October 22, 2006
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That Most Important Tip Jim McLennan Tennis is the game for a lifetime. Meaning, not only that one can age gracefully playing this game for many, many years, but equally if not more importantly, the multiple facets and aspects of the game will take a lifetime to master. And no matter how much you improve, every time you move up a level of play, there will always be a new pool of opponents to test your newfound skills. This new pool of opponents may just push you to add yet additional skills to your bag of tricks. In this newsletter, we want your feedback. We want to know what tip or feel has dramatically changed your game and where or from whom it came from. It will be interesting to catalog the replies, and might create a dialogue within these newsletters for future topics. In my own game, I have had many coaches, played on high school and college teams, and competed in hundreds of tournaments. Over the years, as my game grew, there were many small steps taken and also a few large ones when a technique seemed to totally re-orient my game. Two in particular come to mind. In both instances, these techniques would (I believe) have been less valuable had they come either sooner or later, but in both instances they were appropriate to the state of my game at that particular time. First was a contract, more or less, with Tom Stow and Jim Irwin: Take the net on all second serves from the opponent. And all meant all – every darn second serve became an opportunity to take the net. The idea was to apply force to the weakest point in the opponent’s game. But really, what happened, and would happen for you (if the time is right within your own game) is that I got a lot better at taking the ball on the rise, a lot better at timing the split step, and a lot better at knowing where to volley, when to angle, when to float it, when to snap it and when to fade it. Really, the contract was to learn how to play the net, nothing more or less, but in a systematic and repeatable manner. Learning any skill will always be about the “reps” and on this one there were many many reps. The second standout technique that really changed the way I play tennis was the gravity turn I learned from Don Kerr. He was able to clearly show me the difference between a jab step and a gravity turn (see library) but more importantly, I could clearly feel the difference, and the learning of this move was actually fun. It took quite some time to integrate it into my game, but once mastered, it has become so much easier to move about the court. I can feel it, I can see it in others, I can see it when players use it on television, and it makes good sense (at least to me). But again, we want to hear from you on this one. What thought, tennis tip, prompt or feel has dramatically improved the way you play? (Click link to purchase Jim's McLennan's Secrets of World Class Footwork Video.) As always, we would love to hear from you! Questions, comments, personal experiences all create helpful dialogue for everyone! Please click here to send us your email.
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