CLOCK.  Stand in the court, face the front wall.  Your head is at twelve, your feet at six.  Your right arm out to the side parallel to the floor is at three; your left arm out to the side is at nine.  Right-handed Pros are deadly on anything arriving to their body space right-handed between three and five-thirty; and left-handed between seven and nine; while the converse is true with Left-Handed Pros.  Most players do not spend enough time developing safe shots and speeds for their off-hands at ten or eleven O’clock, if righties; or at one and two for lefties.  It’s also very hard to do anything final with a ball arriving at 12 O’clock, with either hand; while some players are good with one hand or another at Six O’clock, if they can field a ball off the bounce. So, in your first rallies against a new opponent, make a deliberate game-plan from Step One to test each hour on the opponent’s clock.  This new plan will eliminate doubt and give you a focused strategy.  As soon as you spot any single errors or misses, do all your work to get the opponent to hit the ball with that hand at that hour on that player’s clock.   

            Armed with this knowledge, you are now ready to Seal the Court, another Coach Lew neologism.  You don’t need to practice your 100 % shots. You need to practice the 60 % shots at hours on your clock that you miss, err, or don’t want to hit, until you can return them, to a safe part of the court, error-free, not leaving any setup for any opponent.  If you can hold your service innings, by working rallies to execute your two-way lightning bolts, holding center, according to advice herein; and if you can prevent your opponent from scoring with your two-way neutralizers, while staying calm at the center, you will now have “Sealed the Court.” No one can get in.  This is the pinnacle of dictating play.  By the way, once opponents know you can Seal the Court, they feel helpless on both offense and defense, and now you are on the way to developing “An Aura.”  This last quality is no joke.  Coaches know it exists within elite champions.  Coach Lew discussed it frequently with young David, and told him “Aura is worth 5 to seven points per game.” 

 Step Seven: What About My Game? ► Design Your Game to Dictate Play 

            In every sport, elite coaches all over the world tell their clients, “Just Go in and Trust Your Game.”  Even novices can trust their games, knowing they might lose against equal or better players.  While this advice may settle clients’ nerves, where coaches want their clients to stay collected, I have always considered such advice a fantasy.  Or perhaps coaches advise, “Execute.  No Errors Today.”  “Execute” is good for focusing offense, but the advice ignores the defensive half of a competition, while “No errors today” is impossible to accomplish, as it is a command phrased in an irrational negative, such that it’s useless. (Try: “Don’t think of a big pink elephant,” uh, “Do not make errors today.”) Your client’s answer?  “I played my game and got beaten. But I trusted my game.”  And the coach’s excuse?  “OK, the opponent was better than you today, so now you know what you need to work on.”  So, perhaps some coaches take the long view, as the client learns what the client needs to move up levels, but that kind of coaching is lazy and stretches out a growing dependency between a client and coach(es), who want the business. “Hey, we get to work longer together! Maybe a couple more years!!” 

      After age 16, David never had these thoughts. Instead, he single-mindedly “sealed the court” by protecting his weaknesses, choosing offense only on offense, and neutralizing opponent’s known-skills on defense, and always by hitting shots to his opponents’ recognized and underdeveloped clock-hours, eventually earning him his victories over long tourney weeks.  

            So?  What about you?  What if your coach said, “Today, dictate all play.”  How would YOUR regular game, mentality, and shot-selections change if you decided to take charge of the game, and did everything you needed to do to deny the opponent everything the opponent wanted?  Would you be designing yourself a new game you could trust, or enjoy?

APPENDIX: TABLE OF TGO’S SINGLES WINS/LOSSES WITH RESULTS AND NOTES: 

      Year/Tourney                         Game-Plan                             Result                                Notes