An information advantage is when a competitor utilizes data and knowledge in a way that provides a competitive edge. The advantage may come through knowledge of a particular opponent or through knowledge that applies to the competition itself. It can be acquired through any combination of discovering, withholding, suppressing, or uniquely utilizing information and it can manifest through strategic, tactical, technical, and arsenal advantages. Certain information advantages are capable of reigning over all other advantages in an oppressive manner-- oppressive such that their emergence brings to life the old phrase “if you can’t beat them, join them." Consequently, application of these oppressive info advantages often transforms the competitive landscape and substantially shifts the strategic status quo.
Commonly known examples of applied information advantages:
Tennis: Ivan Lendl-- Lendl intelligently built his strategy around exploiting then-recently
developed arsenal advantages provided by string technology that amplified the potency of heavy-topspin techniques and emboldened forehand-dominant baseliner tactics. Ivan Lendl inspired generations of players and his trademark power-baseline style has remained ubiquitous for over thirty years.
Martial Arts: Royce Gracie-- Gracie brought Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) to the Ultimate Fighting Championship and demonstrated the oppressive all-encompassing advantage that BJJ provides by winning three fight championships via grappling, chokes, and submission techniques. Jiu-Jitsu was quickly cemented as a necessity in every mixed martial arts fighter's arsenal. Twenty-five years later and nearly all competitive mixed martial artists train in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Warfare: Gunpowder-- Arsenal advantage. No explanation needed.
In each of these examples the information advantage was so dominant that it forced the field into following suit for survival. The introduction of these advantages into competitive environments often results in periods of accelerated evolution. In other words, competitors who either lacked the information advantage or who were not specialized to combat it were eliminated. I call this the competitive displacement effect-- when only the fittest survive. The displacement effect is the defining quality of an oppressive information advantage and causing it is like obtaining the holy grail of competitive edges.
Here at the Congruent Tennis community we have been questing towards the Holy Grail for years... and we believe we may have found it in the form of The Congruent Tennis System. CTS, composed of modules such as “The Two Forehand Concept” and “The Shot Matching Cycle”, has proven itself as a potent information advantage. The Congruent Tennis System’s modules work cohesively as all-encompassing 'software upgrades' to players' decision making processes. Devastatingly harmonious strategic, tactical, technical, and arsenal upgrades are par for the course. As you will learn in our upcoming articles the CTS empowers players to have complete comprehension of the game-state and enables them to quickly and easily match near-optimal responses to any given incoming shot. It also gives coaches a framework to assess their players’ games at a higher resolution and provide coaching and instruction that amplifies their players’ styles and strengths. Due to fear of seeming overly-grandiose we have refrained from calling the Congruent Tennis System a “Unified Theory of Tennis” in spite of the fact that doing so would be honest and accurate.
Players and coaches who train and play with the system consistently accomplish beyond expectation-- thus, we’re deservedly confident that CTS provides an advantage that is, at the very least, highly potent and worthy of being shared. What remains to be be definitively concluded is whether or not the system provides an **oppressive** information advantage. Does the CTS give an advantage so great that it creates a ‘join or die’ scenario for the competition? Based on our personal experiences as players and coaches we are confident that the answer is “yes”. But confidence isn’t certainty. We want certainty.
In order to be **certain** that the CTS provides a Holy-Grail-Tier info advantage the system needs more testing. That's why we're using this project to convert CTS to open-source. We need more coaches trying out the system with different types of players and programs. We need more players training and playing with it. We need more advanced competitors taking the system into deep waters and seeing if it still floats. We need critical eyes examining every aspect for flaws and potential problems. We need help exposing the system to as much stress and challenge as possible in order to find the cracks and weaknesses. The goal is to attack it from every angle. As a large grassroots community we're more than capable.
A word from CTM Founder Chuck Tomlin on the “Open Source” quality of Congruent Tennis:
We have a shared vision of the Congruent Tennis Community being quite similar to an open source software platform designed to serve the entire grassroots tennis effort. We built this so coaches, parents and players would feel they can step up and take certain items off the shelf. They should be able to deploy these elements right into their game. We want others to take selected key components from Congruent Tennis instruction and write them into their own instruction models based on how their presentations are organized or constructed. Our goal is to build a foundation and framework where every interested tennis enthusiast can participate and help to continually build and update it going forward. No disrespect to the "Tennis Experts", but that model of depending only on them has proven to be too narrow. It has led to bottlenecks on information dissemination and an elitism this sport can't afford to continue.
Open-source projects benefit most when commentary, criticism, and questioning is encouraged. The aim is to crowd-source the stress-testing to maximize exposure to novel scenarios, accelerate the iterative process, and to purge all weaknesses from the system. Put succinctly: we want to see if you can break it.
If the system can withstand such a rigorous stress-test then we will be able to collectively state with certainty that learning the Congruent Tennis System provides the most decisive advantage that can be found in tennis.
If you participate in the process then you’ll be able to state that you were one of the earliest pioneers on the final frontiers of tennis discovery. You’ll also be one of the earliest adopters of the game's first truly comprehensive training systems. Consider that advantage.
Start learning the Congruent Tennis System so you can take part in the stress-test. Join our community, invite your friends, get your voice heard and make your contribution to the process. Nobody is under qualified for this project. The CTS and the greater Congruent Tennis Model project aims to serve parents, players and coaches of all ages and ability levels so don’t hesitate to sign up and speak up.
Look out for many more articles in the following weeks-- you don’t want to be late catching this wave.
Thanks for reading
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Coach Knox
Turning Tennis on its Side
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