A tennis analyst recently observed that power was overwhelming tactics in modern tennis. Tactics and strategy were becoming less relevant as players achieved consistently high power. The players in that particular match, Sinner and Fonseca, are preeminent representatives of a new generation characterized by the speed and weight of their shots. Their normal rally balls register metrics that were formerly the preserve of aberrant winning shots. Even under extenuating circumstances – when players would previously have resorted to tame defensive parlays – they manage to produce shots that are deep, hard, and precise. Watching them, you can’t help but be amazed at their seeming inability to miss.

The key to their shot-making is spin. These players can effectively swing without inhibition because they impart so much spin on the ball. They have perfected a modern technique that hits the ball more obliquely. A large portion of their force is thus sublimated into rotation. The remaining fraction of their force that imparts forward propulsion is sufficiently muted to avoid hitting the ball too far. For them, control is based on slight adjustments to the balance between these two directions, not from a reduction in the input of force. Exactly the opposite is common at the recreational level: players slow down to achieve control. The starkest illustration is the second serve. Whereas professional players add tremendous amounts of spin to ensure consistency on their second serve, amateur tend to slow down their swing. They execute more or less the same motion as on their first serve, but with much less dynamism and a commensurately feeble result.

Restraint is a poor form of control. To be sure, you can achieve a certain measure of control by slowing your movement or withholding your force, but there are significant pitfalls. Firstly, calibrating your force is difficult. It’s vulnerable to clumsiness. Secondly, a significant reduction in force is required to achieve sufficient control. The superior method of control is redirection: changing the angle of attack. In this paradigm, you modulate your force by redirecting it and purposely dissipating some or it, rather than by generating less of it. It’s both physically and psychologically easier to do this.

Strangely, there is special value in approaching things indirectly rather than head-on. An angle, of whatever kind, unlocks possibility. This is true not just of kinetics but also intangibles. Writing about Proust, a commentator wrote: “This is a form of extreme precision – he is always trying to get at the essence of the thing from multiple angles. (It is a curious fact about language that whoever seeks extreme precision is forced to use metaphor.)” Metaphor, like spin, is a form of indirect expression. The key to control is understanding the inherent tension, and finding an angle that cuts through it. If there is a chance of going too far – and there usually is – then the solution is not restraint but realignment. You change your angle of attack and apply force more indirectly. Ironically, it cuts deeper.