This is just my opinion from looking at the in-game descriptions and playing plans, it's not a factual guide etc, just my theorycrafting;

Trying to work them out, which playing styles suit which attributes;


Top Spin - Power Serves, Spin, Lobs, short power. (Flat Serves, attacking returns)

Defensive Play - Spin, Positioning, Anticipation, Focus, Stamina, Speed, Footwork, Reflexes. (Flat Serves, Defensive returns)

On the body - Footwork, Stamina, Focus, Accuracy, Power. (Flat Serves, defensive returns, "aims at opponent weak spot", whatever that is.)

Counter attack - Spin, Speed, Agility, Footwork, Stamina, Accuracy (Flat serves, middling returns, description says they need speed and agility to get around the court.)

Destabilise - Serve power. (Flat serves, middling returns, lots of flat and chopped shots, seems to suggest a player needs the full variety of technical attributes to pull this off.)

Deviation play - Server power, Spin, Shot accuracy and power, Stamina, focus, anticipation, positioning, reflexes. (Flat and kicked serves, aggressive returns, needs strong technicals and good shot selection abilities)

Varied play - Serve accuracy, shot accuracy, focus, anticipation, positioning etc etc (Low power flat serves, aggressive returns, again needs strong technical abilities but can ignore power.)

Offensive baseline - power serves, power shots, spin, volley etc (High power serves, aggressive returns, uses 'mixed' play, so basically an all round Varied play style that can abuse power on top of excellent abilities everywhere else.)

Power baseline - Power serves, shot power (High power flat serves, attacking returns, more one dimensional Offensive baseliner basically, use for powerheads with only fore/backhands I guess)

Attacking play - Power Serve, Speed, Volley, all shot types. (High power flat serves, aggressive returns, relies on a mixture of varied play AND net play, in short the ultimate all rounder.)

Serve and Volley - Serve accuracy, power, volley, speed, lateral movement, spin, drop shots, smash, returns (Flat serves, aggressive returns - you MUST have a good return game to be able to get up to the net, uses a lot of spins and chops, I'm not sure what chops translates into though for attributes.)

Serve and attack - Serve power, speed, volley etc (As above, but with more power.)


Of the attributes:

Technicals are easy enough; they deal with accuracy of serve, power, spin etc etc. I would say, identify the strengths and try to fit them into the above playstyles. Top spin players should go for top spin sort of plays etc.

Physicals are another way to identify playing style; You need Speed to get to the net, but footwork is what seems to be the skill for side-to-side and backward movement.

Tactical: I would think the major ones are; Focus - Vital, this is basically shot consistency, or "decisions" in football manager if I understand it right. Without focus, you make the wrong shots.

Anticipation - identifies opponent moves, which leads to Positioning - identifying where the ball will go.

Key stat: REFLEXES - Reflexes is how quick you react to where the ball will go when you've identified where it is going. So, you want this to be married to positioning; High Pos, low Reflexes probably means you know where it's going but you won't always get there and so on.

I would imagine that when scouting for new players, you ideally want someone who has athletic attributes (Physicals) and some strengths in the key mental attributes (Focus etc), so that will let you train them fully on technical abilities.

The other thing I noticed;

When you play a tournament, when you lose, go back into the training screen and you can adjust your training for the remaining days. If your player is knocked out in round 1 or in the qualifying round, then MAXIMISE their training. The default training will give them double rest and one rubbish training module, so they waste an entire week.

Try and keep fitness at 90% or higher. You can go surprisingly tough on youngsters (Super heavy training) and recover them within two-three days of rest. I would say, do training morning and afternoon, rest in the evening and use the last day of the week to rest and train conditioning.

With this system, I think you can enter a tournament every week, especially since you're going to get knocked out a lot along the way. The risk is that if you get to consecutive finals you'll be exhausted. This is just for the youth, I think for the older players you have to adjust on a case by case basis. I think registration is a three week period, so you have to guest at how many tournaments they're going to handle.

FWIW, I've seen the AI do two tournaments on the bounce and win both.