Lesson in Love

I haven't taken tennis lessons since I first began playing.

Which isn't entirely true. I did take a tennis class a few years back. At the time, I could only sign up for a beginner's class, and the teacher didn't really know tennis all that well. It was as if she had "trained" to be a phys. ed. teacher and took tennis as part of that, but never cared that much about tennis. I'm sure I knew more about tennis than her and played better.

I decided to sign up for some lessons when a coworker did the same. It was at Rock Creek Tennis Center, and even though it's a bit of a hike from here, the nice thing is that they have a tournament held there, and so if I have to drive to there, I know how to get there.

The first lesson was a bit unusual. When I arrived, there were already three other people there and the instructor, an older gentleman who seemed pretty eager. The other three seemed to already know each other. That made four, even though the group should have been six.

It turns out the guys had been taking lessons earlier and they signed up for more. One guy in particular seemed to have signed up for lessons perpetually, having played their for years.

The instructor mainly spent time running through drills.

One thing about drills, and the thing I don't particularly like about it is that it's both speedy and slow. When you're hitting, the guy feeds you balls faster than you'd probably get them in a game. But once you're done, you wait.

That in itself is really not so bad because I was running around quite a bit and needed the time to rest.

I did notice that some of the other players lacked some footspeed, so I was able to move a little quicker in that respect.

Later on, I went to hit with Ravi, whose going to take some beginner's lessons with his wife, and this allowed me to both hit and think about hitting.

One thought that occurred to me was that I needed to think about my shoulders, in particular, my upper torso. I tend to arm the ball a fair bit, and that makes my shot weaker and harder to control. I also find the ball flies up on my, partly because the face of the racquet is a bit open.

Anyway, things to think about until the next lesson.