Chapter One: The Typical Tennis Lesson

Imagine what goes on inside the head of an eager student taking a lesson from an equally eager new tennis pro. Suppose that the student is a middle-aged businessman bent on improving his position on the club ladder. The pro is standing at the net with a large basket of balls, and being a bit uncertain whether his student is considering him worth the lesson fee, he is carefully evaluating every shot. "That's good, but you're rolling your racket face over a little on your follow-through, Mr. Weil. Now shift your weight onto your front foot as you step into the ball... Now you're taking your racket back too late... Your backswing should be a little lower than on that last shot... That's it, much better," Before long, Mr. Weil's mind is churning with six thoughts about what he should be doing and sixteen thoughts about what he shouldn't be doing. Improvement seems dubious and very complex, but both he and the pro are impressed by the careful

analysis of each stroke, and the fee is gladly paid upon receipt of the advice to "practice all this, and eventually, you'll see a big improvement'.

As a new pro, I too was guilty of overteaching, but one day when I was in a relaxed mood, I began saying less and noticing more. Errors that I saw but didn't mention were correcting themselves without the student ever knowing he had made them. How were the changes happening? Though I found this interesting, it was a little hard on my ego, which didn't quite see how it was going to get its due credit for the improvements being made. It was an even greater blow when I realized that sometimes verbal instruction to a conscientious student seemed to decrease the probability of the desired correction occurring.

All teaching pros know what I'm talking about. They all have students like one of mine named Dorothy. I would give Dorothy a gentle, low-pressure instruction like, "Why don't you try lifting the follow-through up from your waist to the level of your shoulder? The topspin will keep the ball in the court'. Sure enough, Dorothy would try with everything she had. The muscles would tense around her mouth; her eyebrows would set in a determined frown; the muscles in her forearm would tighten, making fluidity impossible; and the follow-through would end only a few inches higher.

At this point, the stock response of the patient pro is, "That's better, Dorothy, but relax, dear, don't try so hard!" The advice is good as far as it goes, but Dorothy does not understand how to "relax'.

Why should Dorothy or you or I experience an awkward tightening when performing the desired action which is not physically difficult? What happens inside the head between the time the instruction is given, and the swing is complete? The first glimmer of an answer to this key question came to me at a moment of rare insight after a lesson with Dorothy: "Whatever's going on in her head, it's too damn much! She's trying too hard, and it's partly my fault'. Then and there, I promised myself I would cut down on the number of verbal instructions.

My next lesson that day was with a beginner named Paul who never had held a racket. I was determined to show him how to play using as few instructions as possible; I'd try to keep his mind uncluttered and see if it made a difference. So I started by telling Paul I was trying something new and I was going to skip my usual explanations entirely to beginning players about the proper grip, stroke, and footwork for the basic forehand. Instead, I was going to hit ten forehands myself, and I wanted him to observe, not thinking about what I was doing, but simply trying to grasp a visual image of the forehand. He was to repeat the image in his mind several times and then just let his body imitate. After I had hit ten forehands, Paul imagined himself doing the same. Then, as I put the

racket into his hand, sliding it into the correct grip, he said to me, "I noticed that the first thing you did was to move your feet'. I replied with a noncommittal grunt and asked him to let his body imitate the forehand as well as it could. He dropped the ball, took a perfect backswing, swung forward, racket level, and with natural fluidity ended the swing at shoulder height, perfect for his first attempt! But wait, his feet; they hadn't moved an inch from the perfect ready position he had assumed before taking his racket back. They were nailed to the court. I pointed to them, and Paul said, "Oh yeah, I forgot about them!" The one element of the stroke Paul had tried to remember was the one thing he didn't do! Everything else had been absorbed and reproduced without a word being uttered or an instruction being given!

I was beginning to learn what all good pros and students of tennis must learn: that images are better than words, showing better than telling, too much instruction worse than none, and that conscious trying often produces negative results. One question perplexed me: What's wrong with trying? What does it mean to try too hard?