Lessons

When I was 13 or so, my mother enrolled in me in local tennis lessons. They were held for two weeks, five days a week, for an hour each. In those days, it was probably quite cheap to get lessons. I'm sure it was about 20 dollars each for my brother and me to get lessons.

They were group lessons. The first year we were taught by some guy named Jay, I think. He had learned tennis at the Dennis Van der Meer camp. He was the guy who gained some notoriety coaching Billie Jean during her match against Bobby Riggs and became a contributor to Tennis Magazine. He thought he had boiled down playing tennis to a certain few key steps and if only you'd practice that, you'd get good.

In hindsight, he taught in something of a classic style. My first racquet for that class was an old wooden racquet that my dad had bought used, and we had another one that seemed like a cheap K-mart brand.

At the time, the two-hander was still something of a novelty. Despite some very high profile two-handers, Chris Evert, Jimmy Connors, Bjorn Borg, and some lesser players like Harold Solomon, it was still slowly making its way to tennis instruction. So I was taught to hit a one-handed shot. My brother read an article on Gene Mayer and how he hit his two-hander on both sides, and adopted that style for some time.

The following summer, we took lessons from Dave and Arnel. They were, at one point, on the tennis team, but had recently gone to college, and saw this as a summer job, teaching kids to play tennis. Dave was a good looking guy sort of the Mark Hamill type and Arnel seemed Filipino, and was there to assist and hang out.

I don't recall if we took lessons after that. Basically, after the first year, I was pretty much self-taught, which turned out OK in hindsight, but not great.

Although I learned tennis in the early 80s, I was trying to learn what was termed then and now as "modern" tennis, which meant a loopy forehand, open-stance shots, and so forth. I remember playing videotapes of Mats Wilander and Bjorn Borg (in an exhibition, no less) trying to imitate their shots, and later on, trying to imitate early Agassi. I tried the Lendl forehand.

What I didn't realize then was how faithful I was to their shots, which was, in hindsight, not very. Early on, I learned to hit pretty good topspin on my forehand, but switched to a two-hander, and could never get good topspin on that shot. I would hit a slice backhand too.

One thing that was a little unusual was that I liked coming to net and hitting drop shots, even early on. It didn't hurt that John McEnroe was on top, and had deft shots.

For many years afterwards, I took no more lessons. I wasn't sure who I'd take them from, and they would have been pricey had I looked.

A coworker of mine whose wife had just joined him after finishing her degree wanted to learn tennis with his wife, and they had signed up for lessons in DC at the site of the Legg Mason Tennis Classic where they have a semi-public court, where there's no membership, but you pay for the use of the courts.

I took lessons with Dale who looked a bit like Ron Paul. Dale taught a kind of tennis as exercise style for advanced players. He offered very little instruction. The idea was to go and do drills and essentially get in shape to play tennis. My tennis only improved incidentally, mostly through just playing.

Around Thanksgiving of last year, I took a lesson from Joel. He taught in this holistic manner. Throw the racquet at the ball he would opine. He would suggest that the racquet wanted to move in a certain way, and you had to be free and relaxed.

I didn't take another private lesson until January when I decided to take one at Cabin John with a guy named Mike. Mike was a youngish Asian dude in his early 20s. He was a bit more technical about what he wanted me to do, rotating my shoulders more, etc. He seemed a touch dispassionate, I seem to recall.

Then I didn't take lessons for a while, a few months. I heard about these high schoolers that would teach lessons at about half the cost of normal lessons at public courts. So I took three or so lessons from a guy named Sharat, who was finishing up his junior year in high school.

He was a pretty chatty dude, talking about how to hit the ball. He favored teaching you to play mini-tennis, suggesting that good technique comes from being able to hit the ball well when you are hitting in slow motion. If you have bad technique hitting slowly, you'd have bad technique hitting quickly. He was reasonably good, but still I felt something missing.

By this point, I was reading Fuzzy Yellow Balls and Essential Tennis. I knew Ian said, on his website, that he had private lessons. Although he was a bit of a hike from where I lived, it was still under an hour to get there. I wasn't sure what to expect, but so far, he's given the best lessons so far.

He's able to offer advice in the "modern style" dealing mostly with using the core more to his shots. He's able to observe strokes then offer a simple idea here or there to focus on one problem at a time. I've tried teaching tennis, and I find that I get nitpicky on all sorts of things. In the end, the person doesn't listen so much. Some of the advice I've heard before, but I didn't know to apply it to my own game.

A lot of tennis is surprisingly non-intuitive. For example, most people think of tennis as an arm sport. Apparently, if you play other sports like baseball or if you box, you find that you need to use more of your body if you want to get good power. The arm can get pretty strong on its own, but it can do even more if you coordinate it with your body.

There's plenty of players that don't turn their bodies when hitting shots. This turn helps add power to shots, but it takes a bit of coordination to do. I've been working on that more, since I used to not do it. I'm sure there are still issues with how I hit shots.

With volleys, I used to never cross-step to reach a volley nor turn sideways to hit. I'd frame the ball but never knew how I was doing it. I'd use too much hand motion trying to hit a ball and get no pace when I hit shots.

I understand these aren't intellectual endeavors but physical ones. And they're costly to learn these lessons, but they are rewarding too. Intellectual tasks require discovering the unknown often with little assistance except your own intellect. Learning tennis is trying to solve a problem to which some people have solutions to (at a price, to be fair).

Few things in life have answers as pat as tennis. Although it's taken some work to find someone to offer good lessons, it's been worth it so far!

Teaching Tennis

I took a tennis lesson right around Thanksgiving last year from a guy I'll call Joe. Joe takes an unusual approach to teaching tennis, which goes to show you that tennis can be taught in a wide variety of ways.

In particular, Joe believes that the racquet has, for lack of a better phrase, a mind of its own. OK, that's exaggeration. He believes that you throw a racquet, meaning, let the momentum of the racquet do the work. That's an intriguing thought, and I like the idea.

I find, when I end up teaching tennis, that I end up teaching a little bit the way I like to hit the ball, and the way I was taught to hit the ball when I first started learning to play tennis.

Let me go back to those days of yore. I was taught to play tennis by a guy who took classes by Dennis Van der Meer. Van der Meer, I've discovered, was instrumental in coaching Billie Jean King during her battle against Bobby Riggs, and that notoriety lead him to some fame in Tennis magazine, and his own camps.

He felt that tennis could be broken down in several steps, and would tell people to do those steps. Now, Van der Meer was old school. He taught players how to hit a flat shot. The classic way to play tennis is to hit with a closed stance, which means your front foot (for a rightie, that's your left foot when hitting a forehand, and the right foot for a backhand) is in front of the back foot. In other words, when you hit a forehand, your belly button points to the right wall/fence, and points to the left fence when you hit a backhand.

Ever since Borg was number 1, two things have resulted. Open stances and heavy topspin forehands.

Most teachers, these days, opt to teach you a modern style, which leads to open stances and heavy topspin.

It's rather difficult to learn to hit spin, though it seems easier, depending on your background, to learn slice shots than to learn topspin, probably because topspin requires better timing (you come "over" the ball, which can often lead the ball to be hit in the net).

If you start by hitting shots flat, the question is whether a modern stroke, which is meant to be used with topspin, makes sense.

One of my coworkers and his wife have been learning to play tennis. I find it much easier to spot her errors than his, partly because they are so contrasty. While he has very long strokes, and moves reasonably well, her strokes are too short, and she doesn't move so well.

The "throw your racquet" approach seems to encourage waiting until the last second to hit a shot, then making a quick loop with the racquet. That works OK, if you have time, and to be fair, I am guilty of preparing late too. It's just that, over the years, I've learned to speed up my stroke to handle fast pace. But even so, I know I need to get the racquet back earlier.

So, I'll give a quick laundry list of problems that she's had (and gotten past, somewhat). Initially, she had a very whippy forehand that had very little follow-though and also very little backswing. It was the whip motion that was getting her the pace on her shot, when she could connect, and yet, I felt that this whip was hard to reproduce consistently.

My first piece of advice was to tell her to have a bigger follow through. This would, in my mind, elongate the stroke so it didn't suddenly stop short, lacking pace. She's been able to make the follow-through a bit longer. I will say, most pros, have a VERY long follow-through, but I wouldn't recommend that early on. I advised making it somewhat longer, not the windshield wiper, flip approach that most pros seem to favor.

Today, I covered two other aspects, mostly affecting her backhand. I'd notice that the racquet would only go back when the ball got near her, and then she'd swing really fast. If the ball came too quick, she didn't have enough time to prepare. So I wanted her to get the racquet back and wait for the shot to come to her. That way, she didn't have to time the backhand nearly as accurately.

As she's learning this, there is a tendency to revert back to her way of hitting, which is to again wait and then swing. What I'm trying to figure out now is how to get her to think about hitting the ball with the racquet perpendicular to the ground. Right now, her tendency is to flip the racquet up thus causing the ball to aim to the sky.

I think that's partly because she's been taught to have her racquet pointed down, behind her. The idea, I know, is to eventually get her to learn topspin, but I think it's messing a little with her mechanics, because she's not understanding that, at the point of contact, the racquet should be perpendicular to the ground. What it does before and after, doesn't matter so much. I think the next time, I'd advise her to stop the racquet just as she it makes contact, to make her see where the racquet is aimed when the ball hits it.

The other part I worked on, and this will take more work, is footwork. Tennis footwork is nearly as important as hitting the ball. If you don't get to the ball soon enough, you are almost always going to hit a bad shot. Her footwork is problematic in two ways. First, when the ball is too far, she doesn't get their soon enough. When it's too close, she gets jammed.

I'm trying to remind her to keep her feet moving. But that's going to take time, because she's accustomed to not moving the feet. I will say she manages to hit the ball at the very tip of the racquet more effectively than anyone I've seen, but that suggests she's not moving close enough to the ball.

One thing that I advised her the last time we played was to start her shots with her backhand. At the time, she started her rallies with her forehand, and was never hitting the backhand over the net. She might hit in 1 in 4 backhands successfully. By starting with her backhand, she at least can get one shot with no pressure, and I feel that's helped her get far more consistent hitting her backhand. Actually, before that, I noticed that her left hand was WAY up on the grip, and that simply looked awkward. She's been hitting it with her second hand touching her first, and that's added consistency too.

I'd actually like her to get her racquet back sooner on her forehand too, but her whip forehand, when she connects, has good pace. Again, if you hit too hard to her forehand, she ends up not hitting it correctly, but that's probably true of everyone.

So these days, I feel that her footwork needs improvement, and that she needs to figure out how to get a perpendicular face hitting the backhand. I might have her aim at the top of the net, when hitting her backhand. Honestly, I need a good video camera to see what's going on (on my own strokes too).

OK, I'll talk about Ravi, but it's much harder for me to critique his shots only because it seems like he's got the motion more or less correct. Unlike his wife, Ravi's forehand is very long. In fact, by contrast, it almost seems too long. At some point, I realized that it was so long, and he was trying to generate so much pace, that he was having trouble timing his forehand.

Ideally, I'd tell him to cut out most of the set up to his forehand and hit with less of a setup, but I feel the loop is eventually where he wants to go, so I didn't want to tell him to get rid of the loop (at least the part leading up to hitting the ball), only to tell him to add it back again. One thing I then suggested was to think of his racquet stroke in two parts, first, there was dropping the racquet down, then moving it forward. By thinking of it in two parts, the first part becomes more of a simple setup, and the second part is where he really hits. That effectively shortens the stroke, so there's less time and movement before hitting the ball. The idea is to simplify the stroke.

With the backhand, it's harder to spot the problem. Ravi alternately has his racquet pointing up and down. When it's up, the ball skies upwards. When it's down, it hits the net. He's again, whipping the shot, which gives pace, but he's not sure when the racquet head is up or down. I think he needs to mentally compensate. If it's too low, hit it a little too high next time. If it's too high, then hit it too low next time. I would probably suggest, similar to his wife, getting him to stop the racquet just at the point of contact, just to see where the racquet is aimed. This is a bit tricky because you really want the momentum of the racquet to carry the motion through the ball.

Since what's good for the goose is good for the gander, let me talk a little bit about my own stroke. When I started to hit topspin, I was working on the upward brushing action. Indeed, I hit upward so much that the ball lacked pace. I've been spending over ten years trying to flatten out the shot. In the past, I had very little means to analyze other people's shots. I used to try to use a VCR, and go slow-mo to see what the pros did. These days, a few intrepid souls have put slow-mo of Federer, Roddick, and so forth on the net, so I can watch it in slow-mo.

I have several issues. One, I tend to use only my forearm to hit the ball, using it to spin the ball. I notice most of the top pros keep their arm fairly straight (not quite lock step), with their wrist cocked, and swing fully, only letting the momentum carry the shot on. I've been trying to practice this for a long time (two months or so), and it's still not quite there.

Second, I need to turn my shoulders more. Most pros, on forehand and backhand, have a significant shoulder turn, and use the shoulder and upper body turn as much as the arm movement. Right now, my shots are landing very deep (too deep). So I still need to work on shoulder turn and depth.

I also realize, with today's lesson, that my toss is still inconsistent and too low.

So that's what I'm up to with my own strokes.

Easter Tennis

In the 70s, there was this notion that wives of rich men would go play tennis with some young stud tennis pro, and there would be some tryst, as the shallow young men were typically in it for the money, and the lonely wife wanted attention from someone more virile and attentive than their husband.

Implicit in this scenario is that tennis lessons are expensive (also implicit is that the tennis lessons didn't teach much tennis, but that's besides the point).

That's still true today.

I've had two private lessons, from two guys, which I'll call Mark and Joe. Joe's approach to teaching was more holistic. He believed in the racquet doing work, that the hand merely flings across, and its momentum would do the rest. I met Mark this morning before dawn, which had more to do with the prices of the court. While Joe has a deal with the tennis center he works at that allows him to charge the same price regardless of when he teaches, Mark charges based on the cost of the court at that moment. In other words, the tennis center he works at doesn't cut him any deals on court fees, making it more expensive at peak hours, and cheaper at non-peak hours.

Thus, I was up at a little after 5 getting ready for a 6 AM lesson.

Mark's approach is far more conventional. He suggests specific improvements in your game. We started off with my forehand, in which he suggested striking the ball with a straighter arm, and maintaining an angle between arm and wrist. He also emphasized shoulder turn. This is basically how I wanted to hit the ball, after starting at Federer hitting his forehand slow motion.

My tendency is to keep my elbow into the body and let the forearm and wrist do the work, which creates, I suspect inconsistency.

From there, we went to the backhand, where he wanted my arms straighter, and again, a bigger shoulder turn. This felt a little awkward, but I was able to make this adjustment better.

It's surprising how tired I was getting hitting 10-15 forehands in a row. I was literally winded from doing this.

On my serve, he noticed my toss was not that consistent, and wanted me to toss the ball higher.

I felt I was shanking the ball hitting volleys as well.

There's a second contrast between Mark and Joe. Joe thinks coming for lessons every once in a while (once a month or so) is enough. Mark prefers lessons more often, like every week, and more often, if I can help it. While I can "afford" it, I don't want to take lessons that often, partly because of the expense. If he had some deal where he'd do 4 lessons for the price of 3, then maybe. It goes back to the expense of playing that often.

Think of it. If I have a membership at a fitness club, that's say 50 dollars a month. If I have lessons with him once a week, that's 65 dollars a lesson or 260 to 320 dollars a month (depending on the number of weeks in that month).

I think I'll probably end up taking lessons with Mark, partly because of proximity, partly because his hours are all over the place, and partly because I like the specific advice I get, over the more holistic approach Joe takes.

I will say, during the lesson, I felt more uncomfortable with my racquet than ever, but mostly because I felt I was hitting on the wrong places in the racquet. I think I need to pay attention to the old adage of keeping my eyes on the ball.

Now, for some sleepy time. 6 AM is awfully early for me.

Tennis Channel's Central Court

Chris Myers is one of those sports guys who you feel you've seen forever, but don't know all that well. The danger of having a sportscaster host a tennis show is that he doesn't know what he's talking about. For many years, especially throughout the early 80s, tennis was broadcast like a second-tier sport.

By second-tier, I mean the tennis announcers assumed the audience was not a tennis audience but was a general audience, and that they lacked the patience to learn the sport. This made sense. There was no Google to query, no web to seek answers. Finding more about tennis required real research, possibly going to a real library.

I don't know how many times Tony Trabert had to explain the rules of the tiebreak. I'm sure the producers of the CBS shows asked him to do it over and over again. By contrast, baseball, basketball, and football never suffered from that. They never said "A field goal is worth 3 points. Most field goal kickers can only kick about 40-50 yards". But tennis announcers would talk like that.

Typically, they would pair an expert with a general sports announcers, whose primary responsibility was not tennis. Thus, Pat Summerall and Jim Simpson (who was Cliff Drysdale's early sidekick back before he paired up with Fred Stolle) and Al Trautwig (who paired with Mary Carillo to cover women's tennis in the early 80s) were needed to provide a common sports guy's approach to the sport. At times, the tennis expert was not particularly good. You might have Tracy Austin or Chris Evert, players that basically relied on their personal experience to tell you about the current players, but often had no idea how a certain player had played in the weeks leading up to the tournament. In other words, despite being top players, they weren't being professionals, doing background research.

Mary Carillo and John McEnroe really helped elevate some of the professionalism of men's tennis. McEnroe, in particular, would do his homework. It's not that Carillo didn't do it---she did, but that you wouldn't expect a world's former number 1 would actually do research. McEnroe had a good memory for players, matches they had played, and so forth.

So, historically, tennis coverage was spotty, and only in the 90s, did it begin to get better.

Central Court is Tennis Channel's interview show where players in various stages in their careers, from those that are in the twilight (Martina), to current players (Nadal), to up-and-coming players (Sam Querrey) are interviewed. Chris Myers shows he's done the research to find out as much as he can about the player, and that shows a respect to the tennis fan whose watching the channel.

What Tennis Channel is currently missing is a really good tennis instructional show. By good, I mean that they analyze how current pros hit the ball, and discuss how to hit the ball, and work with beginners to find out what issues they are having.

Beyond that, I've become more impressed with Tennis Channel, the more I watch. The commentary could be a little better (Leif Shiras and Jimmy Arias do the announcing). I like hearing Martina doing commentary, but mostly because she says what is on her mind. I'd say that McEnroe and Carillo are still the best at commentary. I miss listening to Fred Stolle and Cliff Drysdale gently rib one another. ESPN took a big risk putting two non-Americans (well, Drysdale did get American citizenship early on, but he was born in South Africa) as commentators, and leaving out a generic sports announcers (Stolle is Australian, but spent a lot of time in the US).

Admittedly, the channel has its hiccups. I was watching a Center Court episode with John McEnroe. After the commercial break, it went back to a different show. It's about instruction, I admit, but not entirely what I'm looking for.

Trying the Topspin Serve

Last night, it was supposed to be in the mid 40s, which I thought would be pretty reasonable. Chilly, but not crazy cold. It was pretty much that. Chilly, but not crazy cold.

I had been looking at YouTube videos on how to this the topspin serve and was eager to try it out. I need a bit more practice, but I found that I wasn't getting that much pace, which may be a result of either falling back on old habits, or that topspin serves are just not hit that hard.

One thing I was able to do better was to hit the serve while pronating the arm, but I can't consistently get the spin and trajectory right. That's what practice is for.

I should go back and try to hit the serve by "throwing" the racquet, since that was giving me better pace, and alternate back and forth with this topspin serve.

Get a Grip

I like this article demonstrating the various grips using the base knuckle rather than the classic "V".

Follow Through

I had been hitting my forehand in something of a classical manner, where the racquet would end up pointing forward after I hit the shot, but if you look at any photograph of any top pro hitting their forehand, whether it be Nadal or Roddick or Agassi or Federer, their follow through is amazing.

Literally the racquet will be either above their left shoulder or somewhere above their left arm. Indeed, there's a bit of wrist pronation going on.

Vic Braden once said that what you do after you hit the ball doesn't matter. He claimed the racquet can be all over the place. But that's much like saying a baseball player hitting a ball can do anything after they hit the ball. Indeed, they can't. Baseball hitters have so much momentum that the bat keeps moving far after they hit it.

You also see this with American football players when they run to tackle a quarterback. They want to hurt the quarterback so much that they run full-speed. However, an astute quarterback typically just takes a few steps forward, and the would-be tackler, running full-bore, completely misses his target. He can't adjust that quickly if he runs that hard and that fast.

Similarly, to get power, you have to really swing fast, and this motion needs to go somewhere, so it follows through over to the other side of the body. You see nearly all modern players striking the ball with tremendous follow through. None of that compact McEnroe shot making. It's especially important when you want to generate a lot of spin.

I find that thinking more about the follow through has helped me keep power on shots that are on the run, when I'm likely to be more defensive. You have to give the racquet a pretty good swing, and let the momentum carry the racquet on.

(And I haven't begun to talk about feet position, hip, shoulder, etc).

Are You Being Served?

The hardest part of tennis is learning how to serve. The amazing thing about professional players isn't so much the pace of their serves, though that's pretty amazing, but that they can get it in the court so reliably.

Just to give you a sense of how hard the serve is, watch some slow motion serves. Here's a link to the serve of Joachim Johansson. In case you don't know who Joachim Johansson is, he's a 6'6" Swedish tennis player with a huge serve. We're talking speeds that are comparable to Andy Roddick. I was watching some Davis Cup rerun with US against Sweden, and Johansson was making Roddick's life miserable with his serve.

OK, let's start with the arm itself. People often talk about a wrist snap when serving. It's more properly called wrist pronation, which is something Vic Braden pointed out. Most average players really have a hard time understanding this, much less hitting it properly. Basically, if you watch the pros in slow motion, it appears as if they are about to hit the ball edge on.

At the last moment, they pronate their wrist, and the racquet face is flat on for the moment it's hit, and then it flip over so the racquet face which had been pointing to the left (for a rightie), then flat on, is now pointing to the right. To get a sense of this, take your right hand and raise it above your head.

Then, have the palm point left. This means your thumb would be (were it ninety degrees to your fingers pointing straight up) pointing behind you. Now, turn your palm forward. Your thumb points left.

Then, turn your palm to the right, which is pretty awkward. Your thumb points forward.

This motion, when done really fast, is wrist pronation. I've heard the analogy of whipping very much like using a large thermometer.

The way to learn wrist pronation is to really simplify the motion and just think backswing, and minimal follow through (with the pronation). Very hard to get this right, but easier then adding all the other motion to the serve.

Beyond that, there's the knee bend, the location of the hips, the hip rotation, the backscratching position, etc. That is, your hips and knees also play a role in hitting a big serve, in addition to the hard part of wrist pronation.

The other thing I learned was to "throw" the racquet, which gives it acceleration all the way through. I'd often just worry about hitting it at the point of contact, and making it more from the elbow on up, rather than the rest of the arm. I used to know this guy, who, when he was young, played baseball. The ball throwing movement he was used to making made for a really powerful serve, so the analogy of "throwing" the racquet is not so far off (except I was never that good at throwing a ball).

What you often see the average player do is to push the ball forward using the wrist as a hinge. Compared to the proper way to hit a serve, it's far simpler, but not that great for applying spin, and also not great for power. While the motion of wrist pronation feels more natural the more your practice it, it certainly feels completely unnatural until you learn how to hit it properly. And of course, it's completely unintuitive, which is why the average player would never learn it on their own without having slomo video of top servers (and they wouldn't even know what to look for, and how to achieve that motion).

What's something of a relief is that Roger Federer is not one of the biggest servers in the game. His serve might be fifth best in the world or lower, behind Sampras, Johansson, Roddick, Isner, and a few others. But it is pretty effective, nonetheless, and he returns really well too. It's interesting to note that the top two matches in terms of aces with 55 and 51 aces respectively, the person who served the most aces lost. Even with lots of aces, it needs to be timed right. When you don't get an ace, you still need to win points. And there's still the return of serve.

Which isn't to say a powerful serve doesn't help. It helped Sampras, Lendl, McEnroe, Edberg, Safin, etc. But there are many players with incredible serves which helps them get in the top 50, or even the top 30, but not much further. As hard as Roddick hits his serve, he can still hit a pretty good forehand and backhand, otherwise, he wouldn't even be mentioned as a top player.

So learning a serve is pretty tough!

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.

Tennis Lesson

I've been taking tennis lessons since Ravi was taking them too, figuring I hadn't had lessons in a long time, and my game wasn't going much of anywhere in a long time either.

The first set of lessons I took were in a group setting, and it lasted five weeks. It reminded me of the kind of environment Nick Bollettieri has at his academy (Agassi, Courier, Seles, etc. all went to his academy). Kids run drills, hit a shot, get back to the end of the line.

I find that kind of hitting pretty stressful, because you have to get ready right away, then wait and wait, then hit again. It doesn't lead to getting your strokes "grooved", meaning, in a rhythm, so that you feel comfortable.

Over time, I began to think of these drills as more exercise, meant to get your movement down, and less about hitting the ball properly. If you hit the ball well, that's good, but if you miss, you just keep going on. Once you can forget about whether you hit it in or not, it works better.

Even so, we didn't get that much instruction. I found, as I was practicing, that my backhand isn't very good, nor is my serve. My serve has been improving some, mostly because I've been trying to get better technique.

During this time, Ravi would tell me about his lessons, which were also group lessons, and how his instructor would talk about throwing the racquet, and holding the racquet a certain way. I wasn't sure what to make of it.

Thanksgiving weekend arrived and our instructor decided to take the weekend to visit relatives and such and cancelled the lesson. So I decided to take a (pricey) private lesson. And it turns out the guy teaching that was Joel. Joel's got huge dreadlocks, and is pretty chatty, but gave a lot of ideas to think about.

In particular, he talked about throwing the racquet as well. What he meant was to let the momentum of the racquet do the work. That's an interesting visualization as people tend to "muscle" the ball, which causes their arm, ironically enough, to move slower, and this idea of throwing was meant to make it move faster, and more relaxed.

I should say that "throwing" isn't quite the right visualization. You don't throw it per se. Instead, as you swing the racquet, you let the momentum carry it through. The idea of throwing it means that you make sure the momentum is pretty high.

We also worked on simplifying my backhand some, getting down some, and again, letting more of the momentum do the work. I also did this on my serve, and the pace seemed a lot better than I was used to.

I think Joel's advice worked better than I expected partly because I tend to be over-analytical about my own shots. I'm sure some people hit and don't know what they do. I try to think about how I hit my shots, how my take back should be, and so forth, and tinker with it from time to time. Lately, for instance, I've been trying to emulate more of an Agassi backhand, which is short and compact, at least in the takeback.

I was also trying to work on the pronation of the wrist that people claim is needed for a good spin serve. It didn't occur to me to hit it with more of a forehand grip as I was more of a backhand grip player (having modeled it somewhat like Edberg's serve). It felt awkward, but the spin was reasonably good, so I was a bit surprised. I might have to experiment with that some more.

All in all, though the lesson was twice as expensive, it gave me some nuggets to think about.

Too bad it's getting cold. Hope I find some time to practice.

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.