35 years playing this game, and I just learned an absolutely fundamental point. You can hit inside-out, inside-in, or straight, but you cannot hit outside-out consistently. I watched a couple matches at Wimbledon with this in mind, and it enriched the matches unbelievably. It helped me win a match the other day, too.
It's easy to explain, but this video may be even easier to understand.
An outside shot is one that crosses your body as it's on its way from the opponent's racket to yours. It's called an outside shot because the ball is moving away from you as it reaches the strike zone. An inside shot is one that is moving toward your body as it's on its way into your strike zone. Hitting "in" is hitting across your body, and hitting "out" is hitting away from your body.
So, if you have two right-handed players, when they're hitting forehand to forehand, they're both hitting outside-in shots. And when they're hitting backhand to backhand, they're still hitting outside-in shots. If Player 1 hits his backhand down the line instead of crosscourt to Player 2's backhand, the other player is going to be hitting an inside forehand. If he hits his forehand crosscourt, then he's going to be hitting inside-in, which works. If he goes back at Player 1's backhand again, he'll be hitting inside-out, which works.
The situation that bites most of us is when Player 1 is standing deep in his forehand corner and hits a ball down the center of the court. Player 2 will take that shot on his forehand side, and be tempted to hit it to Player 1's open backhand court. That's an outside-out shot and it doesn't work.
I had no idea!
The magic here is that it's not the ball's relationship to the court that matters, but the ball's relationship to your body.
The simple rules are:
+ Never change the direction of a deep inside shot. Hit it back where it came from.
+ Usually change the direction of a deep outside shot. If it came from the backhand, hit it to the forehand.
+ Hit a short ball straight down the court to minimize risk, instead of hitting for lines.
+ If you're standing in your backhand corner, use the inside-out forehand as a weapon.
When you hit "in" across your body, you're using the natural rotation of your body. When you hit "out" away from your body you're working against the natural rotation of your body, so that's always a less safe shot. When the ball coming toward you is an extreme "inside" shot it will naturally come closer to your body allowing you to rotate through an "inside-out" shot naturally, so you can use the inside-out forehand as a strong and safe weapon.
So, the next time you watch a match you will be amazed as you watch the pros follow these 4 simple rules. And you'll be even MORE amazed as you watch them break them ... and be punished! You've heard players described as "steady" or as "gamblers". It all boils down to how often they try to hit an outside-out shot to the open court, and more often than not I watched the pros who tried to go outside-out miss.
I expected Federer would break these rules constantly, but he actually followed them more closely than anyone against whom I watched him play. He hit the ball where he should and with conviction over and over until his opponent decided he had to gamble.
I was awed. I hope you will be too.
Highlight videos are not really good for seeing the normal flow of play, but this one is interesting. The first 3 misses off ground strokes by Soderling are 2 backhands and 1 forehand attempting to hit outside-out to the open court.
Showing posts with label Tennis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tennis. Show all posts
09 July, 2009
07 July, 2009
The Narrator
You may have heard Roger Federer played a little tennis this weekend against Andy Roddick. After knocking the ball around for 4 1/2 hours, Roger had more little numbers on the scoreboard than Andy, and that difference was worth an extra 425,000 British pounds (which is like $70,000,000,000 or some such after applying the exchange rate; I don't know) and a chunk of history because it was the 15th time Roger has won one of the big 4 tournaments. Nobody's ever won the last point at a major tournament so many times.
The match, though, has given us, "The Narrative." For a prime example, see this article by Boris Becker, "Roddick Stopped Believing.
Boris was a brilliant if unstable tennis player and the youngest Wimbledon champ ever. I listened to his commentary on the BBC broadcast of several matches and found his commentary misleading over and over again. This article is no different. And in the scheme of things it doesn't really matter, but if you happen to bat the tennis ball around for a hobby commentators like Boris Becker can ruin your day.
The Narrative goes like this. Roddick never believed he could win that match, and he revealed that deficiency over a 3 minute span toward the end of the second set. He built up a 6-2 lead in the tiebreak, and only needed to hit one more good shot take a 2-0 lead in sets against Roger. But, you see, Roger has beaten Andy 19 of the last 21 times they've played, and Andy's 2 wins were in relatively unimportant tournaments. On this big a stage, Andy knew deep down in his heart he never had a chance.
That deep inner doubt is why, when Roger hit a duck of a high forehand at 6-5 in the tiebreak, Roddick shanked away his chance at greatness.
Wrong.
Wrong because it's a narrative after the fact. Wrong because that thinking won't help Andy win the next match. Wrong because it misses the point of what was really happening out there. Wrong because when us average Joe's get out on a tennis court and try to win an important match all we're going to remember is that we have to believe to win, and that's a lie. The truth is more complex, but TV commentary can't really do complex.
At 6-2 Federer pulled Roddick wide to the forehand and Roddick replied with a flat shot down the line. That put the ball on Federer's side of the court very quickly. In fact, Federer received the ball while Roddick was still standing about 15 feet to the right of where he needed to be to continue the point successfully. Federer simply hit the ball 30 feet to Roddick's left and the score went to 6-3.
The commentators (Becker not among them) praised the brilliance of Federer's backhand shot. I don't want to take anything away from Federer, but once Roddick went down the line, the "winner" was a routine stroke. No brilliance was required. Literally, any of 100,000 top club players could have won that point from that position. Maybe Federer used some special sauce in hitting the simple winner, but Roddick gifted him with that point. (See for yourself at the 5:00 mark of this video The Tiebreak.)
The correct shot was crosscourt, but Andy hoped to surprise Federer with the unexpected gamble. He figured he could "beat him down the line," but actually Roger was in control of the point. Andy brain-cramped and paid for it.
Roger then hits two good serves. After the poor play he demonstrated at the beginning of the tiebreak, it was about time he hit a couple good ones.
At 6:30 in the same video, you see Andy hit a second serve that Roger returns passively. Andy decides to attack the net. He hits the right shot and he hits it adequately, then Roger tries to go down the line with his passing shot when crosscourt would have been a better decision. Federer's forehand is mishit and goes much higher than he really intended, putting Andy in an awkward predicament. The high backhand volley is one of the hardest shots in tennis and Federer's ball may be going out. Andy's in the driver's seat, but he's not sure where to go. He decides the ball is probably going out, but that he'd better hit it anyway. That's always a tough decision.
When you swing at a ball you believe is headed out, it's almost a guarantee you're going to hit an inferior shot. Roddick pushed his backhand volley wide. It happens to the best of them, and in fact it did just then. You can rewind it and watch it happen over and over and over again. I'm sure Andy is not doing that, but the commentators have all christened that the stroke that decided the match.
Yes, that mistake was unfortunate. If Roger hits a better pass, I'm betting Andy hits a better volley. But tennis is like that.
Under pressure, Andy reverted to his most natural game. He'd been playing a new style all day, and doing a fantabulous job of it, but in the pressure of a tiebreak he reverted to his old style. The knock on Andy has always been gambling too soon and being afraid to move up to net. He gambled badly at 6-2 and he lost his feeling for the net at 6-5. Andy played a brilliant match to get himself to that point, and to give himself the chances he did. Andy played the right match to get to where he was, and it was not a natural style for him. What he'd done to get to 6-5 in the second set tiebreak was nothing short of amazing.
So what happened to end the dream?
There is a magic juice in tennis. If you've got it, you're going to win the point and if the opponent has it, he's going to win. That juice is called focus. Focus is what allows a man to return a 140 mph serve. Literally, between the time a 140 mph serve leaves the racket and the time it whistles past your ear, you cannot blink twice. In order to put a tennis racket in the path of that ball, at the exactly angle required to make the ball travel back into the far court, you must have focus. It's an almost inconceivable degree of connection between the eyes and the hand, leaving the brain almost entirely out of the picture.
Focus consumes energy like like a Rottweiller eats Scooby-snacks ... and you only have so many Scooby-snacks in your lunchbox. When you start a tennis match, you have a level of energy. Burn it too quickly, and you'll find yourself out of gas. You can tell when a player is out of gas, because he takes unjustified risks and misses. You can tell when a player is focused, because he does exactly what he should do and does it with a margin of safety, even when it's almost physically impossible.
Roddick showed every sign of losing focus in that tiebreak. He brain cramped at 6-2 and he shanked a makeable volley at 6-5. At 6-6 he dropped the ball while bouncing it prior to his second serve, approached on a weak shot, and missed a slightly difficult half-volley. At 6-7 he drove a backhand long. Federer, on the other hand, displayed perfect focus in the second half of the tiebreak. He did nothing amazing, and he did everything with a margin of safety.
Certainty that you are hitting the right shot can increase your focus. Fear that you might be making a mistake can dispell focus. The confidence of having beaten a man 19 times can increase focus. Having tasted defeat at your opponent's hands pressures your focus. Having a voice in your head narrating the hideous, secret, real reason you're making human mistakes can bleed focus dry. All those things were weighing on Roddick, but he was managing them successfully. Clear up to 15-14 in the 5th set tiebreak, Roddick managed all those things. The one thing Andy could not manage was fatigue.
Fatigue makes cowards of us all (Lombardi and Patton), and Roddick was significantly more fatigued than Federer. On Wednesday, Federer demolished Karlovic. On Wednesday Roddick poured his heart into a 5 set match against Leyton Hewitt. On Friday Federer embarassed Hass. On Friday Roddick played 4 crisis sets against Andy Murray and all of England. Federer came into Sunday's match with a full tank and a reserve of confidence Roddick could not begin to match.
The Narrative is that Roddick choked at the threshold of greatness. The reality is that fatigue caused him to lose focus. The man's problem was being human, not some intangible lack of belief or cowardice. The difference that distinction makes on the court on July 5th is nill, but come the US Open the difference will be massive. If Roddick believed The Narrative (he won't), he'd go out on court and at the critical moment there would be one more burden on his shoulders as he struggled for focus. He'll already have to fight fear, fatigue, and pressure, but The Narrative adds to that already herculean burden the special fear that he must be a choker. If, however, he believes the truth, that he fought to the limits of human endurance over 5 days and almost pulled off the upset of the championships anyway, he'll head into Flushing Meadows with an increased confidence that might actually sharpen his focus at just the right moment.
Life is like that. We all have a Narrator in our heads, the Boris Becker of our minds. When Roddick drops that ball at 6-6 just before serving Becker exclaims, "Oh my God!" We've all heard that frightened, little squeal in our minds over nothings. The Boris in our heads is misleading us, and when we follow him it's down the path of our own failure. At the moment of truth, his voice can be the thing that finally blurs our focus.
This little game we call Life is played with people's hearts, and every mistake costs someone - sometimes dearly. We need that focus every time we struggle to love an annoying relative, to overcome a besetting addiction, or to give when we'd much rather grasp greedily our gifts.
127 men lost Wimbledon, and I think most of us lose at life, too. It's just a matter of degree. Roddick lost after winning 6 rounds, and he needs to remember his success. When we lose, it's important to hear the Spirit's healing voice in our ears, because every time we lend our ears to our inner Boris, and thereby expose our hearts to Satan's lies, we weaken ourselves against the next match.
Today's lesson is that we need to make sure we're not misled by the Narrators all around us, and especially not by that one in our head.
May the Spirit guide you.
The match, though, has given us, "The Narrative." For a prime example, see this article by Boris Becker, "Roddick Stopped Believing.
Boris was a brilliant if unstable tennis player and the youngest Wimbledon champ ever. I listened to his commentary on the BBC broadcast of several matches and found his commentary misleading over and over again. This article is no different. And in the scheme of things it doesn't really matter, but if you happen to bat the tennis ball around for a hobby commentators like Boris Becker can ruin your day.
The Narrative goes like this. Roddick never believed he could win that match, and he revealed that deficiency over a 3 minute span toward the end of the second set. He built up a 6-2 lead in the tiebreak, and only needed to hit one more good shot take a 2-0 lead in sets against Roger. But, you see, Roger has beaten Andy 19 of the last 21 times they've played, and Andy's 2 wins were in relatively unimportant tournaments. On this big a stage, Andy knew deep down in his heart he never had a chance.
That deep inner doubt is why, when Roger hit a duck of a high forehand at 6-5 in the tiebreak, Roddick shanked away his chance at greatness.
Wrong.
Wrong because it's a narrative after the fact. Wrong because that thinking won't help Andy win the next match. Wrong because it misses the point of what was really happening out there. Wrong because when us average Joe's get out on a tennis court and try to win an important match all we're going to remember is that we have to believe to win, and that's a lie. The truth is more complex, but TV commentary can't really do complex.
At 6-2 Federer pulled Roddick wide to the forehand and Roddick replied with a flat shot down the line. That put the ball on Federer's side of the court very quickly. In fact, Federer received the ball while Roddick was still standing about 15 feet to the right of where he needed to be to continue the point successfully. Federer simply hit the ball 30 feet to Roddick's left and the score went to 6-3.
The commentators (Becker not among them) praised the brilliance of Federer's backhand shot. I don't want to take anything away from Federer, but once Roddick went down the line, the "winner" was a routine stroke. No brilliance was required. Literally, any of 100,000 top club players could have won that point from that position. Maybe Federer used some special sauce in hitting the simple winner, but Roddick gifted him with that point. (See for yourself at the 5:00 mark of this video The Tiebreak.)
The correct shot was crosscourt, but Andy hoped to surprise Federer with the unexpected gamble. He figured he could "beat him down the line," but actually Roger was in control of the point. Andy brain-cramped and paid for it.
Roger then hits two good serves. After the poor play he demonstrated at the beginning of the tiebreak, it was about time he hit a couple good ones.
At 6:30 in the same video, you see Andy hit a second serve that Roger returns passively. Andy decides to attack the net. He hits the right shot and he hits it adequately, then Roger tries to go down the line with his passing shot when crosscourt would have been a better decision. Federer's forehand is mishit and goes much higher than he really intended, putting Andy in an awkward predicament. The high backhand volley is one of the hardest shots in tennis and Federer's ball may be going out. Andy's in the driver's seat, but he's not sure where to go. He decides the ball is probably going out, but that he'd better hit it anyway. That's always a tough decision.
When you swing at a ball you believe is headed out, it's almost a guarantee you're going to hit an inferior shot. Roddick pushed his backhand volley wide. It happens to the best of them, and in fact it did just then. You can rewind it and watch it happen over and over and over again. I'm sure Andy is not doing that, but the commentators have all christened that the stroke that decided the match.
Yes, that mistake was unfortunate. If Roger hits a better pass, I'm betting Andy hits a better volley. But tennis is like that.
Under pressure, Andy reverted to his most natural game. He'd been playing a new style all day, and doing a fantabulous job of it, but in the pressure of a tiebreak he reverted to his old style. The knock on Andy has always been gambling too soon and being afraid to move up to net. He gambled badly at 6-2 and he lost his feeling for the net at 6-5. Andy played a brilliant match to get himself to that point, and to give himself the chances he did. Andy played the right match to get to where he was, and it was not a natural style for him. What he'd done to get to 6-5 in the second set tiebreak was nothing short of amazing.
So what happened to end the dream?
There is a magic juice in tennis. If you've got it, you're going to win the point and if the opponent has it, he's going to win. That juice is called focus. Focus is what allows a man to return a 140 mph serve. Literally, between the time a 140 mph serve leaves the racket and the time it whistles past your ear, you cannot blink twice. In order to put a tennis racket in the path of that ball, at the exactly angle required to make the ball travel back into the far court, you must have focus. It's an almost inconceivable degree of connection between the eyes and the hand, leaving the brain almost entirely out of the picture.
Focus consumes energy like like a Rottweiller eats Scooby-snacks ... and you only have so many Scooby-snacks in your lunchbox. When you start a tennis match, you have a level of energy. Burn it too quickly, and you'll find yourself out of gas. You can tell when a player is out of gas, because he takes unjustified risks and misses. You can tell when a player is focused, because he does exactly what he should do and does it with a margin of safety, even when it's almost physically impossible.
Roddick showed every sign of losing focus in that tiebreak. He brain cramped at 6-2 and he shanked a makeable volley at 6-5. At 6-6 he dropped the ball while bouncing it prior to his second serve, approached on a weak shot, and missed a slightly difficult half-volley. At 6-7 he drove a backhand long. Federer, on the other hand, displayed perfect focus in the second half of the tiebreak. He did nothing amazing, and he did everything with a margin of safety.
Certainty that you are hitting the right shot can increase your focus. Fear that you might be making a mistake can dispell focus. The confidence of having beaten a man 19 times can increase focus. Having tasted defeat at your opponent's hands pressures your focus. Having a voice in your head narrating the hideous, secret, real reason you're making human mistakes can bleed focus dry. All those things were weighing on Roddick, but he was managing them successfully. Clear up to 15-14 in the 5th set tiebreak, Roddick managed all those things. The one thing Andy could not manage was fatigue.
Fatigue makes cowards of us all (Lombardi and Patton), and Roddick was significantly more fatigued than Federer. On Wednesday, Federer demolished Karlovic. On Wednesday Roddick poured his heart into a 5 set match against Leyton Hewitt. On Friday Federer embarassed Hass. On Friday Roddick played 4 crisis sets against Andy Murray and all of England. Federer came into Sunday's match with a full tank and a reserve of confidence Roddick could not begin to match.
The Narrative is that Roddick choked at the threshold of greatness. The reality is that fatigue caused him to lose focus. The man's problem was being human, not some intangible lack of belief or cowardice. The difference that distinction makes on the court on July 5th is nill, but come the US Open the difference will be massive. If Roddick believed The Narrative (he won't), he'd go out on court and at the critical moment there would be one more burden on his shoulders as he struggled for focus. He'll already have to fight fear, fatigue, and pressure, but The Narrative adds to that already herculean burden the special fear that he must be a choker. If, however, he believes the truth, that he fought to the limits of human endurance over 5 days and almost pulled off the upset of the championships anyway, he'll head into Flushing Meadows with an increased confidence that might actually sharpen his focus at just the right moment.
Life is like that. We all have a Narrator in our heads, the Boris Becker of our minds. When Roddick drops that ball at 6-6 just before serving Becker exclaims, "Oh my God!" We've all heard that frightened, little squeal in our minds over nothings. The Boris in our heads is misleading us, and when we follow him it's down the path of our own failure. At the moment of truth, his voice can be the thing that finally blurs our focus.
This little game we call Life is played with people's hearts, and every mistake costs someone - sometimes dearly. We need that focus every time we struggle to love an annoying relative, to overcome a besetting addiction, or to give when we'd much rather grasp greedily our gifts.
127 men lost Wimbledon, and I think most of us lose at life, too. It's just a matter of degree. Roddick lost after winning 6 rounds, and he needs to remember his success. When we lose, it's important to hear the Spirit's healing voice in our ears, because every time we lend our ears to our inner Boris, and thereby expose our hearts to Satan's lies, we weaken ourselves against the next match.
Today's lesson is that we need to make sure we're not misled by the Narrators all around us, and especially not by that one in our head.
May the Spirit guide you.
16 September, 2008
The Year of Rallying Dangerously
In August of 2007 I made a promise to myself that I was going for one year to pour everything my body had to give into winning a tennis tournament. I started my quest at the Reynoldsburg Open. In August 2008 I played the Reynoldsburg Open for the second time. In 2007 I won through easily to the Quarterfinals, then lost in a tough match to the #1 seed. In my second attempt I won the hardest match I'd ever played to get to the Quarterfinals, then lost in a tough match to the #4 seed. They were my best two showings of the year, and the second was no better than the first.
This is the story of my continued failure to master tennis.
I've had an expensive affair with this elegant, introverted sport, and never more so than this year. I know everyone doesn't like to read and think about tennis as much as I do, not even most players, but if you're interested read on and I'll tell the story of this year and what it's meant to my life. If you don't I promise I'll understand.
I fell in love with tennis at age 14 or so.
Back at 14 my whole life was at, "Love All." That's the score at the beginning of every tennis match, and my life was still a blank sheet awaiting the unfolding of whatever story it would tell. I spent hours back then hitting against various wooden walls all over my little home town of Grass Valley, CA. I did the same thing with soccer, but it's much easier to practice tennis alone than soccer. With soccer, you can kick penalty kicks all day, and do some light dribbling, but without at least one other person it's pretty hopeless. With tennis, a simple wall will let you practice everything but volleying and return of serve.
I even bought my own racket. The $20 things my parents bought me just weren't cutting it any more. The T.A. Davis Imperial I bought was $80 of pure, voluptuous beauty. (http://www.woodtennisrackets.com/makers/tad/tadrac1.htm - it's in the third row, on the far right.) It was my own money, and when I wore out the first racket, I turned around and bought another just like it. I never regretted spending that money, and I never regretted wearing those rackets down to nubs.
I found that I actually loved more about tennis than just playing. I learned how much I loved being alone with my wall and my ball. I could settle into a groove, pushing myself left and right, wearing my body down, and wondering where the hours could have gone. I was a pretty massively depressed kid, and solitaire tennis played profitably into my survival.
I guess I was emo before emo was cool. :-)
In high school I began to make a little bit of a name for myself. No one on the team hit with as consistent form as I did. Against the wall, I had even worked out a dependable form on my one-handed backhand. No one else used the one-hander back then, so it became a kind of signature of mine. I went on to win a number of high school matches.
All I remember are two losses.
The first one was a really close ladder match on my team. John had not watched as many pros as me or modelled his game after them, but he was resourceful and he was getting the better of me. At one point the coach walked by and found out I was losing. He just said, "I guess John wants it more than you," and walked off.
I was devastated.
That was a deep, deep blow. I wanted that win much worse than John did. It meant a lot more to me to be #1 on that team than it did to him, but John had figured something out that I didn't figure out for years. Looking back, I know I could not have beaten him that day, but I carried my coach's accusation for decades. It might have motivated another player, but it hyper-motivated me. It placed a burden on me that I could not bear, and my reaction to it started me down the road to choking in a way I could not cure.
My second memorable loss was in a match against the local public high school's scrub team. Our little Christian school didn't have a lot of players to choose from, so their scrub team ended up beating us. I don't remember whether if I had won my match, we would have won the meet.
Anyway, it was a single-set match, first to 8 wins. I was ahead 7-1 and felt badly for the poor little kid on the other side. I backed off the littlest bit to let him get a game or two and lost 7-8. It's the kind of thing one doesn't forget, but my coach's look told me I'd really, really never forget it. His eyes reminded me I lacked heart, and couldn't be trusted to deliver under pressure.
Halfway through my little opponent's comeback, my niceness turned into panic and finally into a full-blown choke. I started losing because I was nice, and then choked because I feared I hadn't "wanted it bad enough." I learned that day never to lose out of niceness again, but my habit of choking was permanently fixed by that day.
I'm a very emotional man, and tennis is a fickle sport to emotional players. I needed help dealing with my emotions in more areas of my life than tennis, but tennis was a perfect mirror for everything else that was happening in those years. I was a kid with some potential but who never figured out how to harness it. Instead of the real strength that I did have, I tried to harness some "true grit" that just wasn't me. I started trying to do everything by some unnatural force of will, and it just didn't work for me. And that never works for anyone on a tennis court.
Pretty much everything about life sucked. It just showed most obviously in my tennis.
I laid down my rackets when I graduated high school. Nothing good was happening for me out there, so I let it die. Any potential I might have had was long since gone, and there was no point in playing the game any more.
It was about 10 years later when I picked them up again. I found that tennis was fun if I played doubles with a partner who could keep my emotions under a wise rein. Singles was still too much and too hard for me, but doubles was fun and we won the city championship at our level - and the city was Atlanta. The level was pretty low, but it was nice to have some success.
Then I injured my knee, and laid the old rackets back down again until my divorce.
It had been 11 years since I'd last touched the old Wilson Pro Staff 7.5 in my closet, but with everything else falling apart I needed something unimportant to call my own. My knee was OK if I wore the brace, so I had the racket restrung and joined a 3.5 doubles team.
My two years were just what the doctor ordered. They were good men and I began to feel like I could play the game again. They whetted my appetite, and I began wanting to play more and more.
During my two years there, my main tennis weakness was on full display. No matter what kind of match I was in, I could find a way to choke. I could find a way to be intimidated, or to play below a poor opponent, or just to try too hard. Somehow, I figured my problems out by the time we reached the playoffs, and that never hurt. I think both seasons I was something like 5-3, but I don't think I lost a playoff match.
My little bit of success gave me courage. The choking problem was still there, but I began to hope that I could master it. I was, after all, 40-something now - not 16. The lure of singles tennis began to grab me. I had failed at singles all those years ago (2 1/2 decades? Really?) and I wanted to try my hand at it again. I'd heard there were singles tournaments around Columbus, and I wondered what would happen if I played them.
It seemed like I'd kind of learned how to handle choking during our playoff matches. Maybe playing in tournaments would tap into whatever helped me with that same kind of stress.
So, I started training for singles. And the choking only got worse. Somehow this sport that was a game for many seemed to be a life and death struggle for me. The fear of missing a simple shot grabbed me around the throat point after point, match after match, and year after year. I'd loved tennis for 30 years when I finally played that first official tournament in August of 2007. I beat a guy who hadn't played in years pretty handily, and then played the #1seed. I gave him a run for it. I surprised him, and hung with him for quite a while before he imposed himself on me.
He beat me in straight sets, and there was an obvious skill gap between him and me. If I was going to win a tournament, I really needed more and better skills.
So, I called in a pro.
I went to Joan Ramey's tennis camp.
http://www.rameycamps.com/site/tennis-schools.asp
I'd recommend her gifts and experience to anyone. She retooled my game from top to bottom in 3 days. She saw more hitches and more glitches in my game than I'd ever guessed anyone could find, but she was equally observant of what I was doing right. I left her camp with the strokes to compete with the big boys. It was expensive, but it was the cheapest money I'd ever spent. I could have spent years trying to put together all the things I learned from her in one weekend, and having those years given to me at 43 was quite a wonderful gift.
And with that training in hand, I came back to the local tournament circuit.
And it knocked me on my butt.
I'd love to tell the story of how I rose to the top of Columbus tennis, but I never even made a splash. I'm afraid I have no desire to the tell the story of loss after loss after loss. I know that will disappoint you, but try to understand.
It probably took 8 months after my time with Joan, practicing 3-5 times a week, for the things she taught me to settle down into the depths of my unconscious the way the 30 years of bad habits had done. The strokes I wanted at the beginning of my tournament journey were finally beginning to come naturally.
And even after those 8 months I was still losing to 1st string high school players. Now, that's not exactly something to be ashamed of. A 1st string high school player usually has one or two really good strokes, a lot of stamina, and a deep, burning desire to win, but I was playing to win.
An old man like me usually has cunning, experience, and a valuable calmness in any situation. Oddly, I have none of the three.
I'm not a cunning player. I come straight at you with my best game. If you can beat it, I'll lose.
And my experience was useless. When you throw out all your old strokes, it sets you back a bit. Suddenly, you don't know what to do in a given situation, because you've always done something else before. You find yourself having to think when you should be simply performing, and that's the death of any value experience might have brought.
And more than anything else, I was not calm. Even having strokes that should make me a decent tournament player could not help me breathe when the pressure hit.
I think I played fifteen to twenty matches total. I met up with about five 2nd string high school players during my tournament play. I beat them all. I brought my best game straight at them, and they could not beat it. I probably met up with about ten college level players. They all beat me easily. I brought my best game at them, and they knew exactly what to do to it.
And I met up with three 1st string high school players.
These were the losses that hurt. I lost all three of these matches, and I lost them because I choked. It was truly heartbreaking. And just to cheer me up, a couple of the happy winners gave me tips about what do to when I'm under pressure. Thanks guys. Every tip was one I've heard about 100 times, and whispered to myself during the trial by fire. Every tip failed me.
My old high school coach was a really great guy, and a good man. I praise him for everything he did, and I don't want it to sound like I blame him for what I did to myself across all those years. He did what every teacher does. He experimented. He cared and tried to figure out a way to help me reach my maximum potential. And he did what I've done so many times in my life, and guessed wrong. It's not his fault.
For 25 years I'd carried his words around in my head, and with my game sharpened beyond anything I'd ever achieved before, I was still pulling those words out and killing my potential with them in really unhappy ways.
I have to admit, I was getting close to putting the old rackets down again. I'm a card carrying masochist, but the fun of paying good money to get my butt stomped in the first round of every tournament was beginning to wear on me.
In July, I found Brent Abel.
http://webtennis.net/tips-series.htm
I may or may not ever play in the style Brent recommends. I've tried it out, and had both great success and abysmal failure. Some of the fault has been mine, and some of the credit belongs to my opponents. We'll see what I do next year. But whether or not I start playing his game, I purchased everything he had on mental skills, and it was a bargain.
Brent's primary aim is to teach each player mastery of themselves, and I needed that more than anything. My strokes were never my problem. It was always me. He freed me of my choke. And he did something even better than that for me. He taught me things about myself I didn't even know. He gave me permission to play tennis like an introvert, and in so doing I learned what I look like when I'm really competing well. I don't look like my high school tennis coach thought I should look. I don't look like tennis announcers think I should look.
When I'm playing my best, I look like I'm really unhappy and almost bored.
Since I started looking at myself through Brent's magnifying glass, I've seen something change in my game. I've become competitive. I beat my first 1st string high school player, beat a 1st year college player, and lost well to a pair of college+ players. It's been a new world for me, and a happy one.
My first win in the Reynoldsburg Open of 2007 had been against a 3rd string high school tennis player. My win in 2008 was against 1st string high school player or maybe even better. And my Quarterfinal loss there in 2008 had twice the quality of my loss in 2007. I was still losing, but my tennis was actually better. Finally. And more than that, I enjoyed myself in a way I did not enjoy my loss in 2007. Tennis is a lot more fun when you can breathe.
My results are no better, and I doubt they ever will be, but my joy with this game is much richer now.
Last night I lost a match 6-7, 4-6 to an old, cunning, inexperienced competitor. He beat me in exactly the same way I lost that ladder match back in my high school days. By rights, I should have won. My strokes were better and my mental game was sharp, but my opponent found the same old weakness. He discovered that I eat up any shot that comes hard and flat at me - like a wall might return. All those years ago I taught myself to hit balls that come off a wooden wall - hard and flat. Anyone who hits anything to me that a wall would not hit always has a great chance of humiliating me.
I lost that match, but one thing was different. I enjoyed myself. And I was sure the guy cheated me out of four critical points! If he had seen those 4 critical points the way I saw, I might have won by as small a margin as that by which I lost. But even with that weighing on my mind, I was enjoying myself. I could see how a worthy opponent was beating me, and I honestly enjoyed trying to stop him.
3 months ago the scoreline would have been 4-6, 1-6 because he figured me out at 3-3. We both knew the moment he changed his game against me, and we both knew the battle was on. It was a real hoot as I tried to force him into positions that kept him from hurting me, and he kept finding ways to hit that one ball I couldn't figure out. He pushed through, but I only choked away three or four points the whole night. It was fun.
And that makes me want to hold on to these old rackets for another year.
Tomorrow I'll work on that shot my opponent kept hurting me with. It'll be just like old times; me, a tennis ball, a machine (that can toss me exactly the shot I need to practice) and pushing myself until I wonder where the hour's gone.
And after my next match, I'll work on whatever hurt me worst that night.
And I'll enjoy myself.
In all this, I've learned one thing above everything else. I've learned the golden value of pushing myself to master something. I accept the reality now that I'm never going to master tennis. After all these beatings, it's still hard to accept. I really thought one day I'd be able to win a tournament, but I can now see that if I do it will take a lot more work than just a single year, a little bit of luck, and it'll have to be a small, small tournament. The guys who play the big tournaments are phenomenally good. The distance between their skills and mine is greater than the distance between Federer's skill and theirs. Really. They are that good. On my best day my best backhand can't compete with what they do while joking around and practicing.
And it is good, it is very good, for me to see what real mastery looks like. I'm embarassed to say I can see how little progress I've really made toward it, too. But I'm proud to see how much more progress I've made than if I'd stayed where I was and kept flattering myself. Pushing against the standard of play at these tournaments finally forced me to come to grips with things that had bothered me for decades, and that can only be good.
I finally learned to enjoy the game again.
Some day I'll probably rewrite this story, because it deserves to be more readable, but today I'm going to publish it as is. It's my story and it's kind of a rough ride. It makes sense that it'd be a rough write.
I'm really glad the Lord made me with a love of tennis, and I'm really glad I came back.
This is the story of my continued failure to master tennis.
I've had an expensive affair with this elegant, introverted sport, and never more so than this year. I know everyone doesn't like to read and think about tennis as much as I do, not even most players, but if you're interested read on and I'll tell the story of this year and what it's meant to my life. If you don't I promise I'll understand.
I fell in love with tennis at age 14 or so.
Back at 14 my whole life was at, "Love All." That's the score at the beginning of every tennis match, and my life was still a blank sheet awaiting the unfolding of whatever story it would tell. I spent hours back then hitting against various wooden walls all over my little home town of Grass Valley, CA. I did the same thing with soccer, but it's much easier to practice tennis alone than soccer. With soccer, you can kick penalty kicks all day, and do some light dribbling, but without at least one other person it's pretty hopeless. With tennis, a simple wall will let you practice everything but volleying and return of serve.
I even bought my own racket. The $20 things my parents bought me just weren't cutting it any more. The T.A. Davis Imperial I bought was $80 of pure, voluptuous beauty. (http://www.woodtennisrackets.com/makers/tad/tadrac1.htm - it's in the third row, on the far right.) It was my own money, and when I wore out the first racket, I turned around and bought another just like it. I never regretted spending that money, and I never regretted wearing those rackets down to nubs.
I found that I actually loved more about tennis than just playing. I learned how much I loved being alone with my wall and my ball. I could settle into a groove, pushing myself left and right, wearing my body down, and wondering where the hours could have gone. I was a pretty massively depressed kid, and solitaire tennis played profitably into my survival.
I guess I was emo before emo was cool. :-)
In high school I began to make a little bit of a name for myself. No one on the team hit with as consistent form as I did. Against the wall, I had even worked out a dependable form on my one-handed backhand. No one else used the one-hander back then, so it became a kind of signature of mine. I went on to win a number of high school matches.
All I remember are two losses.
The first one was a really close ladder match on my team. John had not watched as many pros as me or modelled his game after them, but he was resourceful and he was getting the better of me. At one point the coach walked by and found out I was losing. He just said, "I guess John wants it more than you," and walked off.
I was devastated.
That was a deep, deep blow. I wanted that win much worse than John did. It meant a lot more to me to be #1 on that team than it did to him, but John had figured something out that I didn't figure out for years. Looking back, I know I could not have beaten him that day, but I carried my coach's accusation for decades. It might have motivated another player, but it hyper-motivated me. It placed a burden on me that I could not bear, and my reaction to it started me down the road to choking in a way I could not cure.
My second memorable loss was in a match against the local public high school's scrub team. Our little Christian school didn't have a lot of players to choose from, so their scrub team ended up beating us. I don't remember whether if I had won my match, we would have won the meet.
Anyway, it was a single-set match, first to 8 wins. I was ahead 7-1 and felt badly for the poor little kid on the other side. I backed off the littlest bit to let him get a game or two and lost 7-8. It's the kind of thing one doesn't forget, but my coach's look told me I'd really, really never forget it. His eyes reminded me I lacked heart, and couldn't be trusted to deliver under pressure.
Halfway through my little opponent's comeback, my niceness turned into panic and finally into a full-blown choke. I started losing because I was nice, and then choked because I feared I hadn't "wanted it bad enough." I learned that day never to lose out of niceness again, but my habit of choking was permanently fixed by that day.
I'm a very emotional man, and tennis is a fickle sport to emotional players. I needed help dealing with my emotions in more areas of my life than tennis, but tennis was a perfect mirror for everything else that was happening in those years. I was a kid with some potential but who never figured out how to harness it. Instead of the real strength that I did have, I tried to harness some "true grit" that just wasn't me. I started trying to do everything by some unnatural force of will, and it just didn't work for me. And that never works for anyone on a tennis court.
Pretty much everything about life sucked. It just showed most obviously in my tennis.
I laid down my rackets when I graduated high school. Nothing good was happening for me out there, so I let it die. Any potential I might have had was long since gone, and there was no point in playing the game any more.
It was about 10 years later when I picked them up again. I found that tennis was fun if I played doubles with a partner who could keep my emotions under a wise rein. Singles was still too much and too hard for me, but doubles was fun and we won the city championship at our level - and the city was Atlanta. The level was pretty low, but it was nice to have some success.
Then I injured my knee, and laid the old rackets back down again until my divorce.
It had been 11 years since I'd last touched the old Wilson Pro Staff 7.5 in my closet, but with everything else falling apart I needed something unimportant to call my own. My knee was OK if I wore the brace, so I had the racket restrung and joined a 3.5 doubles team.
My two years were just what the doctor ordered. They were good men and I began to feel like I could play the game again. They whetted my appetite, and I began wanting to play more and more.
During my two years there, my main tennis weakness was on full display. No matter what kind of match I was in, I could find a way to choke. I could find a way to be intimidated, or to play below a poor opponent, or just to try too hard. Somehow, I figured my problems out by the time we reached the playoffs, and that never hurt. I think both seasons I was something like 5-3, but I don't think I lost a playoff match.
My little bit of success gave me courage. The choking problem was still there, but I began to hope that I could master it. I was, after all, 40-something now - not 16. The lure of singles tennis began to grab me. I had failed at singles all those years ago (2 1/2 decades? Really?) and I wanted to try my hand at it again. I'd heard there were singles tournaments around Columbus, and I wondered what would happen if I played them.
It seemed like I'd kind of learned how to handle choking during our playoff matches. Maybe playing in tournaments would tap into whatever helped me with that same kind of stress.
So, I started training for singles. And the choking only got worse. Somehow this sport that was a game for many seemed to be a life and death struggle for me. The fear of missing a simple shot grabbed me around the throat point after point, match after match, and year after year. I'd loved tennis for 30 years when I finally played that first official tournament in August of 2007. I beat a guy who hadn't played in years pretty handily, and then played the #1seed. I gave him a run for it. I surprised him, and hung with him for quite a while before he imposed himself on me.
He beat me in straight sets, and there was an obvious skill gap between him and me. If I was going to win a tournament, I really needed more and better skills.
So, I called in a pro.
I went to Joan Ramey's tennis camp.
http://www.rameycamps.com/site/tennis-schools.asp
I'd recommend her gifts and experience to anyone. She retooled my game from top to bottom in 3 days. She saw more hitches and more glitches in my game than I'd ever guessed anyone could find, but she was equally observant of what I was doing right. I left her camp with the strokes to compete with the big boys. It was expensive, but it was the cheapest money I'd ever spent. I could have spent years trying to put together all the things I learned from her in one weekend, and having those years given to me at 43 was quite a wonderful gift.
And with that training in hand, I came back to the local tournament circuit.
And it knocked me on my butt.
I'd love to tell the story of how I rose to the top of Columbus tennis, but I never even made a splash. I'm afraid I have no desire to the tell the story of loss after loss after loss. I know that will disappoint you, but try to understand.
It probably took 8 months after my time with Joan, practicing 3-5 times a week, for the things she taught me to settle down into the depths of my unconscious the way the 30 years of bad habits had done. The strokes I wanted at the beginning of my tournament journey were finally beginning to come naturally.
And even after those 8 months I was still losing to 1st string high school players. Now, that's not exactly something to be ashamed of. A 1st string high school player usually has one or two really good strokes, a lot of stamina, and a deep, burning desire to win, but I was playing to win.
An old man like me usually has cunning, experience, and a valuable calmness in any situation. Oddly, I have none of the three.
I'm not a cunning player. I come straight at you with my best game. If you can beat it, I'll lose.
And my experience was useless. When you throw out all your old strokes, it sets you back a bit. Suddenly, you don't know what to do in a given situation, because you've always done something else before. You find yourself having to think when you should be simply performing, and that's the death of any value experience might have brought.
And more than anything else, I was not calm. Even having strokes that should make me a decent tournament player could not help me breathe when the pressure hit.
I think I played fifteen to twenty matches total. I met up with about five 2nd string high school players during my tournament play. I beat them all. I brought my best game straight at them, and they could not beat it. I probably met up with about ten college level players. They all beat me easily. I brought my best game at them, and they knew exactly what to do to it.
And I met up with three 1st string high school players.
These were the losses that hurt. I lost all three of these matches, and I lost them because I choked. It was truly heartbreaking. And just to cheer me up, a couple of the happy winners gave me tips about what do to when I'm under pressure. Thanks guys. Every tip was one I've heard about 100 times, and whispered to myself during the trial by fire. Every tip failed me.
My old high school coach was a really great guy, and a good man. I praise him for everything he did, and I don't want it to sound like I blame him for what I did to myself across all those years. He did what every teacher does. He experimented. He cared and tried to figure out a way to help me reach my maximum potential. And he did what I've done so many times in my life, and guessed wrong. It's not his fault.
For 25 years I'd carried his words around in my head, and with my game sharpened beyond anything I'd ever achieved before, I was still pulling those words out and killing my potential with them in really unhappy ways.
I have to admit, I was getting close to putting the old rackets down again. I'm a card carrying masochist, but the fun of paying good money to get my butt stomped in the first round of every tournament was beginning to wear on me.
In July, I found Brent Abel.
http://webtennis.net/tips-series.htm
I may or may not ever play in the style Brent recommends. I've tried it out, and had both great success and abysmal failure. Some of the fault has been mine, and some of the credit belongs to my opponents. We'll see what I do next year. But whether or not I start playing his game, I purchased everything he had on mental skills, and it was a bargain.
Brent's primary aim is to teach each player mastery of themselves, and I needed that more than anything. My strokes were never my problem. It was always me. He freed me of my choke. And he did something even better than that for me. He taught me things about myself I didn't even know. He gave me permission to play tennis like an introvert, and in so doing I learned what I look like when I'm really competing well. I don't look like my high school tennis coach thought I should look. I don't look like tennis announcers think I should look.
When I'm playing my best, I look like I'm really unhappy and almost bored.
Since I started looking at myself through Brent's magnifying glass, I've seen something change in my game. I've become competitive. I beat my first 1st string high school player, beat a 1st year college player, and lost well to a pair of college+ players. It's been a new world for me, and a happy one.
My first win in the Reynoldsburg Open of 2007 had been against a 3rd string high school tennis player. My win in 2008 was against 1st string high school player or maybe even better. And my Quarterfinal loss there in 2008 had twice the quality of my loss in 2007. I was still losing, but my tennis was actually better. Finally. And more than that, I enjoyed myself in a way I did not enjoy my loss in 2007. Tennis is a lot more fun when you can breathe.
My results are no better, and I doubt they ever will be, but my joy with this game is much richer now.
Last night I lost a match 6-7, 4-6 to an old, cunning, inexperienced competitor. He beat me in exactly the same way I lost that ladder match back in my high school days. By rights, I should have won. My strokes were better and my mental game was sharp, but my opponent found the same old weakness. He discovered that I eat up any shot that comes hard and flat at me - like a wall might return. All those years ago I taught myself to hit balls that come off a wooden wall - hard and flat. Anyone who hits anything to me that a wall would not hit always has a great chance of humiliating me.
I lost that match, but one thing was different. I enjoyed myself. And I was sure the guy cheated me out of four critical points! If he had seen those 4 critical points the way I saw, I might have won by as small a margin as that by which I lost. But even with that weighing on my mind, I was enjoying myself. I could see how a worthy opponent was beating me, and I honestly enjoyed trying to stop him.
3 months ago the scoreline would have been 4-6, 1-6 because he figured me out at 3-3. We both knew the moment he changed his game against me, and we both knew the battle was on. It was a real hoot as I tried to force him into positions that kept him from hurting me, and he kept finding ways to hit that one ball I couldn't figure out. He pushed through, but I only choked away three or four points the whole night. It was fun.
And that makes me want to hold on to these old rackets for another year.
Tomorrow I'll work on that shot my opponent kept hurting me with. It'll be just like old times; me, a tennis ball, a machine (that can toss me exactly the shot I need to practice) and pushing myself until I wonder where the hour's gone.
And after my next match, I'll work on whatever hurt me worst that night.
And I'll enjoy myself.
In all this, I've learned one thing above everything else. I've learned the golden value of pushing myself to master something. I accept the reality now that I'm never going to master tennis. After all these beatings, it's still hard to accept. I really thought one day I'd be able to win a tournament, but I can now see that if I do it will take a lot more work than just a single year, a little bit of luck, and it'll have to be a small, small tournament. The guys who play the big tournaments are phenomenally good. The distance between their skills and mine is greater than the distance between Federer's skill and theirs. Really. They are that good. On my best day my best backhand can't compete with what they do while joking around and practicing.
And it is good, it is very good, for me to see what real mastery looks like. I'm embarassed to say I can see how little progress I've really made toward it, too. But I'm proud to see how much more progress I've made than if I'd stayed where I was and kept flattering myself. Pushing against the standard of play at these tournaments finally forced me to come to grips with things that had bothered me for decades, and that can only be good.
I finally learned to enjoy the game again.
Some day I'll probably rewrite this story, because it deserves to be more readable, but today I'm going to publish it as is. It's my story and it's kind of a rough ride. It makes sense that it'd be a rough write.
I'm really glad the Lord made me with a love of tennis, and I'm really glad I came back.
16 July, 2008
The Match
If you wonder what the match, The Match, between Federer and Nadal was all about, here's 13 minutes of bliss.
http://vimeo.com/1312674
As you watch, realize that any pro from any generation at any level can hit any of the shots you'll see in this video. No pro anywhere. ever. has hit 13 minutes worth of these shots, with this much on the line, with this much fear in his heart, as both of these men did last Sunday.
It was clearly the best tennis match of all time. The drama was unparalleled by any event in any sport I've ever heard of, stretching across almost 5 hours of time on court. If you've ever wondered what desire looks like, here it is.
http://vimeo.com/1312674
As you watch, realize that any pro from any generation at any level can hit any of the shots you'll see in this video. No pro anywhere. ever. has hit 13 minutes worth of these shots, with this much on the line, with this much fear in his heart, as both of these men did last Sunday.
It was clearly the best tennis match of all time. The drama was unparalleled by any event in any sport I've ever heard of, stretching across almost 5 hours of time on court. If you've ever wondered what desire looks like, here it is.
15 July, 2008
Touching Base
Hello all. Long time no see.
I think it's been more than a year since they instituted the blog-block at work, and it continues to make life tough for me. I used to be able to count on 30 minutes a day, 3-5 days a week, to put things out here that interested me. I think it's been 2 months since I've blogged anything regularly, and I don't see any breaks coming soon. I continue to be quite busy at home, and just seem to be getting busier.
One of my preoccupations these days has been tennis. This year I've played a very full tournament schedule, and I have learned SO MUCH about this game!
I cannot believe I ever thought I knew anything about tennis.
I don't know when I've ever been so profoundly humbled.
It's been very good for me.
Here's what's humbling about it. I used to think I knew as much about tennis as I did about being a Christian. Now that I know how badly I've sucked all these years at tennis, I'm pretty sure I'm right about being just that good a Christian, too. If people with true devotion can be so much better than me at a silly game, I am awed at how deep the waters of true wisdom might truly be.
I think about how far I thought I was in tennis, versus how far I now know I still have to go, all most every day. And almost every day I'm reminded how far I thought I was on the road to being a decent Christian. Well, praise the Lord, it just means I have that much more excitement and hope ahead of me.
The rest of life is really going well. I'm quite happy these days, and really feel the blessing of the Lord in every area of my life. I just figured I'd check in and let those of you keeping score know that things are good.
I do have several half-baked posts mocked up in my inbox. Maybe some day I'll actually write a couple of them. :-)
----
For those of you with too much time on your hands, let me tell you about my year of tennis-ing dangerously.
Here's the score. I've put all sorts of time and effort into learning how to play tennis right, and then teaching my body to do what my brain has absorbed, and what I've learned is that people who have been doing exactly that same thing for years are much better than me. I'm exactly 11 months into my master plan for local tennis domination, and so far I have yet to make it past the quarter finals of a single tournament. My record is something like 4-9, with at least 2 of those losses being 0-6, 0-6 drubbings.
I'm a putzer. :-)
I'm proud of this part of it all, though. I've stepped onto the court and measured myself. 3 years ago, I thought I was pretty good at this game, but I was playing at the 3.5 level when the tourney's are all 5.0+ events. I had no idea what the gap is from 3.5 to 5.0. Now I know. It's the gap between 7th grade algebra (which is way tougher than arithmetic) and college level calculus (which is still way below graduate level experimental math.) Not surprisingly, I've made it up to first or second year high school level algebra, and keep failing at the college-level tests.
I've had to learn to take my game out of the ivory tower, and learn how to make it happen on the hard courts. I now know, not just what an attacking game looks like, but what it felt like both times I did it right. I know what it feels like to decide to flatten out a forehand against someone who's eaten flat forehands for lunch for 2 decades. I've measured myself against the #1 seed in 4 different tournaments now, and come up wanting every time.
My expectations were completely unrealistic (or I probably would not have had the courage to try.) The thing with expectations, though, is that we really expect them to work. Having those expectations dashed really hurt ... every single time ... repeatedly ... publicly. But after a mere 11 months, I think I am beginning to see what I can really expect, and it's rewriting my experience of the game. I look back and see some pretty quick learning, and now I really feel good about what I see.
Here's my grades, as best I can assess them:
[Legend:
Dimension of Tennis
[:]
The way I thought I was playing in 2007.
[-]
The way I was actually probably playing in 2007.
[-]
The way I think I'm playing now.]
Grade card:
Forehand: B - D - C
Backhand: C - F - B
Serve: B - D - C
Approach: C - F - C
Volley: D - F - C
Put-away: C - F - D
Mental toughness: D - C - B
I think my best chance to become a winning tennis player at this level is to turn my volley into an A. You need an A to win, and you need to force other people to play into your A strength. Right now, my best hope is to lull people into playing against my backhand and surprise them, but it's not an A and it never will be. But I think I have the nerve to make my volley an A, and I think it's a rare enough game to upset some otherwise much better players than I am.
We'll see.
With my newly adjusted expectations, I'm actually starting to enjoy tennis. It's been a great ride, and maybe I've got a little glory tucked away somewhere in these tired old bones. I'll tell the story of my latest win some day, if I can get to it while it's still fresh. :-)
Thanks for listening.
I think it's been more than a year since they instituted the blog-block at work, and it continues to make life tough for me. I used to be able to count on 30 minutes a day, 3-5 days a week, to put things out here that interested me. I think it's been 2 months since I've blogged anything regularly, and I don't see any breaks coming soon. I continue to be quite busy at home, and just seem to be getting busier.
One of my preoccupations these days has been tennis. This year I've played a very full tournament schedule, and I have learned SO MUCH about this game!
I cannot believe I ever thought I knew anything about tennis.
I don't know when I've ever been so profoundly humbled.
It's been very good for me.
Here's what's humbling about it. I used to think I knew as much about tennis as I did about being a Christian. Now that I know how badly I've sucked all these years at tennis, I'm pretty sure I'm right about being just that good a Christian, too. If people with true devotion can be so much better than me at a silly game, I am awed at how deep the waters of true wisdom might truly be.
I think about how far I thought I was in tennis, versus how far I now know I still have to go, all most every day. And almost every day I'm reminded how far I thought I was on the road to being a decent Christian. Well, praise the Lord, it just means I have that much more excitement and hope ahead of me.
The rest of life is really going well. I'm quite happy these days, and really feel the blessing of the Lord in every area of my life. I just figured I'd check in and let those of you keeping score know that things are good.
I do have several half-baked posts mocked up in my inbox. Maybe some day I'll actually write a couple of them. :-)
----
For those of you with too much time on your hands, let me tell you about my year of tennis-ing dangerously.
Here's the score. I've put all sorts of time and effort into learning how to play tennis right, and then teaching my body to do what my brain has absorbed, and what I've learned is that people who have been doing exactly that same thing for years are much better than me. I'm exactly 11 months into my master plan for local tennis domination, and so far I have yet to make it past the quarter finals of a single tournament. My record is something like 4-9, with at least 2 of those losses being 0-6, 0-6 drubbings.
I'm a putzer. :-)
I'm proud of this part of it all, though. I've stepped onto the court and measured myself. 3 years ago, I thought I was pretty good at this game, but I was playing at the 3.5 level when the tourney's are all 5.0+ events. I had no idea what the gap is from 3.5 to 5.0. Now I know. It's the gap between 7th grade algebra (which is way tougher than arithmetic) and college level calculus (which is still way below graduate level experimental math.) Not surprisingly, I've made it up to first or second year high school level algebra, and keep failing at the college-level tests.
I've had to learn to take my game out of the ivory tower, and learn how to make it happen on the hard courts. I now know, not just what an attacking game looks like, but what it felt like both times I did it right. I know what it feels like to decide to flatten out a forehand against someone who's eaten flat forehands for lunch for 2 decades. I've measured myself against the #1 seed in 4 different tournaments now, and come up wanting every time.
My expectations were completely unrealistic (or I probably would not have had the courage to try.) The thing with expectations, though, is that we really expect them to work. Having those expectations dashed really hurt ... every single time ... repeatedly ... publicly. But after a mere 11 months, I think I am beginning to see what I can really expect, and it's rewriting my experience of the game. I look back and see some pretty quick learning, and now I really feel good about what I see.
Here's my grades, as best I can assess them:
[Legend:
Dimension of Tennis
[:]
The way I thought I was playing in 2007.
[-]
The way I was actually probably playing in 2007.
[-]
The way I think I'm playing now.]
Grade card:
Forehand: B - D - C
Backhand: C - F - B
Serve: B - D - C
Approach: C - F - C
Volley: D - F - C
Put-away: C - F - D
Mental toughness: D - C - B
I think my best chance to become a winning tennis player at this level is to turn my volley into an A. You need an A to win, and you need to force other people to play into your A strength. Right now, my best hope is to lull people into playing against my backhand and surprise them, but it's not an A and it never will be. But I think I have the nerve to make my volley an A, and I think it's a rare enough game to upset some otherwise much better players than I am.
We'll see.
With my newly adjusted expectations, I'm actually starting to enjoy tennis. It's been a great ride, and maybe I've got a little glory tucked away somewhere in these tired old bones. I'll tell the story of my latest win some day, if I can get to it while it's still fresh. :-)
Thanks for listening.
12 June, 2008
Flipping Tennis
Ah yes, now where was I?
And how do you work this "blogger" thingy?
I do vaguely remember a time when I used to post pretty frequently, so I'm sure it will all come back - just like falling off a bicycle.
A couple of you have followed my tennis ramblings over the years, and I thought I'd share a little bit of what's been happening lately. In a nutshell, I may have played the first decent tennis match of my life on Monday night. It felt almost like one of those science-fiction stories where the hero falls asleep and wakes up in a new world. I blinked, and found myself playing at a level I never knew existed. I still lost, but I think I'll make it back to that place again the next time I step out on court, and I'm looking forward to that moment in a brand new way.
It's kind of along story from 1972 when I first started hitting tennis balls until 2008 when I finally hit one right, so I'll skip forward to Aug 2007.
Last summer my forehand was tearing apart my right wrist. I was using a really twisty motion known as a "windshield wiper" to put topspin on the ball, and all that wrist motion plus all the power was doing bad things to me. I was pretty convinced I was doing life-long damage to it, but I was still winning so I couldn't stop playing. As the 3.5 doubles season came to an end, I decided something had to change, and before quitting tennis I figured I'd try modernizing my game. (Anyone who knows me, knows how anathema "modern" is to me, but I was desparte!) As is my wont, rather than changing my forehand, I changed everything. I went from the Eastern grip taught for the old wooden rackets to the Semi-Western grip that is so natural with the new carbon-fiber rackets. Before all was said and done, I'd changed my forehand, backhand, volley and serve, all in radical ways. There ain't nothin' else to change, or I'd have changed it.
The new strokes gave me more spin and more power, all with the added benefit of my wrist no longer feeling like it was splitting in half. But wait! There's more! For no additional cost, I also received more accuracy and a more reliable shot under pressure.
There was no downside.
I was prepared and empowered to take the world by storm!
I entered my first tournament in September, and beat one kid before losing to a couple of solid players. They were easy losses to understand, though. Under pressure, 35 years of habit proved hard to break. I was mingling my Eastern style into my Semi-Western performance, and those two flavors did not taste great together.
I kept grinding the new style into my body, creating muscle memory with every stroke. I practiced a lot and critiqued every swing, working to keep my style as purely simple as I physically could. I never reverted back to the old style under pressure. I'd lose with the new style rather than scrape by on the old even one more day. It was all going to pay off. The temptation to give up and fall back was strong each time I lost, but I resisted.
Come December, I entered my second tournament. I beat one flaky player, before losing to a couple of solid players. They were easy losses to understand, though. I still reverted to the old style sometimes, and I hadnot enough played under match pressure with the new style.
I played some more between January and May, and even started having some success. Usually, I was pulling off come-from-behind wins against decent players. The inexplicable thing was that I had vastly better strokes than the players I was beating, and I was losing to my equals. I was choking in every match, and my game was suffering horribly for it.
Choking has been the eternal theme of my tennis, and it was not going away without a fight. If I could get past the choke, I usually won any match I played. The opponent became an after-thought for me. More than anyone I feared the enemy stuck eternally between my ears, and I was searching out weapons with which to fight him.
The new strokes were very helpful in fighting the choke. The Semi-Western is twice as choke-resistant for me as the old Eastern style. Others have different experiences, but the Semi-Western fits me like a glove. And my new skills gave me confidence that helped me fight the choke.
But something was missing, and the choke was always one wrong thought away for me.
I entered the Lancaster Open on Memorial Day weekend, and beat one kid before losing to a couple solid players. They were easy losses to understand, though. Nah. Not really. The losses were getting harder to understand. I beat that first kid 6-0, 6-0, which was nice, because in the past I'd never been able to beat anyone effectively. So, things were looking good. Then I ran into Steve Gunderson. I lost to him 0-6, 0-6 and I simply shouldn't have. Yes, Steve should beat me. Yes, he's much better than me. But no. He's not THAT much better than me. He plays with the old Eastern style, and he uses it brilliantly, but my strokes should have matched up well against his, and obviously they did not.
My other loss that weekend was to Pete Mudre. He ate me alive with frankly inferior strokes. He put wicked slices in the middle of the court, and watched me fail to handle them. Should I have beaten him? Probably not. But losing 0-6, 1-6 was just not right. He was not that much better than me. Really.
I registered my lessons from Lancaster and went home and added an attacking game to my style repertoire. It was the right decision, and it completely failed me in my next match. I played a guy who wanted to beat me really badly, and I choked. It made him really happy. Not so much for me. It had been so long since I'd won a tennis match, I was beginning to wonder whether I deserved to hold a racket at all.
I talked all this over with a kind-hearted, long-listening friend, and we decided I needed to feel more released in my tennis. I was too uptight about each error because I took them as indicators of my commitment or some such. Instead, I needed to realize that tennis was just a great opportunity for me to learn about myself, so every mistake was just another clue into my mind.
Then I entered the Gahanna Open. I only entered one division this time (I think I'm going to just stay with the Open divisions for a while, and quit playing the over-35's) and was paired against the #4 seed. The guy was much better than me, and it showed in my 4-6, 1-6 loss. The 5 games I won in Gahanna were an improvement over Lancaster, and my mood after the match was improved. I'd "felt it" a little bit, and when I'd made mistakes I'd been able to relax and avoid choking. I'd lost because my opponent was better than the, and not because I played worse than I should have. It felt better than the drubbings I'd received of late, but it was a far cry from good.
And then Sunday, blessed Sunday, happened. I went out to play against my "measuring stick," Nate. Nate could beat any of the guys who beat me (except maybe Steve, but I'd enjoy watching that match.) When I am finally able to put real pressure on Nate, I'll be able to play anyone. Sunday was not that day. I failed to play even to my own level against Nate. It was awful. All my self-talk about "release" kept me mentally positive, and I was not exactly choking, but nothing I hit was going in.
After we were done, Nate tried to give me a pep talk. It was an uphill battle, and he was not making much progress until he said these fateful words, "You're trying to flip everything."
I was baffled.
Nate explained.
If my opponent hit a ball low and wide to my backhand, I was in a bad position. That's tennis 101. I had maybe a 20%/80% chance of winning that point. 20 times out of 100 I win the point, and 80 times out of 100 I lose it. Nate observed that I was trying to flip that percentage with one awesome shot. I was trying to flip my 20/80's into 80/20's, and that required that I hit something amazing.
I won't be falsely modest here. I can hit shots just like that. Really. From that ridiculous position, I often will hit a screaming cross-court winner that leaves my opponent gaping.
I won't be falsely proud here, either. Ten times as often as I hit that screaming winner, I hit the ball just wide, just long, just into the net, just within my opponent's reach, or just out of the tennis park. There happen to be a lot more ways to miss than there are to amaze.
Nate said, "When you're in a 20/80 position, fight for neutral. Don't look for an advantage. Hit for 40/60, and if that works, then hit the next shot for 50/50, and then start thinking about 60/40. Don't try to flip it. Fight for neutral"
The light hit me like an arc-welder in a mirror factory.
I can scorch the ball back right at my opponent, instead of trying for an amazing winner. The chances are he will still win the point, but my percentages are up to 40/60 instead of 20/80. My odds improve. The chances are his next shot will not be as wicked as the one I'm dealing with right now. And if he does put the ball away, oh well. Against quality opponents you're going to lose some points even though you never made a mistake.
The reams of history and understanding that flowed through my mind at that moment would torment you, my reader, far too much, but let me point out a couple things.
+ So, THIS is what it means to "build a point!" I always thought building a point was trying to hit an almost winner followed by a clean winner, but no. It's bigger than that.
+ All I earned with my shiny new strokes was entry into the "rookie" level of real tennis. The guys I'm playing now all have every stroke I'm just learning. And when I say, "have," I mean they can hit it in practice 9 times out of 10, and can hit it confidently under match pressure. I really am vastly better now than my old 3.5 hitting buddies, but that means squat at the 5.0 level where I'm trying to play.
+ With every stroke, I need to be adding 10% to my advantage. That means I should not be hitting just to stay even, but I should not be trying to add 45% to my advantage with one stroke, either.
+ But my opponent is doing the same thing!
+ Wow!
+ Tennis is really an arm-wrestling match, with both of us trying to push through for 5% at a time until our opponent falls too far behind to make it up. And then we play another point.
+ ALL THE GUYS I'VE BEEN LOSING TO HAVE KNOWN THIS FOR YEARS!
No wonder they're beating me!
For 35 years I've been stepping out there and trying to flip disadvantaged positions. When I fail at the improbable, my opponent gets the point. When I succeed, though, they don't try to flip the point. Instead, they fight for neutral and build until they have me at a disadvantage again. Then I try to flip it again. If I'm lucky, I flip 1 in 5 points. In tennis, you must win 55% of the points to have hold a comfortable lead in any given match. Winning 20% of points leads to brutally ugly scores.
My opponents have been working to neutralize my advantage without risking a "full flip" like I do.
And this realization led to another, and more important one.
No wonder I choke.
You can only miss important shots so many times before you begin to feel like a failure, and begin to doubt yourself. More often than not if I'm in the low percentage position in a point I'll miss a big shot trying to flip the point, and when I'm at the high percentage position my opponent will hit a neutralizing shot to get back to even. Once we're even again, it just means I have another opportunity to fall behind, which gives me another opportunity to miss. I keep putting myself in positions that lead to missing! Psychologically, I've been shooting myself in the foot for 35 years.
The percentages don't lie. If I'm as good as my opponent, at some point I'll be ahead in 50% of the points we play and behind in the other 50%. From that position, if I win 55% of points in which I'm ahead and win 15% of points in which I'm behind, I'll get my butt waxed in public. In a 180 point match, that puts the score at 63-117, or in tennis score terms, 0-6, 0-6, 0-6.
Let me put it another way. I have to be so much better than my opponent that I am ahead in more than 70% of all 180 points to win. I will only win when I'm playing an inferior opponent.
And THAT's exactly what's been happening in my tennis life. I win with difficulty against people who are worse than me, and lose to people who are at my level.
Hmmm. When intuition and statistics agree about a thing, one had best pay some attention to that thing.
So, I signed up for the Bexley Open, drew another #4 seed, and held my breath. I went out there determined to "fight for neutral." I'd literally not touched a racket since Nate breathed his advice out upon my game just the day before, so I had no idea what it would feel like to "fight for neutral," but I was gonna give it the old college-dropout try.
The match started at 0-3. It was not propitious. :-)
But I learned. I saw that I was not going to be able to attain a neutral position by hitting softly or down the center. The guy I was playing was a former college player. That means he had been killing tennis balls daily for 4 years and testing his skills against high level competition weekly while I was plinking around barely winning 3.5 doubles matches. He was ripping shots that I don't even dare to try, and generally kicking my butt easily. To reach neutral against this guy, I needed to hit hard and toward the safe edges of the court.
So I did.
1-3.
The set ended at 2-6, and I was feeling the despair. I was broken twice, and that never feels good. Then again, I had nothing to lose, so I doubled my commitment to fighting for neutral and added to it a commitment to emphasize the word, "fight."
To start the second set, I broke him and held my serve to consolidate for a 2-0 lead.
I had never, ever, not even once been in the lead in any way against a seeded player in a tournament in my life, not even while down a set. Heck, I'd only once won more than 1 game in one single set against a seeded player! This was new territory for me.
Choke time.
Only I didn't choke.
My opponent had to work to win the next game, and then he had to work hard to break me back for 2-2. It hurt to be broken, but I'd made him earn it. I didn't give anything away, so I squared my chin and shoulders and went back to work.
I broke him again for 3-2. And consolidated by holding serve for the 4-2 lead!
I could not believe how I was playing. I was not surrendering points like I always do in pressure situations. I was playing like I belonged on this court with this guy who had years of experience under his belt, was 15 years younger than me, and taught tennis for a living at a local junior high school. I was making him sweat.
He held and broke me back for 4-4.
There was no longer a question of him deciding whether to bring out his A game. He was playing with every drop of tennis in his blood, and he was scraping out games. The two service games I held, I held at love. I was officially winning more points than him because I was making him scrap for every one of his service games.
But he did have all that experience, and there was a lot of tennis in his blood.
He held for the 5-4 lead.
At the changeover, I actually changed shirts. The pros do it when they want to feel ready for whatever comes, and it made sense, so I did it.
5 points later, the score was 30-40 - it was Match Point against me. If I lost the next point, I went home a 2-6, 4-6 loser. If I choked, I went home feeling like a sucker again. If I double-faulted, I felt like a moronic sucker. If I patty-caked the ball, and he killed it like he should, I felt like a sucker masquerading as a tennis player. And yes, all those thoughts squirmed into my mind past the locked doors of my subconscious. I shoved back down before I could serve.
I cast the krypton beam of "fight for neutral" all around my brain, and filled my mind with the determination to hit for 5% at a time. I served a good kicker to his backhand, and he sent back a mere 30% reply to the center of my court. I was up 70/30 in the point, and barely knew what to do. I fought off the urge to crack the ball somewhere, and went for 75/25 by hitting a reasonably tough shot to his backhand. I followed it in to the net, and he hit a neutralizing shot back to me. By attacking the net, though, I'd placed myself in position for just that shot. I stepped up and firmly punched the volley away.
Just like in the textbooks.
Just like I'd practiced when I added the attacking mojo to my game.
Just like a real tennis player would do.
That moment was the culmination of everything I've done in learning to play this game at this level.
I followed that point up by taking the next two and the game for a 5-5 tie.
Nothing could take that moment away from me. I played the percentages and made my attacking game the deciding factor at a critical juncture. I succeeded because I didn't choke, because I fought for neutral, and because I knew how to take the attack to my opponent safely. Just like real tennis.
I still cannot describe what that feels like.
For 35 years I've wondered, if I'd had the chance, could I have played real tennis with the big boys. For any number of reasons I've not tried, and when I finally did try, I failed miserably, and when I failed I wanted to quit. That volley put away 35 years of doubts and fears, and said to me that I'd grown up just a little bit. Finally.
I forced my opponent to weather a deuce during his service game, but he pulled through for the 6-5 lead.
This time, at the changeover I ate half an energy bar. It's the first time I've ever done that, and the first time I've ever wanted to do it. My opponent was suffering badly in the heat, and I was feeling as good as I've ever felt, but if I pulled off the next two games, I need the energy for that precious third set. I was hydrated and nourished and pumped.
And behind 15-40 very quickly.
My experienced and honorable opponent was cracking winners at the lines. I held firm. I served hard, and leveled at 40-40, then even pulled ahead for a game point. If I won the next point, we would go to the tiebreak and my chances looked good.
My next serve drew a 35% reply to the center of the court on my backhand side. I decided to go for my most beautiful shot, but I didn't decide it with enough conviction. I went for the inside out backhand. It's a shot I have, but not when I lack conviction. To take that shot felt to me like I was changing dance partners, and playing against the percentages. It was the right shot at the right time, but I didn't quite believe it.
I missed that shot, and probably the match, by 5 inches.
Back to deuce we went, and my opponent earned two more Match Points. I fought them off with an ace down the line (you should have seen his face) and a kicker out wide. On the sixth match point, I finally succumbed. In a heated exchange I put an inside out forehand just a couple feet long. It was a good shot, played for the percentages and played with conviction, that just happened to sail a little bit on me.
I lost, but I lost my first good match.
Looking back, I think my opponent knew somethiNg I had not figured out yet. Toward the end of a match, during clutch time, and after a hard fought battle to get to the moment of truth, you have to let fly with some calculated gambles. That's the moment to let the "wild things" off their leashes and see what you can do, if you're going to beat an equal opponent. I suspect in those last few games, after your body is fully dialed in and firing on all cylinders, you swinging with calculated abandon can shift things your way. It worked for my opponent, and he knows this game a lot better than I do.
If I had known that on Monday, I don't think my opponent could have stayed on his feet for the third set. The heat had about taken him out.
It's OK.
I'm signed up for the TennisFax Classic next week. We might just meet again.
And how do you work this "blogger" thingy?
I do vaguely remember a time when I used to post pretty frequently, so I'm sure it will all come back - just like falling off a bicycle.
A couple of you have followed my tennis ramblings over the years, and I thought I'd share a little bit of what's been happening lately. In a nutshell, I may have played the first decent tennis match of my life on Monday night. It felt almost like one of those science-fiction stories where the hero falls asleep and wakes up in a new world. I blinked, and found myself playing at a level I never knew existed. I still lost, but I think I'll make it back to that place again the next time I step out on court, and I'm looking forward to that moment in a brand new way.
It's kind of along story from 1972 when I first started hitting tennis balls until 2008 when I finally hit one right, so I'll skip forward to Aug 2007.
Last summer my forehand was tearing apart my right wrist. I was using a really twisty motion known as a "windshield wiper" to put topspin on the ball, and all that wrist motion plus all the power was doing bad things to me. I was pretty convinced I was doing life-long damage to it, but I was still winning so I couldn't stop playing. As the 3.5 doubles season came to an end, I decided something had to change, and before quitting tennis I figured I'd try modernizing my game. (Anyone who knows me, knows how anathema "modern" is to me, but I was desparte!) As is my wont, rather than changing my forehand, I changed everything. I went from the Eastern grip taught for the old wooden rackets to the Semi-Western grip that is so natural with the new carbon-fiber rackets. Before all was said and done, I'd changed my forehand, backhand, volley and serve, all in radical ways. There ain't nothin' else to change, or I'd have changed it.
The new strokes gave me more spin and more power, all with the added benefit of my wrist no longer feeling like it was splitting in half. But wait! There's more! For no additional cost, I also received more accuracy and a more reliable shot under pressure.
There was no downside.
I was prepared and empowered to take the world by storm!
I entered my first tournament in September, and beat one kid before losing to a couple of solid players. They were easy losses to understand, though. Under pressure, 35 years of habit proved hard to break. I was mingling my Eastern style into my Semi-Western performance, and those two flavors did not taste great together.
I kept grinding the new style into my body, creating muscle memory with every stroke. I practiced a lot and critiqued every swing, working to keep my style as purely simple as I physically could. I never reverted back to the old style under pressure. I'd lose with the new style rather than scrape by on the old even one more day. It was all going to pay off. The temptation to give up and fall back was strong each time I lost, but I resisted.
Come December, I entered my second tournament. I beat one flaky player, before losing to a couple of solid players. They were easy losses to understand, though. I still reverted to the old style sometimes, and I hadnot enough played under match pressure with the new style.
I played some more between January and May, and even started having some success. Usually, I was pulling off come-from-behind wins against decent players. The inexplicable thing was that I had vastly better strokes than the players I was beating, and I was losing to my equals. I was choking in every match, and my game was suffering horribly for it.
Choking has been the eternal theme of my tennis, and it was not going away without a fight. If I could get past the choke, I usually won any match I played. The opponent became an after-thought for me. More than anyone I feared the enemy stuck eternally between my ears, and I was searching out weapons with which to fight him.
The new strokes were very helpful in fighting the choke. The Semi-Western is twice as choke-resistant for me as the old Eastern style. Others have different experiences, but the Semi-Western fits me like a glove. And my new skills gave me confidence that helped me fight the choke.
But something was missing, and the choke was always one wrong thought away for me.
I entered the Lancaster Open on Memorial Day weekend, and beat one kid before losing to a couple solid players. They were easy losses to understand, though. Nah. Not really. The losses were getting harder to understand. I beat that first kid 6-0, 6-0, which was nice, because in the past I'd never been able to beat anyone effectively. So, things were looking good. Then I ran into Steve Gunderson. I lost to him 0-6, 0-6 and I simply shouldn't have. Yes, Steve should beat me. Yes, he's much better than me. But no. He's not THAT much better than me. He plays with the old Eastern style, and he uses it brilliantly, but my strokes should have matched up well against his, and obviously they did not.
My other loss that weekend was to Pete Mudre. He ate me alive with frankly inferior strokes. He put wicked slices in the middle of the court, and watched me fail to handle them. Should I have beaten him? Probably not. But losing 0-6, 1-6 was just not right. He was not that much better than me. Really.
I registered my lessons from Lancaster and went home and added an attacking game to my style repertoire. It was the right decision, and it completely failed me in my next match. I played a guy who wanted to beat me really badly, and I choked. It made him really happy. Not so much for me. It had been so long since I'd won a tennis match, I was beginning to wonder whether I deserved to hold a racket at all.
I talked all this over with a kind-hearted, long-listening friend, and we decided I needed to feel more released in my tennis. I was too uptight about each error because I took them as indicators of my commitment or some such. Instead, I needed to realize that tennis was just a great opportunity for me to learn about myself, so every mistake was just another clue into my mind.
Then I entered the Gahanna Open. I only entered one division this time (I think I'm going to just stay with the Open divisions for a while, and quit playing the over-35's) and was paired against the #4 seed. The guy was much better than me, and it showed in my 4-6, 1-6 loss. The 5 games I won in Gahanna were an improvement over Lancaster, and my mood after the match was improved. I'd "felt it" a little bit, and when I'd made mistakes I'd been able to relax and avoid choking. I'd lost because my opponent was better than the, and not because I played worse than I should have. It felt better than the drubbings I'd received of late, but it was a far cry from good.
And then Sunday, blessed Sunday, happened. I went out to play against my "measuring stick," Nate. Nate could beat any of the guys who beat me (except maybe Steve, but I'd enjoy watching that match.) When I am finally able to put real pressure on Nate, I'll be able to play anyone. Sunday was not that day. I failed to play even to my own level against Nate. It was awful. All my self-talk about "release" kept me mentally positive, and I was not exactly choking, but nothing I hit was going in.
After we were done, Nate tried to give me a pep talk. It was an uphill battle, and he was not making much progress until he said these fateful words, "You're trying to flip everything."
I was baffled.
Nate explained.
If my opponent hit a ball low and wide to my backhand, I was in a bad position. That's tennis 101. I had maybe a 20%/80% chance of winning that point. 20 times out of 100 I win the point, and 80 times out of 100 I lose it. Nate observed that I was trying to flip that percentage with one awesome shot. I was trying to flip my 20/80's into 80/20's, and that required that I hit something amazing.
I won't be falsely modest here. I can hit shots just like that. Really. From that ridiculous position, I often will hit a screaming cross-court winner that leaves my opponent gaping.
I won't be falsely proud here, either. Ten times as often as I hit that screaming winner, I hit the ball just wide, just long, just into the net, just within my opponent's reach, or just out of the tennis park. There happen to be a lot more ways to miss than there are to amaze.
Nate said, "When you're in a 20/80 position, fight for neutral. Don't look for an advantage. Hit for 40/60, and if that works, then hit the next shot for 50/50, and then start thinking about 60/40. Don't try to flip it. Fight for neutral"
The light hit me like an arc-welder in a mirror factory.
I can scorch the ball back right at my opponent, instead of trying for an amazing winner. The chances are he will still win the point, but my percentages are up to 40/60 instead of 20/80. My odds improve. The chances are his next shot will not be as wicked as the one I'm dealing with right now. And if he does put the ball away, oh well. Against quality opponents you're going to lose some points even though you never made a mistake.
The reams of history and understanding that flowed through my mind at that moment would torment you, my reader, far too much, but let me point out a couple things.
+ So, THIS is what it means to "build a point!" I always thought building a point was trying to hit an almost winner followed by a clean winner, but no. It's bigger than that.
+ All I earned with my shiny new strokes was entry into the "rookie" level of real tennis. The guys I'm playing now all have every stroke I'm just learning. And when I say, "have," I mean they can hit it in practice 9 times out of 10, and can hit it confidently under match pressure. I really am vastly better now than my old 3.5 hitting buddies, but that means squat at the 5.0 level where I'm trying to play.
+ With every stroke, I need to be adding 10% to my advantage. That means I should not be hitting just to stay even, but I should not be trying to add 45% to my advantage with one stroke, either.
+ But my opponent is doing the same thing!
+ Wow!
+ Tennis is really an arm-wrestling match, with both of us trying to push through for 5% at a time until our opponent falls too far behind to make it up. And then we play another point.
+ ALL THE GUYS I'VE BEEN LOSING TO HAVE KNOWN THIS FOR YEARS!
No wonder they're beating me!
For 35 years I've been stepping out there and trying to flip disadvantaged positions. When I fail at the improbable, my opponent gets the point. When I succeed, though, they don't try to flip the point. Instead, they fight for neutral and build until they have me at a disadvantage again. Then I try to flip it again. If I'm lucky, I flip 1 in 5 points. In tennis, you must win 55% of the points to have hold a comfortable lead in any given match. Winning 20% of points leads to brutally ugly scores.
My opponents have been working to neutralize my advantage without risking a "full flip" like I do.
And this realization led to another, and more important one.
No wonder I choke.
You can only miss important shots so many times before you begin to feel like a failure, and begin to doubt yourself. More often than not if I'm in the low percentage position in a point I'll miss a big shot trying to flip the point, and when I'm at the high percentage position my opponent will hit a neutralizing shot to get back to even. Once we're even again, it just means I have another opportunity to fall behind, which gives me another opportunity to miss. I keep putting myself in positions that lead to missing! Psychologically, I've been shooting myself in the foot for 35 years.
The percentages don't lie. If I'm as good as my opponent, at some point I'll be ahead in 50% of the points we play and behind in the other 50%. From that position, if I win 55% of points in which I'm ahead and win 15% of points in which I'm behind, I'll get my butt waxed in public. In a 180 point match, that puts the score at 63-117, or in tennis score terms, 0-6, 0-6, 0-6.
Let me put it another way. I have to be so much better than my opponent that I am ahead in more than 70% of all 180 points to win. I will only win when I'm playing an inferior opponent.
And THAT's exactly what's been happening in my tennis life. I win with difficulty against people who are worse than me, and lose to people who are at my level.
Hmmm. When intuition and statistics agree about a thing, one had best pay some attention to that thing.
So, I signed up for the Bexley Open, drew another #4 seed, and held my breath. I went out there determined to "fight for neutral." I'd literally not touched a racket since Nate breathed his advice out upon my game just the day before, so I had no idea what it would feel like to "fight for neutral," but I was gonna give it the old college-dropout try.
The match started at 0-3. It was not propitious. :-)
But I learned. I saw that I was not going to be able to attain a neutral position by hitting softly or down the center. The guy I was playing was a former college player. That means he had been killing tennis balls daily for 4 years and testing his skills against high level competition weekly while I was plinking around barely winning 3.5 doubles matches. He was ripping shots that I don't even dare to try, and generally kicking my butt easily. To reach neutral against this guy, I needed to hit hard and toward the safe edges of the court.
So I did.
1-3.
The set ended at 2-6, and I was feeling the despair. I was broken twice, and that never feels good. Then again, I had nothing to lose, so I doubled my commitment to fighting for neutral and added to it a commitment to emphasize the word, "fight."
To start the second set, I broke him and held my serve to consolidate for a 2-0 lead.
I had never, ever, not even once been in the lead in any way against a seeded player in a tournament in my life, not even while down a set. Heck, I'd only once won more than 1 game in one single set against a seeded player! This was new territory for me.
Choke time.
Only I didn't choke.
My opponent had to work to win the next game, and then he had to work hard to break me back for 2-2. It hurt to be broken, but I'd made him earn it. I didn't give anything away, so I squared my chin and shoulders and went back to work.
I broke him again for 3-2. And consolidated by holding serve for the 4-2 lead!
I could not believe how I was playing. I was not surrendering points like I always do in pressure situations. I was playing like I belonged on this court with this guy who had years of experience under his belt, was 15 years younger than me, and taught tennis for a living at a local junior high school. I was making him sweat.
He held and broke me back for 4-4.
There was no longer a question of him deciding whether to bring out his A game. He was playing with every drop of tennis in his blood, and he was scraping out games. The two service games I held, I held at love. I was officially winning more points than him because I was making him scrap for every one of his service games.
But he did have all that experience, and there was a lot of tennis in his blood.
He held for the 5-4 lead.
At the changeover, I actually changed shirts. The pros do it when they want to feel ready for whatever comes, and it made sense, so I did it.
5 points later, the score was 30-40 - it was Match Point against me. If I lost the next point, I went home a 2-6, 4-6 loser. If I choked, I went home feeling like a sucker again. If I double-faulted, I felt like a moronic sucker. If I patty-caked the ball, and he killed it like he should, I felt like a sucker masquerading as a tennis player. And yes, all those thoughts squirmed into my mind past the locked doors of my subconscious. I shoved back down before I could serve.
I cast the krypton beam of "fight for neutral" all around my brain, and filled my mind with the determination to hit for 5% at a time. I served a good kicker to his backhand, and he sent back a mere 30% reply to the center of my court. I was up 70/30 in the point, and barely knew what to do. I fought off the urge to crack the ball somewhere, and went for 75/25 by hitting a reasonably tough shot to his backhand. I followed it in to the net, and he hit a neutralizing shot back to me. By attacking the net, though, I'd placed myself in position for just that shot. I stepped up and firmly punched the volley away.
Just like in the textbooks.
Just like I'd practiced when I added the attacking mojo to my game.
Just like a real tennis player would do.
That moment was the culmination of everything I've done in learning to play this game at this level.
I followed that point up by taking the next two and the game for a 5-5 tie.
Nothing could take that moment away from me. I played the percentages and made my attacking game the deciding factor at a critical juncture. I succeeded because I didn't choke, because I fought for neutral, and because I knew how to take the attack to my opponent safely. Just like real tennis.
I still cannot describe what that feels like.
For 35 years I've wondered, if I'd had the chance, could I have played real tennis with the big boys. For any number of reasons I've not tried, and when I finally did try, I failed miserably, and when I failed I wanted to quit. That volley put away 35 years of doubts and fears, and said to me that I'd grown up just a little bit. Finally.
I forced my opponent to weather a deuce during his service game, but he pulled through for the 6-5 lead.
This time, at the changeover I ate half an energy bar. It's the first time I've ever done that, and the first time I've ever wanted to do it. My opponent was suffering badly in the heat, and I was feeling as good as I've ever felt, but if I pulled off the next two games, I need the energy for that precious third set. I was hydrated and nourished and pumped.
And behind 15-40 very quickly.
My experienced and honorable opponent was cracking winners at the lines. I held firm. I served hard, and leveled at 40-40, then even pulled ahead for a game point. If I won the next point, we would go to the tiebreak and my chances looked good.
My next serve drew a 35% reply to the center of the court on my backhand side. I decided to go for my most beautiful shot, but I didn't decide it with enough conviction. I went for the inside out backhand. It's a shot I have, but not when I lack conviction. To take that shot felt to me like I was changing dance partners, and playing against the percentages. It was the right shot at the right time, but I didn't quite believe it.
I missed that shot, and probably the match, by 5 inches.
Back to deuce we went, and my opponent earned two more Match Points. I fought them off with an ace down the line (you should have seen his face) and a kicker out wide. On the sixth match point, I finally succumbed. In a heated exchange I put an inside out forehand just a couple feet long. It was a good shot, played for the percentages and played with conviction, that just happened to sail a little bit on me.
I lost, but I lost my first good match.
Looking back, I think my opponent knew somethiNg I had not figured out yet. Toward the end of a match, during clutch time, and after a hard fought battle to get to the moment of truth, you have to let fly with some calculated gambles. That's the moment to let the "wild things" off their leashes and see what you can do, if you're going to beat an equal opponent. I suspect in those last few games, after your body is fully dialed in and firing on all cylinders, you swinging with calculated abandon can shift things your way. It worked for my opponent, and he knows this game a lot better than I do.
If I had known that on Monday, I don't think my opponent could have stayed on his feet for the third set. The heat had about taken him out.
It's OK.
I'm signed up for the TennisFax Classic next week. We might just meet again.
07 June, 2008
The Most Important Day in Tennis, EVER (again)
Yes, on Sunday June 8th, Roger Federer will take his 4th straight shot at beating Rafael Nadal in Paris at the French Open, Roland Garros.
Never has staying home from church been so tempting.
For those of you in a little bit of doubt who these two player are, you should read these links. (Those of you who know, should DEFINITELY read these links.)
Roger Federer
Rafael Nadal
Anything can happen, but Rafa is the 4-1 favorite so far. If you watch the match, watch for Federer to try to win points by attacking from the backhand wing. Watch for Rafa to counter by hitting the ball straight at Federer's backhand. Should Federer pull ahead at any point, immediately start holding your breath because the 4 times Federer has held a lead against Rafa on clay this year, he's managed to give it back again. The reason for this is simple. As soon as Rafa's behind, he quits trying to pick on Federer's backhand. Instead, he tries to blow the ball right over the top of Federer's backhand.
Since Rafa's a lefty, their backhands will be down the line from each other, instead of across the court from one another, and the one who puts the ball into the other's backhand side the most effectively will win. The problem is that Rafa will win just by putting it over there. Federer will only win if he puts it to Rafa's backhand, and then follows up by putting another shot all the way over to his forehand.
It's almost not fair.
But all's fair in love, tennis, and the Uncyclopedia.
HT: http://tennisworld.typepad.com/tennisworld/index.html
Never has staying home from church been so tempting.
For those of you in a little bit of doubt who these two player are, you should read these links. (Those of you who know, should DEFINITELY read these links.)
Roger Federer
Rafael Nadal
Anything can happen, but Rafa is the 4-1 favorite so far. If you watch the match, watch for Federer to try to win points by attacking from the backhand wing. Watch for Rafa to counter by hitting the ball straight at Federer's backhand. Should Federer pull ahead at any point, immediately start holding your breath because the 4 times Federer has held a lead against Rafa on clay this year, he's managed to give it back again. The reason for this is simple. As soon as Rafa's behind, he quits trying to pick on Federer's backhand. Instead, he tries to blow the ball right over the top of Federer's backhand.
Since Rafa's a lefty, their backhands will be down the line from each other, instead of across the court from one another, and the one who puts the ball into the other's backhand side the most effectively will win. The problem is that Rafa will win just by putting it over there. Federer will only win if he puts it to Rafa's backhand, and then follows up by putting another shot all the way over to his forehand.
It's almost not fair.
But all's fair in love, tennis, and the Uncyclopedia.
HT: http://tennisworld.typepad.com/tennisworld/index.html
29 March, 2008
Tennis - Followup
In non-professional tennis tourneys, they like to guarantee everyone gets to play at least 2 matches. To accommodate this, they create a consolation draw of everyone who lost in the first round.
There were only 3 of us who lost in the first round (19 participants in a 32 player draw ended up creating 13 "bye" matches in the first round) and one of us 3 losers decided not to play in the backdraw. That left just me and one other guy playing for the backdraw championship.
We played today, and I won 6-1, 6-0.
It was a simple situation. I was about as superior to him as Greg was to me. He had good strokes, and he stretched me on a number of points. He hit several winners, and many of his serves overpowered me. But things looked a little different on this side of the skill-divide.
His shots were so "wristy" he made ping-pong look flat, and his backhand was unpredictable. So, the game plan was simple. Hit most everything to his backhand, and when I did go to his forehand keep the ball too low for him to get that wrist action under it.
I kept to the game plan (never change a winning strategy) and he had exactly the troubles his style should create.
The most interesting thing was that my serve largely fell apart. I probably averaged getting about 35% of my first serves in, and that's because I quit trying for a lot. I need to be trying for more and still achieving 65% or so. You want to be trying to win points outright with your serve. It's not enough to get a high percentage with weak serves. But my serve was just miserable.
I think it was a combination of some of the things I was trying against Greg, and being so far ahead. When the pressure goes away during a match, different parts of your game will weaken. Today, it was the serve. I was glad it was nothing more important.
Thanks for tuning in. :-)
You can see the damage here, after they get it updated.
http://tennislink.usta.com/Tournaments/TournamentHome/Tournament.aspx?T=62813
(BTW - do you know what kind of tourney this was? As they guys would be leaving they'd say little things to each other like, "See you in Scotsdale.")
There were only 3 of us who lost in the first round (19 participants in a 32 player draw ended up creating 13 "bye" matches in the first round) and one of us 3 losers decided not to play in the backdraw. That left just me and one other guy playing for the backdraw championship.
We played today, and I won 6-1, 6-0.
It was a simple situation. I was about as superior to him as Greg was to me. He had good strokes, and he stretched me on a number of points. He hit several winners, and many of his serves overpowered me. But things looked a little different on this side of the skill-divide.
His shots were so "wristy" he made ping-pong look flat, and his backhand was unpredictable. So, the game plan was simple. Hit most everything to his backhand, and when I did go to his forehand keep the ball too low for him to get that wrist action under it.
I kept to the game plan (never change a winning strategy) and he had exactly the troubles his style should create.
The most interesting thing was that my serve largely fell apart. I probably averaged getting about 35% of my first serves in, and that's because I quit trying for a lot. I need to be trying for more and still achieving 65% or so. You want to be trying to win points outright with your serve. It's not enough to get a high percentage with weak serves. But my serve was just miserable.
I think it was a combination of some of the things I was trying against Greg, and being so far ahead. When the pressure goes away during a match, different parts of your game will weaken. Today, it was the serve. I was glad it was nothing more important.
Thanks for tuning in. :-)
You can see the damage here, after they get it updated.
http://tennislink.usta.com/Tournaments/TournamentHome/Tournament.aspx?T=62813
(BTW - do you know what kind of tourney this was? As they guys would be leaving they'd say little things to each other like, "See you in Scotsdale.")
Tennis Dreams
Last night a dream came true for me out on the tennis court.
Had you been there, you could be forgiven for not understanding that as you watched Greg Gormley's score tick up, 1-0, 2-0, 3-0, 4-0, 5-0, 6-0, set, 1-0, 2-0, 3-0...
The first set was almost over when I finally began to see his first serve. At the changeover at 0-3 in the second set he told me how strange it was playing indoors. He's from Austin, TX where you can play outdoors year 'round, and being indoors was causing weird images from his glasses, messing up his vision. I replied, "Yeah. And yet somehow I haven't taken advantage of that." We both laughed.
Greg served again at 4-0, a cannon right at me. I returned it cleanly, and then put his reply deep to his backhand, drawing the error. I won two of the next three points returning a pair of second serves. At 15-40, Greg double faulted, giving me my first game of the match. As we crossed over I said, "Forgive me if I don't even pretend to be ashamed of that."
2 games later, it was over. 0-6, 1-6.
I did not hold serve once, though I did hold a couple of game points. I only broke him when he missed 3 first serves and one second serve in the same game. And he wasn't even at the peak of his game. 15 years ago, he'd been 25 pounds heavier and stronger - back when he played for 2 years on the Association of Tennis Professionals tour.
Yeah. That ATP tour.
The match was over, and I shook his hand with a big-ol' kid's grin on my face. I told him the truth. It was the first time in my life I'd ever seen the ball do the things he was making it do. I told him, "Where I play, the junk I was hitting works." We both laughed, and he told me a little about himself.
Greg Gormley is 8 years younger than me, has been playing this game at the highest levels all his life, and practices with Andy and John Roddick. A number of people think he serves bigger than Andy. (Andy holds the record for the fastest serve ever recorded during a sanctioned match, at 155 mph.) I doubt Greg served anything over 140 mph last night, but I KNOW he served over 130. When his racket hit that ball, it sounded like an explosion. I have never heard my opponent's tennis racket make that noise before, and I have to tell you it was envigorating.
It was exactly like all the movies (except the part where I lost bagel and breadstick - 0 and 1). I found myself on the court with one of those guys you dream your whole life that you might play. And I stood the test. Really.
It was about 3 strokes into the warmup when I realized I was playing above any level I'd ever seen before. He was hitting dumb strokes - flat, all-power, and aimed precisely at my backhand to see whether I could handle them - and making every one of them. When your opponent begins by putting dumb strokes in the court perfectly and repeatedly, you ask yourself a question. The answer to that question was, "Uh-oh."
I was able to handle that power.
Really.
I turned his power into spin and sent it back to him deep, over and over again. That's exactly what the book says you should do, and I was able to do it. And it worked. It worked in the warmup, and it kept working throughout the match.
You see, the thing that made me so happy was that all night long, if Greg would leave me in the point for 3 strokes, I was winning. I won more points from the baseline than he did, I'm almost sure of it.
The point I wish I had on video went like this.
GG: Big first serve to my backhand
KK: Deep, loopy return to his backhand
GG: Flat and hard into the backhand corner
KK: Deeper, somewhat flatter into his backhand
GG: Higher and softer to my backhand, about 8 feet inside the lines.
KK: This is an opportunity shot. Against another opponent, I'd put it back and wait for a better shot, but against Greg it's the best I'm going to see. That makes this an opportunity to panic. I resisted. I decided it was time to let him see I could go down the line, so I let the ball fly another 8 inches, then drive it up the line.
It was picture perfect. I painted the line, and Greg just applauded.
The point was absolutely textbook. I pinned him into the corner, then went into the open court I'd created. And I was able to do that all night long - about one point out of every 12.
You see, Greg's first serve was running from 115 to 135mph. I was successfully returning about 1 in 5 of those, and proud to be. His second serve was a wicked kicker bouncing to my high backhand at upwards of 90mph. I handled close to half of those. In order to win that match, I needed to be returning about 2 in 5 of his first service, and 4 in 5 of his second serves.
My first serve runs from 85 to 105 mph, and he was returning 3 or 4 in 5 of them. I was actually able to win some points with that serve by placing it carefully, though. The slice into his body on the backhand wing was my survival shot. I even managed to serve one ace in the warmup. :-) My second serve ran from 60 to 85 mph and he was occasionally nice enough to dump one of them into the net. He put so much pressure on my serve I probably faulted twice as much as normal, and double faulted some critical points away.
Those last two paragraphs tell the story of the match. In a typical game consisting of 4 - 6 points, Greg was getting 3 of them for free by either acing me or blasting my serve back for an easy return winner. 1-3 points per game were "in play," and those gave me tremendous hope.
This time last year, those 1-3 points would have been shameful. I would have hit 2 amazing winners, and dozens of stupid errors. Last night most of my errors were forced. In the rare moments that Greg gave me something to hit, it wasn't much, but I hit it exactly how I meant to. I patiently did not try to match his power. I turned his power into spin and buried it deep in his backhand side, and it worked. He had a shot tolerance of about 3, and sometime within the first 3 shots of the rally he'd uncork something and more than half the time he'd miss. I kept him pinned deeply enough that his flat, commanding shots were gambles that he lost.
That was my game plan going into the match, and I kept it up the whole time. With a little bit more of a serve, this match would have been 2-6, 2-6 and that's an amazing thing to me.
Here are my takeaways:
1) Greg Gormley is awesomely, amazingly better than I am at tennis. 10 years from now, after I've learned gobs more tricks, and he's slowed down and gotten weaker and older, he'll still kick my butt
2) I need to add 10 mph to my serve to compete nearer to that level
3) I need to practice return of serve, but I'm on the right track. Some of my returns were exactly what I wanted
4) My new strategy of cautious aggression is 100x more effective than my old strategy of flailing away at the ball
This time last year, I could not have held my head up during that match. I'd have walked away with nothing to be proud of. This year, I was able to win some points, return some serves, serve a couple winners, and occasionally handle the most aggressive shots I've ever seen. My spectators were never confused about who was the better player, but I'll bet a couple grungingly admitted they wouldn't be doing any better than I was.
It was a dream come true to hit at that level, and the most encouraging day of tennis I've ever played in my life.
Hopefully, I'll use some of those lessons in my next match.
Had you been there, you could be forgiven for not understanding that as you watched Greg Gormley's score tick up, 1-0, 2-0, 3-0, 4-0, 5-0, 6-0, set, 1-0, 2-0, 3-0...
The first set was almost over when I finally began to see his first serve. At the changeover at 0-3 in the second set he told me how strange it was playing indoors. He's from Austin, TX where you can play outdoors year 'round, and being indoors was causing weird images from his glasses, messing up his vision. I replied, "Yeah. And yet somehow I haven't taken advantage of that." We both laughed.
Greg served again at 4-0, a cannon right at me. I returned it cleanly, and then put his reply deep to his backhand, drawing the error. I won two of the next three points returning a pair of second serves. At 15-40, Greg double faulted, giving me my first game of the match. As we crossed over I said, "Forgive me if I don't even pretend to be ashamed of that."
2 games later, it was over. 0-6, 1-6.
I did not hold serve once, though I did hold a couple of game points. I only broke him when he missed 3 first serves and one second serve in the same game. And he wasn't even at the peak of his game. 15 years ago, he'd been 25 pounds heavier and stronger - back when he played for 2 years on the Association of Tennis Professionals tour.
Yeah. That ATP tour.
The match was over, and I shook his hand with a big-ol' kid's grin on my face. I told him the truth. It was the first time in my life I'd ever seen the ball do the things he was making it do. I told him, "Where I play, the junk I was hitting works." We both laughed, and he told me a little about himself.
Greg Gormley is 8 years younger than me, has been playing this game at the highest levels all his life, and practices with Andy and John Roddick. A number of people think he serves bigger than Andy. (Andy holds the record for the fastest serve ever recorded during a sanctioned match, at 155 mph.) I doubt Greg served anything over 140 mph last night, but I KNOW he served over 130. When his racket hit that ball, it sounded like an explosion. I have never heard my opponent's tennis racket make that noise before, and I have to tell you it was envigorating.
It was exactly like all the movies (except the part where I lost bagel and breadstick - 0 and 1). I found myself on the court with one of those guys you dream your whole life that you might play. And I stood the test. Really.
It was about 3 strokes into the warmup when I realized I was playing above any level I'd ever seen before. He was hitting dumb strokes - flat, all-power, and aimed precisely at my backhand to see whether I could handle them - and making every one of them. When your opponent begins by putting dumb strokes in the court perfectly and repeatedly, you ask yourself a question. The answer to that question was, "Uh-oh."
I was able to handle that power.
Really.
I turned his power into spin and sent it back to him deep, over and over again. That's exactly what the book says you should do, and I was able to do it. And it worked. It worked in the warmup, and it kept working throughout the match.
You see, the thing that made me so happy was that all night long, if Greg would leave me in the point for 3 strokes, I was winning. I won more points from the baseline than he did, I'm almost sure of it.
The point I wish I had on video went like this.
GG: Big first serve to my backhand
KK: Deep, loopy return to his backhand
GG: Flat and hard into the backhand corner
KK: Deeper, somewhat flatter into his backhand
GG: Higher and softer to my backhand, about 8 feet inside the lines.
KK: This is an opportunity shot. Against another opponent, I'd put it back and wait for a better shot, but against Greg it's the best I'm going to see. That makes this an opportunity to panic. I resisted. I decided it was time to let him see I could go down the line, so I let the ball fly another 8 inches, then drive it up the line.
It was picture perfect. I painted the line, and Greg just applauded.
The point was absolutely textbook. I pinned him into the corner, then went into the open court I'd created. And I was able to do that all night long - about one point out of every 12.
You see, Greg's first serve was running from 115 to 135mph. I was successfully returning about 1 in 5 of those, and proud to be. His second serve was a wicked kicker bouncing to my high backhand at upwards of 90mph. I handled close to half of those. In order to win that match, I needed to be returning about 2 in 5 of his first service, and 4 in 5 of his second serves.
My first serve runs from 85 to 105 mph, and he was returning 3 or 4 in 5 of them. I was actually able to win some points with that serve by placing it carefully, though. The slice into his body on the backhand wing was my survival shot. I even managed to serve one ace in the warmup. :-) My second serve ran from 60 to 85 mph and he was occasionally nice enough to dump one of them into the net. He put so much pressure on my serve I probably faulted twice as much as normal, and double faulted some critical points away.
Those last two paragraphs tell the story of the match. In a typical game consisting of 4 - 6 points, Greg was getting 3 of them for free by either acing me or blasting my serve back for an easy return winner. 1-3 points per game were "in play," and those gave me tremendous hope.
This time last year, those 1-3 points would have been shameful. I would have hit 2 amazing winners, and dozens of stupid errors. Last night most of my errors were forced. In the rare moments that Greg gave me something to hit, it wasn't much, but I hit it exactly how I meant to. I patiently did not try to match his power. I turned his power into spin and buried it deep in his backhand side, and it worked. He had a shot tolerance of about 3, and sometime within the first 3 shots of the rally he'd uncork something and more than half the time he'd miss. I kept him pinned deeply enough that his flat, commanding shots were gambles that he lost.
That was my game plan going into the match, and I kept it up the whole time. With a little bit more of a serve, this match would have been 2-6, 2-6 and that's an amazing thing to me.
Here are my takeaways:
1) Greg Gormley is awesomely, amazingly better than I am at tennis. 10 years from now, after I've learned gobs more tricks, and he's slowed down and gotten weaker and older, he'll still kick my butt
2) I need to add 10 mph to my serve to compete nearer to that level
3) I need to practice return of serve, but I'm on the right track. Some of my returns were exactly what I wanted
4) My new strategy of cautious aggression is 100x more effective than my old strategy of flailing away at the ball
This time last year, I could not have held my head up during that match. I'd have walked away with nothing to be proud of. This year, I was able to win some points, return some serves, serve a couple winners, and occasionally handle the most aggressive shots I've ever seen. My spectators were never confused about who was the better player, but I'll bet a couple grungingly admitted they wouldn't be doing any better than I was.
It was a dream come true to hit at that level, and the most encouraging day of tennis I've ever played in my life.
Hopefully, I'll use some of those lessons in my next match.
01 January, 2008
Tennis Report: Midwest Hardcourt Tournament
Ah well. The tennis tournament is over now. That's the worst part. Those of you who were with me immediately after my loss on Sunday might wonder whether getting a little tennis vacation might not be a good thing for me, but I just love hitting that silly ball, even when I do it wrong so often.
For those of you who missed it, here's a quick summary of my performance. I would love if anyone who watched me wanted to add amusing little tidbits to whatever I tell.
The Midwest Hardcourt actually did draw people from all over the Midwest, and I got to see the best tennis Ohio has to offer. That was very cool. And the 6 other people in the Men's 35 singles came from as far as Kentucky to compete in this tournament. They truly were some of the best 35 year-olds I'll play all year. I knew that going in, knew it meant losing was probably in my future, and signed on the dotted line eagerly. We do this stuff to measure ourselves against hardship, not ease, and I certainly got my taste of hardship.
I could not have been more nervous for my first match, but eventually it started. Phew! I stepped out with Ben, and two thoughts went through my mind within about 30 seconds. 1) Bummer. This guy can't play tennis, and 2) Ah good - I'll get to win one in front of all my buds. He literally could not hit the ball straight during the warmup. That's always a bad sign.
But after 4 games, the score was tied at 2-2. I have lost many matches like this to people just like Ben, so I began to get a little nervous. But I avoided panicking and finally figured out his bizarre shots and spins. I won the next 9 games in a row before falling asleep on my first match point. I took the next game, though, since Ben just never was able to confidently return my serve. I won 6-2, 6-1.
On Sunday, I knew the match would be much tougher. Tim was the #1 seed of the tourney, and I went in with a strategy I had only used one other time in my life - Saturday against Ben. After losing the first set and falling behind in the second set 0-4, I thought that maybe I should change strategies. I figured I should maybe go back to my old strategy. That was a pretty solid decision, and I won two more games before it was over to only lose 2-6, 2-6. That was nice, because it meant I had not been beaten by Tim as badly as I had beaten Ben. Small consolation, but we take what we can get. Those who were there know I was not easily consoled immediately after the match.
Against Tim I learned I need to improve my serve. I either need to get more accurate with it or hit it faster, because he returned almost every serve I hit. I also learned what I need to do to improve my backhand slice. I need to quit trying to hit it so low. I need to figure out how to hit it with more margin for error. And finally I learned that if I don't take more chances and hit the ball wider from time to time, I'm just giving my opponent target practice.
And today, on Monday, I learned more things (translation: I lost again). Chris lost his semifinal match by the thinnest of margins on Sunday against another Chris, and that other Chris beat the guy that beat me 6-2, 6-2. In other words, the guy I lost to on Sunday was not the best player in the tournament by a long shot. It meant Chris could destroy Tim who had just destroyed me. I had much less cause for hope against Chris than I had against Tim.
That got me kind of excited.
Against Chris, I started with my old strategy since my new strategy was obviously not ready for prime-time yet. And I tried for more with my serves. And I hit the ball a little riskier. At 2-2 he began reading my toss. I didn't realize that was what was happening until later, but at 2-5 I figured something was going on, and I experimented a bit. I tossed the ball for a serve to the left, then hit it to the right and he was baffled. Hmmm. Add that to the "lessons learned" category. If I steer my serve with my toss, these guys are going to know everything I'm doing. Anyway, it's risky to start serving in a whole new way in the middle of a match, so I ended up losing that serving game and the first set.
I had tried changing to the new strategy at 2-4 to see whether it might work, and he ate my lunch, so for the second set I decided to keep going with what I know.
My newly educated serve helped me to win the first game of the second set, but then he took the next 4 putting me behind 1-4. Chris changed strategies in the second set to the attacking strategy that had failed for me. I could see why it was so effective, and how it should really be executed. Nothing like seeing a strategy performed correctly from such close range to learn what it's really about.
Along the way, I found a good answer to my serve problem, and really concentrated on taking some chances and held for 2-4. He took the next game, but not before I noticed something. When I hit a ball hard to his forehand, then made him run to hit a backhand he missed with the backhand shot. His running backhand was weak. Ah! I had a target. I had something to focus on attacking. I was behind 2-5, so it was a little late to be finding a target, but that's what being a beginner is all about. You have to crawl for a little while before you can walk.
At the same time I learned something else. I need to roll my backhand grip just a little further and strike up on the ball just a little harder to create that little bit of extra margin for error. I hit several good backhand shots in the last two games of the tournament after figuring that out.
I took my new-found knowledge and turned it into another game win for 3-5. I could tell he was actually thinking a little bit about the possibility that I might begin to offer him some competition. So, he stepped on the gas and pretty much destroyed me in the last game.
That's OK.
I learned how high the bar is. I learned what I have to be able to do with my serve, and why I need to work on getting more of my body into every shot to get that extra 10 mph that's going to win me those free points. I learned that my new strategy of attacking tennis and rushing the net can work with a little practice. I learned to adjust my strategy a little sooner. I learned how to adjust a stroke under match pressure. I learned how to spot what the opponent is doing to me. And I learned to see a weakness in my opponent.
That's not bad for my second tennis tournament ever, and my first after having received my first-ever coaching. Both of the guys I lost to have been playing tournaments and being coached for years. If it didn't take a little work for me to catch up to their level, it wouldn't be a sport. I'm willing to pay my dues to do something I love so much.
Bring it on.
Now, I just have to wait 4 months for the next tourney. [Growls.......]
...
Oh yeah. And I finished 4th from a field of 7 and won $25 cash money. Finishing in the money and in the middle of the pack ain't a bad way to start either. I'd say things went OK.
Thanks for all your support!
For those of you who missed it, here's a quick summary of my performance. I would love if anyone who watched me wanted to add amusing little tidbits to whatever I tell.
The Midwest Hardcourt actually did draw people from all over the Midwest, and I got to see the best tennis Ohio has to offer. That was very cool. And the 6 other people in the Men's 35 singles came from as far as Kentucky to compete in this tournament. They truly were some of the best 35 year-olds I'll play all year. I knew that going in, knew it meant losing was probably in my future, and signed on the dotted line eagerly. We do this stuff to measure ourselves against hardship, not ease, and I certainly got my taste of hardship.
I could not have been more nervous for my first match, but eventually it started. Phew! I stepped out with Ben, and two thoughts went through my mind within about 30 seconds. 1) Bummer. This guy can't play tennis, and 2) Ah good - I'll get to win one in front of all my buds. He literally could not hit the ball straight during the warmup. That's always a bad sign.
But after 4 games, the score was tied at 2-2. I have lost many matches like this to people just like Ben, so I began to get a little nervous. But I avoided panicking and finally figured out his bizarre shots and spins. I won the next 9 games in a row before falling asleep on my first match point. I took the next game, though, since Ben just never was able to confidently return my serve. I won 6-2, 6-1.
On Sunday, I knew the match would be much tougher. Tim was the #1 seed of the tourney, and I went in with a strategy I had only used one other time in my life - Saturday against Ben. After losing the first set and falling behind in the second set 0-4, I thought that maybe I should change strategies. I figured I should maybe go back to my old strategy. That was a pretty solid decision, and I won two more games before it was over to only lose 2-6, 2-6. That was nice, because it meant I had not been beaten by Tim as badly as I had beaten Ben. Small consolation, but we take what we can get. Those who were there know I was not easily consoled immediately after the match.
Against Tim I learned I need to improve my serve. I either need to get more accurate with it or hit it faster, because he returned almost every serve I hit. I also learned what I need to do to improve my backhand slice. I need to quit trying to hit it so low. I need to figure out how to hit it with more margin for error. And finally I learned that if I don't take more chances and hit the ball wider from time to time, I'm just giving my opponent target practice.
And today, on Monday, I learned more things (translation: I lost again). Chris lost his semifinal match by the thinnest of margins on Sunday against another Chris, and that other Chris beat the guy that beat me 6-2, 6-2. In other words, the guy I lost to on Sunday was not the best player in the tournament by a long shot. It meant Chris could destroy Tim who had just destroyed me. I had much less cause for hope against Chris than I had against Tim.
That got me kind of excited.
Against Chris, I started with my old strategy since my new strategy was obviously not ready for prime-time yet. And I tried for more with my serves. And I hit the ball a little riskier. At 2-2 he began reading my toss. I didn't realize that was what was happening until later, but at 2-5 I figured something was going on, and I experimented a bit. I tossed the ball for a serve to the left, then hit it to the right and he was baffled. Hmmm. Add that to the "lessons learned" category. If I steer my serve with my toss, these guys are going to know everything I'm doing. Anyway, it's risky to start serving in a whole new way in the middle of a match, so I ended up losing that serving game and the first set.
I had tried changing to the new strategy at 2-4 to see whether it might work, and he ate my lunch, so for the second set I decided to keep going with what I know.
My newly educated serve helped me to win the first game of the second set, but then he took the next 4 putting me behind 1-4. Chris changed strategies in the second set to the attacking strategy that had failed for me. I could see why it was so effective, and how it should really be executed. Nothing like seeing a strategy performed correctly from such close range to learn what it's really about.
Along the way, I found a good answer to my serve problem, and really concentrated on taking some chances and held for 2-4. He took the next game, but not before I noticed something. When I hit a ball hard to his forehand, then made him run to hit a backhand he missed with the backhand shot. His running backhand was weak. Ah! I had a target. I had something to focus on attacking. I was behind 2-5, so it was a little late to be finding a target, but that's what being a beginner is all about. You have to crawl for a little while before you can walk.
At the same time I learned something else. I need to roll my backhand grip just a little further and strike up on the ball just a little harder to create that little bit of extra margin for error. I hit several good backhand shots in the last two games of the tournament after figuring that out.
I took my new-found knowledge and turned it into another game win for 3-5. I could tell he was actually thinking a little bit about the possibility that I might begin to offer him some competition. So, he stepped on the gas and pretty much destroyed me in the last game.
That's OK.
I learned how high the bar is. I learned what I have to be able to do with my serve, and why I need to work on getting more of my body into every shot to get that extra 10 mph that's going to win me those free points. I learned that my new strategy of attacking tennis and rushing the net can work with a little practice. I learned to adjust my strategy a little sooner. I learned how to adjust a stroke under match pressure. I learned how to spot what the opponent is doing to me. And I learned to see a weakness in my opponent.
That's not bad for my second tennis tournament ever, and my first after having received my first-ever coaching. Both of the guys I lost to have been playing tournaments and being coached for years. If it didn't take a little work for me to catch up to their level, it wouldn't be a sport. I'm willing to pay my dues to do something I love so much.
Bring it on.
Now, I just have to wait 4 months for the next tourney. [Growls.......]
...
Oh yeah. And I finished 4th from a field of 7 and won $25 cash money. Finishing in the money and in the middle of the pack ain't a bad way to start either. I'd say things went OK.
Thanks for all your support!
15 December, 2007
Complete Fun
Yes, it's tennis post time.
It's been months since I last burdened you with a blow by blow of my court wars, but yesterday was special. I walked off the court happy.
I won, but that was not the thing. I hit a lot of winners, but that was not the thing. I made a number of mistakes, but that was not enough to discourage me. I even played both with and against ladies, without affecting my mood either way. And it was the first time I really enjoyed myself that way.
I hit every stroke right.
For the first time in my life, at least once, I hit every stroke correctly. That's a flat, top, and high-top forehand; a top, flat, and slice backhand; slice, top, kick, and flat serves; forehand drop and drive volleys; backhand drop and drive volleys; and backhand and forehand overheads. You can only imagine how happy it made me to have to hit every one of those shots during a series of doubles matches, and to deliver under pressure. It was glorious.
I am a more sensitive duck than most. Most people experience a kind of a direct line between growth of skill and growth of confidence. I don't. When my skill doubles, my confidence goes down. I merely know how much further short of the ideal I am. It is not until my skill is "adequate" that I begin to relax and experience this "confidence" thing other people talk about. This time last year, I was able to hit a tennis ball better than most 4.0 players, but I did not have faith in my knowledge - so I lost to 3.0 players all too often and never beat a 4.0 player.
Does that sound strange? Arrogant? Like a cockamamie excuse?
I'll tell you what it is. It's frustrating. I would rally aggressively with these guys, and my shots would be deeper, harder, heavier, and better placed. The match would start, and their shots would get 5% worse, while mine got 30% worse immediately, dropping another 5-30% as the match wore on. Sometimes I would finish a match hitting like a 2.0 player.
It's that horrid emotional sensitivity.
Every little whisper in my head would be magnified to conversational tone, and every statement became a shout. Every doubt was backed up with historic evidence, and every fear was in itself a thing to be feared. It takes almost nothing to knock me off my game.
And then I took that coaching in Sept.
Joan Ramey showed me exactly how to hit the ball (all of the strokes I listed above.) She left no room for doubt. On the forehand, the right foot twists on the balls of the feet, which causes the hips to rotate, which allows the torso to twist and the shoulders to open up. The right shoulder is catapulted forward by the action of the whole body and the racket starts about 6 inches below the eventual point of the contact with the ball. The head tracks the ball back to the point of contact, even as it moves forward toward the eventual target. Finally, the racket strikes forward in a flat line toward the point of contact. It will naturally rise those six inches toward the point of contact in order to hit the ball upward enough to clear the net. The racket is gripped in a semi-western fashion, so the downward tilt of the racket will impart all necessary topspin. No wrist flick or forearm twist is required. Those things will merely introduce points of error. After contact, the arm follows through directly beside the left shoulder, not way up in the sky.
These are all coarse-grain movements by major muscle groups.
In other words, they are repeatable. No matter how much pressure I was under last night, I was able to do all those things the same way, and hit a solid, dependable ball. When I'm in the zone, I can add lots of fine-muscle touch to the gross motor motions of a basic forehand. But when I'm out of the zone, I can still hit the ball well enough to win points, and keep my opponent from figuring out how sensitive I am, and how quickly I might fall apart.
I spent the whole fall grooving in my baseline game, groundstrokes and serves. Two weeks ago, I started working on my net game, volleys and overheads. On Tuesday, I went and paid hard earned cash for an hour of pure volley lessons. Then I grooved those lessons in my basement Wednesday and Thursday. And it worked.
All night, Friday, even as I made mistakes (and I still made plenty) I was able to remember the coarse-grain, gross motor skills I'd learned and keep my head from falling apart. As the night wore to a close, I was still together. Tennis is a game that wears my personality down. At the start of the night, I am typically overconfident, and brimming with great shots. By the middle of the night, the burst of self-belief has passed, and I'm grinding out the things I do best. I've quit trying for anything new, and am pretty much shooting only for safe targets. By the end of the night, I'm holding on by the skin of my teeth. I've missed so many shots that I'm struggling to remember that I ever could play the game at all.
Really.
It was only recently I learned most tennis players don't go through that personal erosion. I always have. It's as if I know my back is only good for 2 hours, so I have to play as much as I can before it goes out. I know my personality can only handle so much, so I have to nurse my mind the whole time I'm out there. I have to practice good self-coaching, and not get too excited or too depressed, or the wheels come off.
Well, last night none of that happened. I played 6 sets or so sets of doubles, and I was as mentally fresh at the end of 3 hours as at the beginning.
They started me on the 4.5 level court. I feel barely qualified to hit with these guys, but I stand in the best I can. I probably lost 2/3 and Phil lost the other 1/3. That's not bad, because 1/2 & 1/2 is perfect. I'd much rather be the 2/3 guy, but I'm hanging on here. We played to a 7-7 tie with no breaks of serve, and we won the tiebreak 5-1. That means I held my serve 3 times. Three times the whole thing was on my racket, and I delivered.
The biggest trial was the volleying at 4.5 level. Volleying at that level is a very visceral, instinctive thing. From a max of 40 feet away, the ball is hit at 50-80 mph, sometimes right at you, some times out of reach. You have to decide whether to come in and face that barrage, or whether to back away. In the past my volley has always been so weak I have stayed back. Last night, I found I had just enough confidence to stay in. The thing is, if you do it right, the volley is good for an instant point. It's worth the gamble. I hit a few serious, perfect volleys at the 4.5 level last night. I also hit some bricks. That's OK. I don't mind failing when I know I'm headed in the right direction. Last night was a step in the right direction.
The rest of my matches were 3.5 level. I hate to step down, but it gave me a chance to build confidence. My daughter tells me that it's better training to beat up on people just slightly worse than you than to constantly lose to people better than you. So, I did. I stayed in, and made some volleys I never could have made before. It was a pleasure.
I've been a little technical here, so I don't blame anyone who hasn't gotten this far. The bottom line is that I've always been scared and nervous, and last night I finally got to see the fruit of all the coaching to which I've exposed myself. They say that "training" is something that happens to you, and "learning" is something that happens in you, and that if all goes well training results in learning. Last night I got to see that the learning is happening, and not just the training.
None of this is trite to me, though it rings so in my ears.
Every animal on Earth learns to survive by playing. Somehow I messed that up in my youth, but I'm gaining ground on life now. 2 years ago, when I started this whole blog thing, I was a 3.0 player who thought he was a 4.0 player. I would say the same applied throughout my life.
I don't talk much about the coaching I'm getting in life, religion and relationships, but it's almost bizarre how perfectly my experience and growth in tennis is matching my experience and growth in all these other areas. 2 years ago, I was the best tennis player on my team - so I quit my team. It was good for my ego and bad for my tennis to stay.
The biggest thing I've learned in these last 2 years is that I'm not really a head-case on the tennis court. I see now why my shots were failing me 2 years ago, and I found I could correct those errors. As I have begun to find reason for confidence, the confidence has come. Other people have a gift for confidence without cause. I do not.
Learning that about myself has allowed me to address the biggest problem in my emotional life. Learning that I can stabilize my emotional "strokes" to work under pressure, and that I can find confidence based on cause, even after 30 years of lacking it, has freed me to try some pretty un-Codepoke like stuff of late. I'm happy with the results, and looking for more "causes."
I left the tennis court Friday night, not euphoric, but blissful. I'm not there yet with regard to all my emotions, but the light at the end of the tunnel is getting closer, and I can smell the fresh air now.
And I'm looking forward to playing in the Midwest Indoor Championships.
It's been months since I last burdened you with a blow by blow of my court wars, but yesterday was special. I walked off the court happy.
I won, but that was not the thing. I hit a lot of winners, but that was not the thing. I made a number of mistakes, but that was not enough to discourage me. I even played both with and against ladies, without affecting my mood either way. And it was the first time I really enjoyed myself that way.
I hit every stroke right.
For the first time in my life, at least once, I hit every stroke correctly. That's a flat, top, and high-top forehand; a top, flat, and slice backhand; slice, top, kick, and flat serves; forehand drop and drive volleys; backhand drop and drive volleys; and backhand and forehand overheads. You can only imagine how happy it made me to have to hit every one of those shots during a series of doubles matches, and to deliver under pressure. It was glorious.
I am a more sensitive duck than most. Most people experience a kind of a direct line between growth of skill and growth of confidence. I don't. When my skill doubles, my confidence goes down. I merely know how much further short of the ideal I am. It is not until my skill is "adequate" that I begin to relax and experience this "confidence" thing other people talk about. This time last year, I was able to hit a tennis ball better than most 4.0 players, but I did not have faith in my knowledge - so I lost to 3.0 players all too often and never beat a 4.0 player.
Does that sound strange? Arrogant? Like a cockamamie excuse?
I'll tell you what it is. It's frustrating. I would rally aggressively with these guys, and my shots would be deeper, harder, heavier, and better placed. The match would start, and their shots would get 5% worse, while mine got 30% worse immediately, dropping another 5-30% as the match wore on. Sometimes I would finish a match hitting like a 2.0 player.
It's that horrid emotional sensitivity.
Every little whisper in my head would be magnified to conversational tone, and every statement became a shout. Every doubt was backed up with historic evidence, and every fear was in itself a thing to be feared. It takes almost nothing to knock me off my game.
And then I took that coaching in Sept.
Joan Ramey showed me exactly how to hit the ball (all of the strokes I listed above.) She left no room for doubt. On the forehand, the right foot twists on the balls of the feet, which causes the hips to rotate, which allows the torso to twist and the shoulders to open up. The right shoulder is catapulted forward by the action of the whole body and the racket starts about 6 inches below the eventual point of the contact with the ball. The head tracks the ball back to the point of contact, even as it moves forward toward the eventual target. Finally, the racket strikes forward in a flat line toward the point of contact. It will naturally rise those six inches toward the point of contact in order to hit the ball upward enough to clear the net. The racket is gripped in a semi-western fashion, so the downward tilt of the racket will impart all necessary topspin. No wrist flick or forearm twist is required. Those things will merely introduce points of error. After contact, the arm follows through directly beside the left shoulder, not way up in the sky.
These are all coarse-grain movements by major muscle groups.
In other words, they are repeatable. No matter how much pressure I was under last night, I was able to do all those things the same way, and hit a solid, dependable ball. When I'm in the zone, I can add lots of fine-muscle touch to the gross motor motions of a basic forehand. But when I'm out of the zone, I can still hit the ball well enough to win points, and keep my opponent from figuring out how sensitive I am, and how quickly I might fall apart.
I spent the whole fall grooving in my baseline game, groundstrokes and serves. Two weeks ago, I started working on my net game, volleys and overheads. On Tuesday, I went and paid hard earned cash for an hour of pure volley lessons. Then I grooved those lessons in my basement Wednesday and Thursday. And it worked.
All night, Friday, even as I made mistakes (and I still made plenty) I was able to remember the coarse-grain, gross motor skills I'd learned and keep my head from falling apart. As the night wore to a close, I was still together. Tennis is a game that wears my personality down. At the start of the night, I am typically overconfident, and brimming with great shots. By the middle of the night, the burst of self-belief has passed, and I'm grinding out the things I do best. I've quit trying for anything new, and am pretty much shooting only for safe targets. By the end of the night, I'm holding on by the skin of my teeth. I've missed so many shots that I'm struggling to remember that I ever could play the game at all.
Really.
It was only recently I learned most tennis players don't go through that personal erosion. I always have. It's as if I know my back is only good for 2 hours, so I have to play as much as I can before it goes out. I know my personality can only handle so much, so I have to nurse my mind the whole time I'm out there. I have to practice good self-coaching, and not get too excited or too depressed, or the wheels come off.
Well, last night none of that happened. I played 6 sets or so sets of doubles, and I was as mentally fresh at the end of 3 hours as at the beginning.
They started me on the 4.5 level court. I feel barely qualified to hit with these guys, but I stand in the best I can. I probably lost 2/3 and Phil lost the other 1/3. That's not bad, because 1/2 & 1/2 is perfect. I'd much rather be the 2/3 guy, but I'm hanging on here. We played to a 7-7 tie with no breaks of serve, and we won the tiebreak 5-1. That means I held my serve 3 times. Three times the whole thing was on my racket, and I delivered.
The biggest trial was the volleying at 4.5 level. Volleying at that level is a very visceral, instinctive thing. From a max of 40 feet away, the ball is hit at 50-80 mph, sometimes right at you, some times out of reach. You have to decide whether to come in and face that barrage, or whether to back away. In the past my volley has always been so weak I have stayed back. Last night, I found I had just enough confidence to stay in. The thing is, if you do it right, the volley is good for an instant point. It's worth the gamble. I hit a few serious, perfect volleys at the 4.5 level last night. I also hit some bricks. That's OK. I don't mind failing when I know I'm headed in the right direction. Last night was a step in the right direction.
The rest of my matches were 3.5 level. I hate to step down, but it gave me a chance to build confidence. My daughter tells me that it's better training to beat up on people just slightly worse than you than to constantly lose to people better than you. So, I did. I stayed in, and made some volleys I never could have made before. It was a pleasure.
I've been a little technical here, so I don't blame anyone who hasn't gotten this far. The bottom line is that I've always been scared and nervous, and last night I finally got to see the fruit of all the coaching to which I've exposed myself. They say that "training" is something that happens to you, and "learning" is something that happens in you, and that if all goes well training results in learning. Last night I got to see that the learning is happening, and not just the training.
None of this is trite to me, though it rings so in my ears.
Every animal on Earth learns to survive by playing. Somehow I messed that up in my youth, but I'm gaining ground on life now. 2 years ago, when I started this whole blog thing, I was a 3.0 player who thought he was a 4.0 player. I would say the same applied throughout my life.
I don't talk much about the coaching I'm getting in life, religion and relationships, but it's almost bizarre how perfectly my experience and growth in tennis is matching my experience and growth in all these other areas. 2 years ago, I was the best tennis player on my team - so I quit my team. It was good for my ego and bad for my tennis to stay.
The biggest thing I've learned in these last 2 years is that I'm not really a head-case on the tennis court. I see now why my shots were failing me 2 years ago, and I found I could correct those errors. As I have begun to find reason for confidence, the confidence has come. Other people have a gift for confidence without cause. I do not.
Learning that about myself has allowed me to address the biggest problem in my emotional life. Learning that I can stabilize my emotional "strokes" to work under pressure, and that I can find confidence based on cause, even after 30 years of lacking it, has freed me to try some pretty un-Codepoke like stuff of late. I'm happy with the results, and looking for more "causes."
I left the tennis court Friday night, not euphoric, but blissful. I'm not there yet with regard to all my emotions, but the light at the end of the tunnel is getting closer, and I can smell the fresh air now.
And I'm looking forward to playing in the Midwest Indoor Championships.
12 November, 2007
Ideal Tennis
I played some 4.0 doubles last night. 4.0 is high level amateur, and I fit right in. 5.0 is much higher level, and while it's my goal, I'm still a good ways away. I don't think anyone had a career night, and my partner carried me from time to time, but I got to return the favor once in a while too. As usual, they were some really great guys, and fun was had by all.
For those keeping score (and I always do), my partner and I went 7-5, 3-6, 6-2, 6-2 against 4 different teams. We should have won that second set, but it was closer than the score. My partner served up 10 double faults out of nowhere in that set. The only difference is that I served most of my double faults in the first set, and they were weaker opponents so I got away with it.
Three volleys from the last set stick in my mind. I was thinking about them during the little drive between homes today.
On the first, I volleyed exactly where I wanted to, but I had chosen a poor target. I aimed too high, and the other joker could have toasted me down the line. He went for the right shot, but it hit 6 inches too low.
On the second, I went down after the ball with perfect form for a short volley, and put the ball exactly where I wanted it. Both opponents took one step for it and quit. They had no chance. Given the speed of the incoming ball, it was highlight reel stuff.
On the third, the ball was coming fast and I lined it up and picked a good spot, but hit it with my racket frame such that it dropped into the net. Sometimes you get lucky off those frame shots, but not this time. I certainly did not deserve to get lucky off that error.
On the first shot luck was with me. On the second, there was no luck and it made for something beautiful. On the third, luck was against me.
The most frustrating thing about tennis for me is that it would still be a perfect game if the luck were removed from it. It would be a very different game, but it would be a heartbreakingly, breathtakingly beautiful one.
Tennis is not tic-tac-toe. If I always hit the ball exactly where I mean to, and if my opponent does too, points will still be won and lost. In tic-tac-toe or checkers, a perfectly played game results in a draw. In tennis, a perfectly played point results in a win. It's a head-to-head game, and one player always has a better idea than the other.
On the court, I always want to measure my ideas against my opponent's. That only happens on about 1 in 10 points, and it's depressing. At the professional level, about 1 in 3 points ends with a blunder, 1 in 2 with a forced mistake, and 1 in 6 with a clear winning shot. At my level the numbers don't look anywhere near that good.
So tennis at my level is best played realistically. Wise players don't try to outplay their opponents, but to sell them enough rope to outplay themselves. I'm learning to play that game, but I really wish I didn't have to.
I wish we all could play ideal tennis.
And that's always been one of my biggest problems in tennis. I give both myself and my opponent too much credit, and play too many unrealistic points.
I won last night, as much as for any reason, because my opponents made more errors than I did. Now I just need to learn to take pride in that.
(Christian applications of this abound, but I won't belabor them.)
For those keeping score (and I always do), my partner and I went 7-5, 3-6, 6-2, 6-2 against 4 different teams. We should have won that second set, but it was closer than the score. My partner served up 10 double faults out of nowhere in that set. The only difference is that I served most of my double faults in the first set, and they were weaker opponents so I got away with it.
Three volleys from the last set stick in my mind. I was thinking about them during the little drive between homes today.
On the first, I volleyed exactly where I wanted to, but I had chosen a poor target. I aimed too high, and the other joker could have toasted me down the line. He went for the right shot, but it hit 6 inches too low.
On the second, I went down after the ball with perfect form for a short volley, and put the ball exactly where I wanted it. Both opponents took one step for it and quit. They had no chance. Given the speed of the incoming ball, it was highlight reel stuff.
On the third, the ball was coming fast and I lined it up and picked a good spot, but hit it with my racket frame such that it dropped into the net. Sometimes you get lucky off those frame shots, but not this time. I certainly did not deserve to get lucky off that error.
On the first shot luck was with me. On the second, there was no luck and it made for something beautiful. On the third, luck was against me.
The most frustrating thing about tennis for me is that it would still be a perfect game if the luck were removed from it. It would be a very different game, but it would be a heartbreakingly, breathtakingly beautiful one.
Tennis is not tic-tac-toe. If I always hit the ball exactly where I mean to, and if my opponent does too, points will still be won and lost. In tic-tac-toe or checkers, a perfectly played game results in a draw. In tennis, a perfectly played point results in a win. It's a head-to-head game, and one player always has a better idea than the other.
On the court, I always want to measure my ideas against my opponent's. That only happens on about 1 in 10 points, and it's depressing. At the professional level, about 1 in 3 points ends with a blunder, 1 in 2 with a forced mistake, and 1 in 6 with a clear winning shot. At my level the numbers don't look anywhere near that good.
So tennis at my level is best played realistically. Wise players don't try to outplay their opponents, but to sell them enough rope to outplay themselves. I'm learning to play that game, but I really wish I didn't have to.
I wish we all could play ideal tennis.
And that's always been one of my biggest problems in tennis. I give both myself and my opponent too much credit, and play too many unrealistic points.
I won last night, as much as for any reason, because my opponents made more errors than I did. Now I just need to learn to take pride in that.
(Christian applications of this abound, but I won't belabor them.)
10 September, 2007
What Is Love?
I finished watching Federer dodge bullets and come out a straight set winner, and left for a walk last night. It had been raining all day, and the air could not have been much heavier.
As always, I walked down to the tennis courts first. It's where I always go when I'm thinky, and I was that and a little bit last night. It was kind of silly to walk down there, since my knee is still suffering some tendonitis and I had on bad shoes, no knee brace and no rackets, but that's never stopped me before.
Yep, there was a threesome of cunning codgers there, all of whom I know pretty well.
So in bad shoes, with a bad knee, a borrowed aluminum racket, and strokes that I KNEW were going to give me trouble, I got out on the court.
How do people say "no" to anything, anyway?
I was right. My strokes were appalling. I just finished a tennis camp where every one of them was reworked completely, and I'm still trying to settle them in. With match pressure on me, and no warmup, I was hitting awfully.
We won 3-6, 6-3, 6-2.
I can't help it. Love makes a man do silly things.
As always, I walked down to the tennis courts first. It's where I always go when I'm thinky, and I was that and a little bit last night. It was kind of silly to walk down there, since my knee is still suffering some tendonitis and I had on bad shoes, no knee brace and no rackets, but that's never stopped me before.
Yep, there was a threesome of cunning codgers there, all of whom I know pretty well.
So in bad shoes, with a bad knee, a borrowed aluminum racket, and strokes that I KNEW were going to give me trouble, I got out on the court.
How do people say "no" to anything, anyway?
I was right. My strokes were appalling. I just finished a tennis camp where every one of them was reworked completely, and I'm still trying to settle them in. With match pressure on me, and no warmup, I was hitting awfully.
We won 3-6, 6-3, 6-2.
I can't help it. Love makes a man do silly things.
09 July, 2007
The Match
Hey ya'll,
I hope you'll forgive my lack of posting. How busy am I? I have not even read any of the blog comments about the recently concluded Wimbledon tourney. I've made the time to read a couple professional articles about it, and this is the best.
Real Men Don't Dance
The author has a heart of Gold, and a heart for God. With this piece, he made me cry - again. He writes the things that matter about the things that don't.
A lot has been made of Nadal's injury. I just finished my ironing and watching the match at the same time. Nadal's injury was not of the sort that took away from his ability to play. The match was pure gold from beginning to end. It will be remembered until their very next big one.
Of course, one might ask why I didn't see the match live. It would be a good question. Simple, really. I stirred the hornets' nest too thoroughly in Sunday School last week, and there was no way I was going to miss the "rebuttal."
Sure enough, attendance was up, and everyone was ready to pick up where we left off.
Have I mentioned that in every college course I ever took, every professor said at least once to the class, "Does anyone agree with Mr. Knox?" I have no clue how I always manage to end up being the only person on my side, but it never changes.
In this case, the discussion was on Heb 4:12. We are going through Hebrews, and I would not be budged on one point. Hebrews 4 does not tell us to work to please God. It tells us to rest in Him. It tells us to strive to rest in Him, but for nothing else. When we enter into Christ, we enter into our Sabbath rest forever.
So, when we got to Heb 4:12, I commented that this verse is about resting, too. That was too much. I maintain that the word of God separates soul from spirit in order to learn who is resting and who is trying to please God. Everyone else in the room contested that the whole testimony of scripture is that we must work to please God. I read the book of Galatians at length to everyone last week, so I didn't feel the need to reiterate.
Anyway, it was pretty wonderful. I distinguished between works that please God and works that flow from love. Someone else distinguished between earning salvation and working as someone saved. Then we all kissed and made up.
Roger played what may have been the match of a career, and the burst of emotion that flowed out of him when he laid down on the court would have had me bawling. But I'd skip it again and again and again to press forward with brothers and sisters into the kingdom.
I love being with saints.
I hope you'll forgive my lack of posting. How busy am I? I have not even read any of the blog comments about the recently concluded Wimbledon tourney. I've made the time to read a couple professional articles about it, and this is the best.
Real Men Don't Dance
The author has a heart of Gold, and a heart for God. With this piece, he made me cry - again. He writes the things that matter about the things that don't.
A lot has been made of Nadal's injury. I just finished my ironing and watching the match at the same time. Nadal's injury was not of the sort that took away from his ability to play. The match was pure gold from beginning to end. It will be remembered until their very next big one.
Of course, one might ask why I didn't see the match live. It would be a good question. Simple, really. I stirred the hornets' nest too thoroughly in Sunday School last week, and there was no way I was going to miss the "rebuttal."
Sure enough, attendance was up, and everyone was ready to pick up where we left off.
Have I mentioned that in every college course I ever took, every professor said at least once to the class, "Does anyone agree with Mr. Knox?" I have no clue how I always manage to end up being the only person on my side, but it never changes.
In this case, the discussion was on Heb 4:12. We are going through Hebrews, and I would not be budged on one point. Hebrews 4 does not tell us to work to please God. It tells us to rest in Him. It tells us to strive to rest in Him, but for nothing else. When we enter into Christ, we enter into our Sabbath rest forever.
So, when we got to Heb 4:12, I commented that this verse is about resting, too. That was too much. I maintain that the word of God separates soul from spirit in order to learn who is resting and who is trying to please God. Everyone else in the room contested that the whole testimony of scripture is that we must work to please God. I read the book of Galatians at length to everyone last week, so I didn't feel the need to reiterate.
Anyway, it was pretty wonderful. I distinguished between works that please God and works that flow from love. Someone else distinguished between earning salvation and working as someone saved. Then we all kissed and made up.
Roger played what may have been the match of a career, and the burst of emotion that flowed out of him when he laid down on the court would have had me bawling. But I'd skip it again and again and again to press forward with brothers and sisters into the kingdom.
I love being with saints.
10 June, 2007
My Hero Fell Today
OK, it's just my tennis hero, so it had no effect whatsoever on my day. In fact, I had the best day I've had in a month. Smiled almost all day long about almost everything. It's a good thing, and a little rare of late.
My take on the match is suspect. I absolutely watched with my heart as opposed to my head, and I am a putzer when it comes to the technical side of tennis. Nonetheless, why keep my mouth shut?
Point 1:
James Blake's precision power game beats Nadal's high percentage defensive game. It's classic rock, paper, scissors. Federer is rock that scissors cannot harm, Nadal is paper that smothers rock, and Blake is scissors that slices paper.
We've all watched Federer try to beat Blake at his own game, and he can't do it. When Federer and Blake both come out ripping laser forehands, Blake goes up two breaks fast. It's only when Federer settles back down into his own game, gives up on the laser tag, and starts confusing Blake that he comes roaring back. Federer can play "scissors," and can hit laser forehands, but not as well as he can play his own game. Federer is no Blake.
What Federer found in Hamburg was that he could beat Nadal by being Blake: flatten everything, go for broke and focus vertically instead of on angles. Hit deep, move in, control the baseline and the pace. What he found in Paris was that he's not good enough at that game to get 'er done against a dialed-in Nadal. But then we already knew that, because he can't even beat Blake at that game.
Federer's unforced error count was caused by trying to do something amazing. He was trying to play Blake's game in a GS final. It was not natural for him, but he did a convincing job.
Point 2:
[Has everyone read Dune? If not skip this massively obscure sub-analogy to the already obscure metaphor. ;-)
Do you remember Paul's knife fight with the young Fremen? He kept getting into a winning position, then not finishing the duel because he slowed down at the moment of the kill. It was because Paul was trained to fight against a shield that could only be penetrated by a slow blade. Even so, Federer....]
Federer achieved 10 break points in the first set, and failed to capitalize on any of them. I agree that this is not because Nadal hit 10 perfect winners (though he probably hit 6 or more!)
With break point on his racket, Federer repeatedly switched back to playing "rock" again. He earned the break opportunities by playing "scissors", but at the critical moment he reverted back to his natural style, "bide, baffle and bait." But Nadal cannot be baited. Federer's game is to lure his opponent into hitting something crushable. Nadal will not be lured into that mistake.
It's not that Federer played badly on 17 break points; it's that he played "Federer" when he needed to keep playing "Blake."
Conclusion:
Federer played FANTASTICALLY for a man playing completely outside his comfort zone. He was trying to do something no one else has done for 89 consecutive matches - beat Nadal on clay. To do so, he stretched his game convincingly, but not yet forcingly.
Federer is the best human to ever play this game, but he's still only human, and that man on the other side keeps on proving it to everyone.
Extension:
Nadal is also playing outside himself. I'm not really sure whether Nadal is also trying to add "scissors" to his game, or trying to add "rock." I think he'll have more success with scissors, because it's closer to his natural style. And scissors works on grass and hard. But, I don't think they will work against "rock."
Nadal's impressive growth makes the next 4 months really, really scary.
I could not be happier!
(How was that on the obscure metaphor scale?)
My take on the match is suspect. I absolutely watched with my heart as opposed to my head, and I am a putzer when it comes to the technical side of tennis. Nonetheless, why keep my mouth shut?
Point 1:
James Blake's precision power game beats Nadal's high percentage defensive game. It's classic rock, paper, scissors. Federer is rock that scissors cannot harm, Nadal is paper that smothers rock, and Blake is scissors that slices paper.
We've all watched Federer try to beat Blake at his own game, and he can't do it. When Federer and Blake both come out ripping laser forehands, Blake goes up two breaks fast. It's only when Federer settles back down into his own game, gives up on the laser tag, and starts confusing Blake that he comes roaring back. Federer can play "scissors," and can hit laser forehands, but not as well as he can play his own game. Federer is no Blake.
What Federer found in Hamburg was that he could beat Nadal by being Blake: flatten everything, go for broke and focus vertically instead of on angles. Hit deep, move in, control the baseline and the pace. What he found in Paris was that he's not good enough at that game to get 'er done against a dialed-in Nadal. But then we already knew that, because he can't even beat Blake at that game.
Federer's unforced error count was caused by trying to do something amazing. He was trying to play Blake's game in a GS final. It was not natural for him, but he did a convincing job.
Point 2:
[Has everyone read Dune? If not skip this massively obscure sub-analogy to the already obscure metaphor. ;-)
Do you remember Paul's knife fight with the young Fremen? He kept getting into a winning position, then not finishing the duel because he slowed down at the moment of the kill. It was because Paul was trained to fight against a shield that could only be penetrated by a slow blade. Even so, Federer....]
Federer achieved 10 break points in the first set, and failed to capitalize on any of them. I agree that this is not because Nadal hit 10 perfect winners (though he probably hit 6 or more!)
With break point on his racket, Federer repeatedly switched back to playing "rock" again. He earned the break opportunities by playing "scissors", but at the critical moment he reverted back to his natural style, "bide, baffle and bait." But Nadal cannot be baited. Federer's game is to lure his opponent into hitting something crushable. Nadal will not be lured into that mistake.
It's not that Federer played badly on 17 break points; it's that he played "Federer" when he needed to keep playing "Blake."
Conclusion:
Federer played FANTASTICALLY for a man playing completely outside his comfort zone. He was trying to do something no one else has done for 89 consecutive matches - beat Nadal on clay. To do so, he stretched his game convincingly, but not yet forcingly.
Federer is the best human to ever play this game, but he's still only human, and that man on the other side keeps on proving it to everyone.
Extension:
Nadal is also playing outside himself. I'm not really sure whether Nadal is also trying to add "scissors" to his game, or trying to add "rock." I think he'll have more success with scissors, because it's closer to his natural style. And scissors works on grass and hard. But, I don't think they will work against "rock."
Nadal's impressive growth makes the next 4 months really, really scary.
I could not be happier!
(How was that on the obscure metaphor scale?)
09 June, 2007
A Man and His Destiny - Or - Silly Games are the Best
Rafael Nadal stands between Roger Federer and the history books. If he wins, the world will acknowledge him as the Greatest of All Time. Tomorrow morning, at 9:00 AM Eastern Time, Roger will try to move Rafa somehow. He should fail. I don't think he will.
Rafa could win tomorrow. Truth be told, he has the skills to win the next three slams. If that happens, Roger is not even the greatest of our time, much less all time. If that happens, Roger slips to the level of a Richard Gasquet, who is beautiful to watch but cannot get the job done. If that happens, I will plead for Roger to find just "one more gear," because I want to believe that classic form and using the whole court beats raw power and grim determination.
Here's my thing.
Deep in my heart, I believe that Roger is a high-strung, emotional player, while Nadal is more a force of will. I believe Federer's game swoops and swoons because that is who he is, and Nadal's game blasts unrelentingly because that is who he is.
I think they both play a very smart game, almost in the same way. Federer is smart about what game to use against you, and Nadal is smart about which of your weaknesses to hammer over and over and over. That's almost a moot difference, but Federer will show you something new until he finds the thing you don't like, and Nadal will hit all your defenses until he finds something he can break down. Federer changes tools and Nadal changes targets.
Red clay exposes Federer's weaknesses while damping his strengths. Grass allows Federer to mask his weaknesses, and amps his strengths. So everything says Nadal should find the chink in Federer's game on Sunday and eat him for brunch again.
But sometimes Federer swoops. Emotionality means that sometimes you don't just go into the zone, you blow right through it into some magic place. Federer can do that. He could do it Sunday. Everything is lined up as best it could possibly be. He has an opponent he fears, but his fear has finally been tempered by a first win. The taste of blood is still sweet on his lips. The dress rehearsal against Davydenko did not go well, so he won't be over-confident. He's gotten rid of the noise in his ear from his former coach, Tony Roche, so he can concentrate.
This could be the moment. This could be the time that the Matador plays above himself, lures the raging one to chase that fluttering red cape, and slips his Wilson sword into the Bull from Mallorca.
I want to see it.
Rafa could win tomorrow. Truth be told, he has the skills to win the next three slams. If that happens, Roger is not even the greatest of our time, much less all time. If that happens, Roger slips to the level of a Richard Gasquet, who is beautiful to watch but cannot get the job done. If that happens, I will plead for Roger to find just "one more gear," because I want to believe that classic form and using the whole court beats raw power and grim determination.
Here's my thing.
Deep in my heart, I believe that Roger is a high-strung, emotional player, while Nadal is more a force of will. I believe Federer's game swoops and swoons because that is who he is, and Nadal's game blasts unrelentingly because that is who he is.
I think they both play a very smart game, almost in the same way. Federer is smart about what game to use against you, and Nadal is smart about which of your weaknesses to hammer over and over and over. That's almost a moot difference, but Federer will show you something new until he finds the thing you don't like, and Nadal will hit all your defenses until he finds something he can break down. Federer changes tools and Nadal changes targets.
Red clay exposes Federer's weaknesses while damping his strengths. Grass allows Federer to mask his weaknesses, and amps his strengths. So everything says Nadal should find the chink in Federer's game on Sunday and eat him for brunch again.
But sometimes Federer swoops. Emotionality means that sometimes you don't just go into the zone, you blow right through it into some magic place. Federer can do that. He could do it Sunday. Everything is lined up as best it could possibly be. He has an opponent he fears, but his fear has finally been tempered by a first win. The taste of blood is still sweet on his lips. The dress rehearsal against Davydenko did not go well, so he won't be over-confident. He's gotten rid of the noise in his ear from his former coach, Tony Roche, so he can concentrate.
This could be the moment. This could be the time that the Matador plays above himself, lures the raging one to chase that fluttering red cape, and slips his Wilson sword into the Bull from Mallorca.
I want to see it.
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