15 Minutes

I've been blogging a lot about tennis lately, I admit.

And I am planning to do more of it, even now.

But, wait.

Once upon a time, if you wanted to write about tennis for the masses, you needed some sort of credentials, you need an agent, and you needed someone that was willing to publish a book for you. Furthermore, you need professional help from taking photos, to editing your text.

This made it difficult for anyone to provide teaching material for tennis, or for that matter, anything else.

The bar was set pretty high to provide information to the masses. And let's not talk about getting a television program on tennis education.

These days, however, for the cost of a computer, a video camera, and editing equipment, anyone with suitable knowledge can now produce videos for mass consumption. A computer might cost anywhere from 500 dollars to 2000 dollars, the video camera anywhere from 300 dollars to something exorbitant.

Beyond the basic knowledge you are trying to convey, you need to learn how to shoot and edit video. Depending on how much special effects you need, there might be more work still.

Then, you need a website to host your content, and some knowledge of how to layout webpages.

As daunting as that sounds, a technically savvy person can do all of this reasonably cheaply, and put the stuff on the web.

Which leads me to my next point.

The best tennis instruction, short of personal instruction, is out on the web. It has many strengths not found in books. First, with video, you can see what's going on. Second, if the person has done their homework, they are going to provide you a lot of interesting information.

I've been flipping back and forth between watching Tomaz Mencinger's tennis videos, which are aimed at the complete beginner, and the somewhat more advanced videos by Fuzzy Yellow Balls hosted by Will Hamilton.

Tomaz and Will take two different approaches. Tomaz tries to simplify the process, by breaking down strokes into easier parts, and using visualization to help you figure out what's going on. He comes up with really clever ideas, such as the "checking your wrist watch" to teach wrist pronation.

Will, on the other hand, has analyzed pros, and looked for commonalities. Rather than simplify the motions, he goes through, in meticulous detail, how and when to do everything. To contrast, I bought a book called Go Tennis with an accompanying DVD. It is rather light (by comparison) on content. While the strokes look modern enough, there are lots and lots of missing details, both of which Tomaz and Will cover in their respective ways.

For example, Will talks about feet position, arm position, how the arm should look, how the shoulders should appear, how to raise the arms, what the arms should look like. Indeed, to explain the serve, Will must break down the serve to 12 steps, each video, about a minute long, and full of information. I'm trying to digest all of this and trying to think about how I can bring this with me to the court.

Five years ago, this information wasn't freely available, nor at the kind of quality that's available now.

Sadly, some teachers feel they have the secrets to tennis, and want to charge and arm and a leg for it, thus perpetuating the idea that tennis should be for the rich. I don't entirely begrudge the desire to sell information for money, but they shouldn't begrudge me for looking at low-cost alternatives.

My point, simply put, is that such resources were, in the past, really difficult to produce. It was out of the reach of so many people that those folks who have talent to explain tennis (or anything else for that matter) were often ignored because they could never have done this.

While the cost of producing these videos is not that cheap, it is cheap enough that all you require, beyond your experties, is a good video editor, and a good webpage designer, and a place to host it. It's true that few people have the domain knowledge to use those skills for anything useful, but those who do now have a reasonable outlet to convey information.

Right now, I'm loving both Tomaz's videos and Will's videos for many reasons. They are informative, in a way not seen before in books or on TV. They are cheap (Fuzzy Yellow Balls is free and TennisMindGame is under 40 dollars). Furthermore, both are apparently readily accessible. While neither are famous, this lack of fame works to the advantage of the lucky few who make an effort to talk to these folks.

As people produce such content, will we, as a society get smarter? I believe that this kind of instruction is the tip of the iceberg, and the web will have much more to offer, once clever people put their minds and their talents to work.