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| Welcome to the October/November 2017 update from Tennis Server, http://www.tennisserver.com/
Greetings,
In our October/November edition of Tennis Server, Ron Waite discusses strategies and techniques for improving your volleys. See: Volleying in the Modern, Groundstroke Era. Then he addresses the importance of good timing to produce winning groundstrokes. See: Timing is Everything in Groundstrokes.
And John Mills explains the importance of having a good kick second serve in your tennis arsenal. See: The Second Serve. Then he addresses what to do with yourself when life's circumstances make it impossible to play tennis. See: Just Do It!.
And in his columns in this newsletter below, Tennis Warrior Tom Veneziano discusses "Children and Tennis Genius," and he provides "A Mental Reminder" on how to master the art of forgetting your mistakes and moving on.
With the holidays just around the corner, remember that tickets to see the best tennis players in the world, live and in person, make great holiday surprises for the special people in our lives. Check out the Tennis Server Ticket Exchange for tickets to the 2018 US Open, Miami Open, BNP Paribas Open, and many other professional tennis events around the world.
And don't forget to check out the Tennis Server's online Holiday Ticket Gift Guide for all the best concert, sports and theatre events over the next year to give your loved one a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Have fun on the court!
Cliff Kurtzman
Publisher and Editor-in-Chief
Tennis Server
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The Tennis Warrior - Exclusive to Tennis Server INTERACTIVE
Tom Veneziano |
The Tennis Warrior is brought to you by Tom Veneziano (tom@tennisserver.com). Tom is a tennis pro teaching at the Piney Point Racquet Club in Houston, Texas. Tom has taught thousands of players to think like a pro with his Tennis Warrior System.
October 2017 -- Children and Tennis Genius
This lesson is dedicated to junior tennis players, but adults take note too! Juniors tend to practice and play more consistently throughout the year, but whether you're an adult weekend warrior or a junior full-time competitor, the mental and physical pitfalls are the same.
Let us start by looking back at a child, six or seven years old, beginning to play tennis. We'll call her Tina. Tina is excited, motivated and ready to roll. She can barely hit the tennis ball, but that does not matter. Hand her a racket (which is often bigger than she is), guide her onto the court and let mom or dad feed her some balls. Fun stuff! Not much instruction is given except to find that elusive little yellow ball and hit it anywhere, even over the fence if she can do it! Tina, not being self-conscious or intimidated by failures, views hitting over the fence as a dandy idea. Mom says hit it over the fence. I can do it!
A few years go by and Tina is now eight or nine, still swinging away, still delighted with the game. We can see some major improvement in her play. She is playing instinctive, relaxed tennis, mostly because she is having fun and does not care too much about results. By this time, not only is Tina making some excellent contact with the ball, but more balls are landing in the court. Yahoo! "Who cares, send me another ball," Tina exclaims. "Okay," says mom, "but be patient, I can only feed one ball at a time." Soon mom is panting with exhaustion from feeding ball after ball after ball. Excited Tina yells out, "More, more, I want more! Why are you stopping?"
By ten or eleven years old, Tina is displaying a natural knack for hitting a tennis ball. She is still playing loose as a goose, and a surprising number of balls are landing in the court. At this point, the parents decide Tina should learn to do everything "correctly," so they begin giving her technical instruction. When that fails to help, they send her off to an instructor. Now, they figure, she is really going to learn tennis.
Mechanics to the rescue! How else will they save this child from herself and from her carefree, childlike play? She certainly cannot improve with that carefree style. No way! She needs exact techniques to accelerate her game and improve. In following this misguided guidance, Tina's mental attitude is forced to make a dramatic shift: her automatic, fun, instinctive, carefree tennis coming from the inside switches to robotic, exact, technical, restricted tennis coming from the outside. Anyone want to guess the outcome?
I would like to stop here to make a point. The child innocently knew that her carefree, relaxed, spontaneous play was the way to go. Her game was improving in due time. She needed no overdone technique, no over-thinking, no second guessing. Just hit, hit and hit with childlike abandonment. Improvement was taking care of itself.
Adults, listen carefully. That is what you have lost. You have lost that carefree, childlike play with no fear of missing, no fear of hitting over the fence and no fear of just letting go. You must find your way back to that childlike thinking, but with an adult game. This is the greatest lesson you can learn from junior players before they are harnessed by overdone mechanics. Their instinctive, spontaneous, relaxed, carefree, automatic play is genius. Absolute genius. So what do we do? We tell them they can't do that anymore.
Okay, back to you juniors. You need to know that being a good, excellent or great tennis player is internal, not external. It is not about going to some dynamic academy in another state or country. It is not about tracking down the best tennis guru or master pro level-five coach. It is mental. It is about your personal decisions to do what it takes. No coach can make you great, only you can. Yes, a coach or a camp can guide you, give you direction and encouragement, but that's it. The rest all comes from YOU. The thousands of decisions you make (most of which involve a relentless drive to hit tennis balls) come from you. I don't care if you are taking lessons from the mighty Fed himself, if you do not have the will to prepare to win, you are not going to make it. And guess what? When you are self-motivated to practice, practice, and keep practicing, you can learn to play incredible tennis anywhere. Your location is not the deciding factor in excellence. Your thoughts, your choices, your willingness to drive yourself: these are the deciding factors. In any case, wherever you go, whether to a Camp Excellence or to a simple neighborhood court, you always bring YOU along.
Juniors, you knew the secret when you were very young. Improvement came from hitting and hitting and having fun. It was internal! Getting better was about you doing what it takes to get better. Now, all of a sudden, you are looking for something external to make it happen. What has changed? Great play is still about effort, and effort comes from the inside. Being great at tennis is internal, not external.
From the beginning, in your childlike freedom to play and play and play spontaneous tennis, you juniors possessed the blueprint to be great players. No need to change the game plan. You know what to do, now just do it! And while you're at it, tell a few adults along the way... you will make my job much easier!
November 2017 -- A Mental Reminder
A phrase I use often is "the next shot is more important than the last mistake." Forgetting a mistake and moving on is essential to playing more relaxed, automatic, and instinctive tennis. It is more important than the mistake itself! Unfortunately human nature has trouble moving forward after failure. This malady is universal. We all know that in order to succeed we must make mistakes, yet we have a difficult time applying that wisdom when we are failing.
To remedy this, you must practice forgetting mistakes and moving on. Here is a plan to help you. The next time you make a mistake, do not attempt to make any correction or analyze what you have done wrong. Just forget your mistake and move on to the next point. If you begin thinking, "If I had done this or that, I would have made that shot," ignore those thoughts and continue on to the next point.
But how are you going to make corrections and improve if you do not analyze your failures? Good question! Here is an even better question: How are you going to improve if you are always searching for a reason behind every failure? Many players slow down their progress because they are overanalyzing their failures instead of accepting them as part of the journey toward success. In their analysis they are actually seeking comfort: finding a reason why they failed makes them feel better about the failure, which makes it feel easier for them to move on.
Now, please do not misunderstand me. I am not saying you should never analyze. What I am saying is, most players analyze too much and recover much too slowly. They want reasons for every failure. How about this reason - you just missed!!! Accept it as part of the game and quickly move on to the next point.
Let me repeat what I stated earlier: the recovery from the mistake is more important than the mistake itself. Since recovering from the mistake is more important than the mistake itself, you should invest more time in practicing those recoveries. This is my challenge to you. For one month, do not, and I repeat, do not analyze any of your mistakes. Just move on to the next point. Play like most pros play! Most pros quickly move on from their failures and are immediately ready for the next point. They realize how crucial this is to their long-term success. So I challenge you for one month to do what most pros do automatically.
After you have mastered the art of forgetting your mistakes and moving on, then you can analyze your game. At this point you should be able to analyze without over-thinking every failure (a terrible pitfall we call "paralysis by analysis"). Keep practicing those smooth recoveries and you will begin to see many new mental options open up that you did not even know existed. You will have a glimpse into an arena of wisdom where few dare to journey.
Your Tennis Pro,
Tom Veneziano
Previous columns from Tom Veneziano are archived online in the Tennis Server's Tennis Warrior Archive six months after publication in this newsletter.
   
In Tom Veneziano's book "The Truth about Winning!", tennis players learn in a step-by-step fashion the thinking the pros have mastered to win! Tom takes you Step-by-step from basic mental toughness to advanced mental toughness. All skill levels can learn from this unique book from beginner to professional. No need to change your strokes just your thinking. Also available at a discount as an E-Book.
Audio CDs by Tom Veneziano:
Recent Tennis Server Columns
Drills and Tips: Turbo Tennis by Ron Waite
Ron Waite |
In his October column, Ron discusses strategies and techniques for improving your net game. See:
And in his November column, Ron discusses the importance of proper timing in the game of tennis. See:
Player Tip: "Tennis Anyone?" by USPTA Pro John Mills
John Mills |
In his October column, John discusses the importance of having a kick second serve in your tennis arsenal. See:
And in his November column, John discusses what to do with yourself when life's circumstances prevent you from playing tennis. See:
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See you on the courts,
--Cliff Kurtzman for Tennis Server INTERACTIVE
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