I received a nice email today from one of your fellow WebTennis.net subscribers who complimented me on employing a fellow tennis coach to help me with my own tennis game.
Here’s what I had to say in response to that email…
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Hi Bill and many thanks for your email and kind words.
I really need someone like Michael Wayman to continue to reinforce the fundamentals into my brain.
Michael was a top tour player from England back in the 70s with wins over such players as Gene Mayer when Gene was #3 in the world.
One of the things that has always stuck with me from the coaching I received from Tom Stow a long time ago was to continue to work on the fundamentals so nothing in my strokes or movement is “artificial”.
Tom couldn’t stand any movement (swing shape, footwork, etc.) that appeared to him to be unnecessary.
Unnecessary meaning that it might even distract from being able to apply a stroke or footwork fundamental.
Michael helps keep me in line with the fundamentals, and I’ve always thought that if you continue to work on them, you’ll get better.
So many players out there have this perception that the fundamentals, the basics, are only for beginners, and that there must be some “magic bullet” that only a few really good players understand.
Maybe it’s just an excuse to not have to get into that practice mode where it can seem as if there is no tangible improvement at times if not most of the time.
Lots of us tend to fight the practice – improvement relationship. It’s taken me a long, long time to stop trying so hard to measure how I’m doing with my practice and improvement.
The more I simply “keep working”, don’t look for the improvement, and trust that improvement will eventually show up, the more I actually get tangible results somewhere down the road.
Our culture these days, even with those of us over 60, tends to lead us to a quick fix expectation.
Ain’t going to happen…
The reality is that none of us will ever (at least in this lifetime) completely master each and every fundamental of the game.
That’s not a negative, it’s for me simply an acceptance that there’s nothing else I need to work on other than a specific fundamental today.
Thanks again Bill for your email. Have a great day out there…! Brent
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