JAK'S MONTHLY ESSAY SERIES: Achieving Your Personal Best
The Game's Most Difficult Skills & the Most Taken For Granted
Despite having numerous essays in the hopper ready for publishing, I'm compelled to revisit the club game's biggest deficiency for this month's offering.
Watching, judging, focusing on that incoming yellow sphere in flight is not only the game's most difficult skill - BTW, it's not easy - often taking it for granted as an automatic, becomes a serious misperception as well. Double whammy.
Just seeing the ball – strictly through one's periphery, a major problem for so many frustrated players – is not going to cut it. Worse yet, players will insist they are watching/tracking the ball to contact, precisely because they can recall "seeing" it. But, that's not watching it, following it, or tracking it into the racket on any shot.
Case in point, I'm thinking of numerous past players who, in lessons, repeatedly frame balls at the net, but are at a complete loss as to why because they think they have watched the ball.
There's that common misperception at the very least. Or, sometimes otherwise - complete denial, or dismissal, of tennis' #1 core necessity.
The root cause for all this eye hand dysfunction is club player's penchant for looking at the court prior to contact versus keeping their head very still for that extra thousandth of a second during contact. And why do so many, typically unknowingly, do that so often? Because they – even very capable ball strikers – are somewhat unclear as to exactly where they want their shot to go (direction), and they are especially unclear about their intended margin over the net (trajectory). They haven't committed to a particular shot, or visualized, or "imagined" if you relate to that term better, their specific shot intentions. Hoping instead that their somewhere over there attempt, analogous to Tom Brady going into a Patriot or Tampa Bay huddle and saying to his teammates, "whatever," versus calling a play, will be successful.
Your inner player want to know your intentions!
You absolutely have "to call a play" in your mind's eye regarding any and all intended specific shots….every single time .YOU are the quarterback of your shots!
Visualizing will actually help you resist the temptation to look up at the court prematurely prior to contact and play more cleanly struck shots. The eyes and the brain work together. If the head moves, the body follows, and the intended stroking path gets altered. Mishit. Poor placement. Unforced error. All of the above.
One of the greatest Olympic track athletes the world has ever seen, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, once remarked to me in an impromptu conversation at a sporting goods show, "I can't believe how you tennis players can focus on that ball for hour after hour." Clearly, Jackie had tried tennis.
Good mechanics and technique will only take you so far without being a good manager of your shot making ability. If you're a careless ball tracker, in combination with an often, mostly random, over there somewhere placement approach, you will be a very inconsistent player, and not perform well. Guaranteed.
Connect your mind and body. It's essential.
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