I found my love of tennis late in life, and as with most things in my life, the path to getting there is amusing and circuitous. In early 2005, I went to Romania to visit my dear friend, Jenny. She had taken up tennis while living there as an ex-pat, apparently business meetings in Romania are conducted on the tennis court, much like they are conducted on the golf course in the States. Anyway, she told me I was going to take lessons, whether I liked it or not (I had been leaning towards the latter). She had an amazing coach — a formerly world-ranked player and coach of the Romanian National team. I spent a week taking lessons from him, and fell in love with the sport. I came back to the States and took some classes, but it wasn’t the same.
A few years went by, I got to Seattle, and decided to try again. I remained frustrated by the poor level of instruction, and quit again. Mastery requires lots and lots of repetitions, and the way these programs are structured doesn’t really allow for that. It’s not sexy, it’s not fun, and it takes a lot of time — but it’s the only way to truly get good at something.
The past few weeks I’ve been wanting to pick up a racket again. I found a playground (thanks, Kaboom!) that has a big concrete wall, bought a few tennis balls, and spent the afternoon outside, just practicing my forehand and backhand against the wall. It felt great to get out there, and I was actually able to spend time just working on the things I know I’m not good at. I also spent quite a bit of time working on ball tracking, and making sure that I watched the ball as it hit the racket.
If I had to pick the one thing that made the most difference it was the eye tracking. We talk about it at S-Phase, but I haven’t done any ball sports since then. But, it’s totally true. Every time I watched the ball hit the racket, it was a strong, powerful stroke. Good stuff!
About Jen Waak