Teaching Tennis, Part 2

These days, you probably don't find too many people that haven't dabbled with some sports here or there. Given that people generally fall back on what they know, it's not surprise that when learning to play a new sport, you're likely to use other sports as a frame of reference.

Yesterday, I was teaching Raj to play tennis. His main background in sports is badminton. He's used to hitting a ball that's over his shoulder, and using the forearm, bending at the elbow. For the most part, tennis requires a moderately straight arm, and a bent wrist (at least, these days). Although it's wristy (these days), it's a confined sort of wristiness (not like the slap shot of racquetball). Once you hit the ball, you follow through to keep the momentum going.

Raj stops swinging the racquet just as he makes contact. Despite telling him to follow through, he seemed mostly unwilling to do so, figuring on his first few tries that the ball wasn't going where he wanted.

While he had some idea how to hit a forehand, he had no idea how to hit the backhand. So he simply ran around the backhand the whole time.

Were I to teach him more seriously (unlikely), I'd have to work to straighten his arm, and get him more aware which way the racquet face is pointing, and more importantly, he'd have to listen.

Again, surprisingly, when he hits the top of the racquet, it seems to go in. The miracle of modern racquets, I suppose.

Ravi's wife seems to take direction far better, and adjust her strokes accordingly, while Raj seems more adamant about hitting the ball the way he wants to.

I've noticed that Stan seems to be plateauing some. He made a lot of progress, but now, he's mostly at the same level. That, I suppose, is not so unusual. Many people play weekend doubles, and never get much better, year to year, mostly, I assume, because they don't set any goals, and partly because they don't know how to achieve the goals, even if they set them. They're just out to have fun, and getting better doesn't seem to be part of that fun.