Tennis is a game of virtuous and vicious circles. I hit a great forehand and that emboldens me to hit another great one. I miss badly, that renders me insecure, and so I execute my next shot tentatively and screw up even worse. Up the good ladder, down the bad one … Today my practice […]
In tennis, ‘transition game’ usually means shots from midcourt where you turn defense or neutrality into offense. You get a short ball and switch to the attack. That’s not how I’m using the term here. I’m using it in this context: I’ve come to recognize a painful truth. I’m a very different player when I […]
You probably know the expression, ‘Less is more.’ It applies to tennis and much more. Today I asked myself: In what ways is this true for tennis? Because we can probably agree that the game is like the proverbial onion that you can keep peeling, layer after layer. Beneath all that, though, it ultimately reduces […]
Although I’ve taken a break from focusing on tournaments, I continue to work hard at improving my technique. Yesterday I identified a sort of trick — not quite the right word, more like a piece of mental sleight-of-hand — that helped immediately. I made a conscious effort not to watch the ball. That’s right — […]
After I lost my quarter-final match at the New England Slam a couple of weeks ago, I headed off to a nearby cafe and treated myself to a modest repast of two pecan squares, a piece of raspberry-crumble coffee cake, and an iced latte with no restrictions on the sugar other than its being Sugar […]
A core psychological issue keeps me from being my most uninhibited self on the tennis court. It revolves around fear of rejection by the group. It’s a deep and ancient issue for me — call it my personal demon. If I could excise it — or, since we’re talking demons, exorcise it — that would open me […]
