Concentration
Learning is a habit that can be acquired. There are certain great aids to learning that any good coach or teacher knows, and tries to instil in a pupil at the very beginning. Chief among them is concentration.
A person who really learns to concentrate, so that the mind does not wander to extraneous things during study, can do a job in about half the time that the person of average attention can. In tennis, concentration is vital to learning the game-and, once learned, even more vital in playing it. The man who keeps his mind fixed on his match at all times puts a tremendous pressure on his opponent.
Anyone who ever played against Frank Parker, or, in the old days, Rene Lacoste, knows what a tremendous strain is placed on him by the unwavering pressure of concentration from across the net. I have always believed that it was his lapses of concentration at points in every big match that kept Frank Kovacs from reaching the absolute peak.
Most people only actually and accurately hear about half of what is told them, and guess at the rest. Unfortunately, in learning the fundamentals of the game, half is not enough. The first thing every young player should learn to do is listen intently to all that is told him. Once he has really heard it, then comes the big job-he must translate the words into action. His mind must govern his muscles to follow the directions. The greater the concentration of the mind on the job, the quicker is the groove of physical control established.
What so often happens is a quick superficial learning, followed by the inevitable reaction that comes from thinking the thing is learned before the actual groove is set. Every coach sees it and should help his pupil guard against it. The first day or two in teaching a new stroke sees a remarkable improvement in the pupil. The novelty of it holds his interest and keeps his power of concentration high, so that progress is easy to see. The third day usually brings the relapse.
The novelty has worn off, the physical groove has not yet solidified quite enough to hold, and the interest is probably slightly waning as the pupil wants to get ahead to something else. Result: concentration slackens, mind wanders, and the physical responses are unco-ordinated and undisciplined. That is the moment when the wise coach and the clever pupil pull the whole picture together by added concentration, and start to form the sound habit of learning.
Concentration, and only concentration, will lift the pupil from the rut. There are many pitfalls that lie in wait to trip the player who allows his concentration to wander while he is learning the fundamentals. He may grow careless about keeping his eye on the ball, changing his feet, controlling his weight, getting his racquet head back, or deciding on his shot and its direction. Failure of any one of these will cause him to make errors.
The concentration that has become instilled so deeply that it becomes almost instinctive allows a player to make specific decisions in plenty of time. The first great fundamental of tennis is to train yourself to concentrate so that you never stop concentrating while on the court. This applies when you are learning the technique of the game, when practising shots or playing in practice, but above all, when playing matches.
Practice
Young players dislike to practise shots today more than anything in the game. Once they have the general technique in hand, they are willing to let their instinctive sense of hitting a balI develop their shots rather than go through the grind of practice-of hitting the same stroke over and over again until mechanically it is almost instinctive.
That is why one sees so few players today with real control, yet such practice is necessary to achieve a complete command of technique. Frank Parker, as a boy, spent hours daily just practising shots, which is why he has held his position near the top of the tennis world so many years. Rene Lacoste, the morning of the day he met Jean Borotra in the finals of the United States Championship in 1926, spent one solid hour standing on the court tossing lobs until he could drop a balI within a foot of the baseline.
That afternoon Borotra rushed the net, only to chase those lobs back to the baseline time and again. So deadly was Lacoste’s control of the lob that he ran through Borotra in three straight sets. It is the willingness to practise, as Lacoste and Parker did, that is lost today, and must be regained if we are to develop players of absolutely top rank. Only by complete concentration on the job at hand can such work be done and done right.
The Racquet Head
Before I turn to the actual fundamentals of stroke production, I want to go into what is of almost equal importance, sine e it applies to all strokes in tennis, namely, the all-important fact that it is the head of the racquet and only the head of the racquet that returns a ball in tennis. Only by proper and early preparation for a shot is it possible to use that racquet head correctly.
Power-speed and pace-is controlled completely by the manner in which the head of the racquet is swung against the ball in hitting it. Body movement and weight are secondary to, though interrelated with, the racquet swing. The player who will always have his racquet head hit the ball solidly and travel directly into and through the line of his shot will always have complete control of his strokes.
If he is able to do this at all times, he is even able to hit off the wrong foot with good results, as Fred Perry does on his famous forehand. The reason that correct footwork is so vital to good stroke production is that correct footwork furnishes an automatic way to bring the racquet head into a position to hit directly into and through the line of the stroke.
Once the feet are so placed that the body is in correct position, the less deliberate body movement or foot movement there is, the better provided the player hits freely with the head of his racquet and does not cramp his swing or shorten its are by compensating with a wrist wriggle. Service, drive, chop, and smash need only the free arm swing that sends the head of the racquet directly into and through the ball on the line of the intended shot.
The volley alone should not carry the long follow-through of the racquet head. The greatest tennis motto I know is “Let your racquet head do your work.” There is no need to tie yourself up in knots to hit a balI hard, or to control it. Just swing your racquet head through the ball at the place you want it to go. It will go there, quickly, or slowly, according to the speed of your racquet head.
The natural question is: How do I always get my racquet head ready to use in this way? That is where the early preparation of shots comes into its own. Have you ever noticed that you never see a great player look as if he is hurried, no matter how short a time he has to reach a balI, or how far away it is? Yet all the second-string, mediocre players are always scrambling around, scurrying like scared rabbits and working themselves to death. That is because the great player prepares his shot on the way to it while the lesser player starts to prepare it when he reaches the ball.
Preparation for a Shot
The secret of preparation for a shot lies in taking the racquet head back the moment you see where the shot is coming, and holding it in readiness until the time comes to hit the ball. Watch such players as Perry, Riggs, Budge, Kramer, and Parker, and see how they take the racquet back as they move to the ball.
The effect is as if the racquet head pulled them into position, instead of their taking position and then moving the racquet. Henri Cochet, the great French star, is a perfect example of this. He almost seemed to aim his shot into your court .by using his racquet head to decide on his direction. When I take up the individual strokes, I will speak more fully of the method of early preparation, but as a generality of stroke production, I cannot emphasize too strongly the value of it. It is the secret of all those amazing “gets” that thrill a gallery when a player, running at full speed, reaches a shot that seemed far out of his reach, and passes the net player or hits a dean winner.
He made the shot because he took his racquet back on the way to the ball, so that when he arrived all he had to do was swing it forward to make the stroke. If his complete preparation had not been made prior to arrival, he would have been unable to swing into the ball and would have been too late to hit it effectively.
There are many ways to prepare shots according to the type of stroke you decide to play, but the same principle, getting the racquet he ad back and ready on the way to the ball, holds true for all. Only the volley, in which the racquet head is carried forward in front of the body so it can meet the ball quickly, is an exception to the rule, but even the volley calls for the same careful preparation on the way, and the same relationship between the racquet head and the ball is present.
After all, the gut is put into the racquet to hit the ball with, and that alone will return the ball. So get your racquet head in position to use the gut effectively, and it will help you keep all the unnecessary movements out of your shots.