Thoughts on Tennis

My blog has lately become something of a tennis blog. I used to blog on movies and other random thoughts, and I'm sure, I'll eventually return to that. But for the past few months, I've become a bit obsessed with tennis.

First, I'll give credit to my mother for enrolling my brother and me into tennis. At the time, I remember being reluctant to want to learn. I'm sure she thought this was a good idea because other people we knew were also enrolling their kids for tennis.

I was 13 when I first learned to play, which, in the scheme of things, is a bit old. The lessons ran for two weeks, and the lesson lasted an hour. My brother and I took lessons for two, maybe three years. Usually, the lessons were sometime in the afternoon, in the peak of summer, so it was often really, really hot.

The first year I took lessons, the guy who taught the class (I think his name was Jay) learned how to teach tennis from Dennis Van der Meer (or more appropriately, a camp run by him). Van der Meer believed you could break down tennis into small chunks, and he felt he knew the right way to teach tennis.

We were taught "classic tennis". Classic tennis is a style that's probably been around since tennis became established, or basically since the 1930s. It continued to be taught through the 1970s, and even the 1980s. I had my lesson around 1982.

Classic tennis is basically eastern forehand grip, eastern backhand grip, step into the ball, hit with moderate to no spin. Racquet goes back to the fence, and so forth.

Although classic tennis is looked at with disdain and is no longer practiced by real pros, it was still effective in its day.

Modern tennis probably started in the 1960s with European clay court players, but really found its expression through Bjorn Borg and then Ivan Lendl, then pretty much every player since then.

Modern tennis basically stressed semi-Western or Western grips, heavy topspin, open stances, and huge follow-throughs. Acceleration is more rotational than linear.

Despite the name "modern tennis", it's been around nearly 30 years. People were talking about modern tennis when Wilander was rising to the top (1982).

Modern tennis has evolved some, as players like Federer (and really, most players today), have huge follow-throughs. The flat style of Connors and the unusual style of McEnroe have long gone, which isn't to say they weren't effective, but that they never got that popular.

I've been trying to hit in a modern style most of my tennis career, which isn't much of a career, to be fair.

I've been trying to work on two strokes for a long time. My serve and my forehand. My serve has gotten a lot more consistent, and I get better spin on it than I used to. I need a better slice serve and more work on my toss, but it's getting there. What I'm missing is pace, and I'm trying to work on that.

My forehand has good topspin, but I find I hit it too high and without enough pace. I've been trying to retool my forehand, trying to contact the ball further in front, and have a straighter arm so I don't use just my forearm to hit the ball.

Now, people tell you that the best way to learn something is to do it without thinking. I find that I end up thinking a lot, which is a mistake, but I'm so analytical, that I can't help it. This has lead me to watch all sorts of videos.

The latest ones that I've picked up are by this guy from Slovenia, who now coaches in Thailand, named Tomaz Mencinger. He's created a series of videos that he distributes through the Internet. Because of this, he has some of the least expensive instruction you can get. Given that there are plenty of teachers that want to make tons of money teaching tennis (some that ask you to spend 75 dollars a month to access their content), Mencinger has to be commended for not doing this.

Mencinger has a knack for coming up with ideas to simplify the teaching of tennis, mostly by breaking down the stroke so that it isn't so complex, and building it up from there. As he encounters problems, he finds drills to compensate for the problem.

A few other coaches do this too. I've been checking out Oscar Wegner, and folks that follow his method. One guy, who goes by "topspin tennis" has many such drills to help students overcome problems with learning to hit the ball (I forgot to try his "paint the wall" topspin drill today--oh well).

I don't know many other racquet sports that gets as much analysis and techniques for beginners as tennis, nor do I know any other sport where the vast majority of pros hit in a style that goes against the most traditional way the sport has been taught.

I love reading or seeing these new ideas, because they give me ideas to try out, as well as ideas to pass on to other people. I find, for example, that when I'm stuck, I end up giving advice from when I learned to play tennis, more than 20 years ago. I give old advice because I don't know how to teach someone modern tennis, even as I've tried to learn it myself.

But, with videos like Mencinger, I know how to give basic advice to someone to teach them how to play, and furthermore, it helps me as well.

I haven't fully picked up everything I need to know, but it's good to know there are resources out there.

What I really need is a video camera to record how I play so I can figure out how to correct what I do.