Rafael Nadal spent his Tuesday practise session trying to find the answer to his forehand woes after his opening match of the ATP Finals.
On Monday night, Nadal played Alexander Zverev and was outplayed by the defending champion.
The German went toe-to-toe with the Spaniard and pulled off his first ever win over the 19-time Grand Slam winner.
It means Nadal is now on the backfoot in the round-robin stages and faces a pivotal second match against Daniil Medvedev.
It is a repeat of the epic US Open final in September where Medvedev fought back from two sets down against Nadal before the 33-year-old gathered himself and won the final set.
Against Zverev, many of Nadal’s groundstrokes were shot and lacking in potency.
And on the practise court with his coach Carlos Moya, Nadal was hard at work trying to rectify those issues.
Former British player and Amazon Prime pundit Mark Petchey watched on as Nadal worked on his game and the analyst felt the Spaniard was searching for a solution.
Petchey said on Amazon Prime: “He and Carlos have been having some pretty heavy discussions about what is wrong [with his forehand].
“The majority of misses have gone into the net.
“He is looking to get that elevation but the racket head speed through the ball looks to be there. He certainly looks like he has got enough pace through there.
“Abdominal injuries don’t tend to heal that quickly. Last night, when I was courtside watching him play, the one thing I thought he struggled a little bit more than the actual technique was the movement.
“A lot of the particularly to his backhand, it looked as though maybe he was protecting his abdominal a little bit by turning his hips and running away from the net.
“I think that is something that maybe is still bothering him.
“But in terms of how he is actually striking the ball, he’s hitting it very hard but he’s still looking for that reliability on that forehand side.”