Playing Style
A right-handed baseliner with a single-handed backhand, Schalken's game is characterised by his consistency of both wings and his continental technique on both the forehand and backhand. The latter is his major weapon, a rallying shot that is also capable of being struck for winners either cross-court or down the line. The player he admired most while growing up was Ivan Lendl.
Schalken is known for his placid on-court demeanour, seemingly reacting in the same manner whether trailing or leading. But as a junior and a young pro he had an explosive temper that, he has stated, hindered him in many matches and caused him to lose through not thinking clearly. Only in 1999 did he manage to suppress his emotional side while on court and develop a more level-headed temperament, although he was disqualified from the Nasdaq-100 Open in 2004 for verbally abusing the umpire.
Read more about this topic: Sjeng Schalken
Famous quotes containing the words playing and/or style:
“All those who dwell in the depths find their happiness in being like flying fish for once and playing on the uppermost crests of the waves. What they value most in things is that they have a surface, their “epidermality”Msit venia verbo.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“I concluded that I was skilled, however poorly, at only one thing: marriage. And so I set about the business of selling myself and two children to some unsuspecting man who might think me a desirable second-hand mate, a man of good means and disposition willing to support another man’s children in some semblance of the style to which they were accustomed. My heart was not in the chase, but I was tired and there was no alternative. I could not afford freedom.”
—Barbara Howar (b. 1934)