Visual Learning

When I first started playing tennis, my parents had bought a VCR. To be more precise, they have bought a Betamax. These were the days when there were two formats: VHS and Betamax, and eventually VHS won out, partly, I imagine, due to a longer format (it could record so-so quality for several hours). They didn't buy the VCR for tennis. That was mostly coincidence.

I'd record tennis matches and try to watch the players hit the strokes in slow motion. Even after imitating players like Courier or Agassi (or more likely in those days, Wilander or Lendl), I found it somewhat difficult to fully translate to the court. I'm sure an experienced coach could give me more advice.

But since then, the great information saviour of the world came about, namely, the web. And video also came, mostly YouTube. This allowed people to put all manners of videos online, in particular, videos for teaching tennis.

These videos I've included seem pretty good at teaching the topspin serve, a serve I've been trying to learn for a while. Admittedly, you have to know something about tennis serve mechanics to get the idea fully (for example, there's a wrist pronation going on in the second video). But it's a great step-by-step introduction to the topspin serve. I want to try this out on the court and see how it works out.