New York City is a tough place to live in as a tennis player or a teaching pro. Clubs are closing left and right and the hourly rates are sky high, but we do have the U.S. Open every year to compensate for that, a chance to watch the best players in the world go at it in on the biggest stage there is.

As a teaching pro I go to the U.S. Open every year and observe the players. I like going to the practice courts and watch the pros train, look for trends,"steal" a few drills from the pros, and of course watch the matches.

One of the issues that came up in this year's Open was the increase in size of the average player in general and the emergence of giants such as Ivo Karlovic and John Isner, who are closer in height to 7 feet than they are to 6 feet. Throughout history there were a few exceptionally tall players who emerged on the tour, but still the majority of the players were between 5'9 and 6'2.

It is a fact that the average height has gone up over the past 30 years, but still I believe that the deal height is somewhere between 5'10 and 6'3. Sure, it's great to serve down from a tree, serve 20 aces per match and hold 90% of the time, but there is downside too to being extremely tall. Taller people are more injury prone, especially in the knees and lower back, they are less coordinated and most importantly not as quick and agile. These modern-day giants with a racquet will remain any player's nightmare and dominate during the indoor and grass court seasons but will be mediocre on the slower courts, especially on clay.

More importantly, in Grand Slam events they will most likely not be able to sustain the burden of 7 matches of best-of-5 sets in 13 days in hot contitions. Even in the age of big servers and power tennis the game in the highest levels is still about shot making, movement, variety of shots and mental strength. I believe that ideally for the game of tennis it is necessary to have a balance between size, weight, agility, flexibility, speed and coordination, which is me just under 6 feet or a couple of inches above 6 feet.

And just to prove my theory right, the 4 players that reached the semifinals in this year's Open were not taller than 6'2 and 2 of them (Ferrer and Davydenko) were under 6 feet. Off course I could be wrong. Can you imagine a 7 footer with Hewitt's speed, Nadal's stamina, Federer's ground strokes and McEnroe's hands?