Bailey’s Blog

Tennis is a game of hands, eyes, head and feet and combining these 4 crucial elements into a beautiful synchronized whole.

What d0 I mean by this?

In relation to hands you need to be able to impart various spins on the ball and get the racket into position early. It is the hands and wrists that help you feel the ball and put the ball where you want it to go. It is the hands and wrists that will create great swing mechanics.

In relation to eyes, you need to watch the ball, your opponent and anticipate where the next shot is going by reading the clues and cues you are presented with. It is the eyes that help with great contact points and hitting at the right height. (strike zone)

In relation to feet, hips  and legs, if you can’t reach the ball you can’t hit it and it is your feet,hips and legs that set up the stance, give you balance + power, an explosive first step and help you recover for the next shot

In relation to the head, well this is where the strategy comes from, where the emotions and self belief evolve and most importantly the love of the game and a never die attitude.

Can you ever say which is more important? I don’t think you can!! All you can say is that someone that has has a great eye, sound swing technique, is mentally tough and a fantastic athlete will normally  be a great player.

I always like to look at these 4 elements when and error is made i.e.

1.) was it a swing error?

2.) footwork/balance/stance error?

3.) contact point/reading/reaction error? or

4.) focus/attitude/emotional error?  

I was watching the latest “Fame” movie and loved one of the quotes from one the teachers to his students and thought it really applied to tennis. “Fame” is a movie about a bunch of students studying their chosen profession be it acting, singing or a music at a New York performing arts school.

The teacher was talking to his students who are busy practicing a set piece of music but one student is off on his own tangent and not focused on the task at hand. The teacher says-

“Study, drilling and technique do not stifle talent they free it!”

So in other words if you are a student of the game, if you train properly and professionally with great attention to detail (good progressive teaching with no short cuts) then you create an ability to be instinctively creative on the court.

You become ”Federer free” (Roger Federer’s’ greatest strength is he is so spontaneous,reactive yet relaxed when playing). But you know what!!….this strength is never free it is a earn’t through very hard yet smart studying, drilling and technical work.

The next three blogs are taken from 2 great tennis autobiographies and relate to fitness and footwork. The books are “Pete Sampras- A champions mind” and “Open” by Andre Aggasi. Both are great reads!

This first blog was a simple but interesting  method that was used to develop Sampras as a junior (at this stage he was eight years old)-

Robert Landsdorp was his forehand and ground-stroke guy

Pete Fisher was his serve coach and overseer of Pete’s development

Del little was a local coach but was the footwork and balance specialist

Larry Easley was the volley coach

He would play matches 3 times a week and play tournaments on the weekend

What I found interesting about this is that tennis is notorious for not having specialist coaches. They do in so many other sports why not tennis?   

“A terrible thing in tennis is when you start losing your legs. If your legs get heavy and you lose the spring in them than your game inevitably declines. You no longer get up as high on your serve, and you don’t get that explosive step to the ball. you don’t move corner to corner effectively, or change direction that well. And when your opponent sees that, he uses it as emotional fuel, even if he’s also tired”

When Andre Aggasi first meets Gil Reyes (his fitness trainer and mentor for over ten years) there is something that Gil says that makes lots of sense to Andre. The conversation was about his fitness training-

Gil: How much do you run each day?

Andre: Five miles.

Gil: Why

Andre: I don’t know

Gil: Have you ever run five miles in a match?

Andre: No

Gil: How often in a match do you run more than five steps in one direction before stopping?

Andre: Not very.

Gil: I don’t know anything about tennis, but it seems to me that, by the third step, you’d better be thinking about stopping. Otherwise your’e going to hit the ball and keep running, which means you’ll be out of position for your next shot. The trick is to throttle down, then hit, then slam on the brakes, then hustle back. The way I see it, your sport isn’t about running, its about starting and stopping. you need to focus on building the muscles necessary for starting and stopping!

Andre laughs and tells Gil that “that might be the smartest thing I’ve ever heard anyone say about tennis”

When you are born you will share your birthday with 15 million people

During your time at school, by the time you are 10 years old you will have an average of 17 friends, by the time you are 40 years old you will have an average of 2 friends

Throughout your life you will grow 950 kilometers of hair and laugh an average of 18 times a day and walk an equivalent of 3 times around the world

You will eat 30 tonnes of food

Drink 9000 cups of coffee and have a 1 in 10,000 chance of being accidentally electrocuted

Throughout your life you will spend 10 years at work

20 years asleep

3 years on the toilet 

7 months waiting in traffic and 2 and 1/2 months on hold

You will spend 12 years of your life watching television and 19 days looking for the remote control

This leaves only 1/5th of your life LEFT FOR LIVING so …….YOU BETTER GET STARTED!!! 

As a footwork teacher I realise that not all children are as coordinated or gifted as each other - the reasons are varied, it could be a physical thing, a social thing or a confidence thing. But, from an early age you can see who are really going to make something of themselves because there seems an innate sense of achievement within them.

In tennis I think of what Steffi Graf and Rafael Nadal must have been like as students….They don’t LACK - they’d rather try than lie! If you hit a ball anywhere on the court they would bust there guts to get to there….this is what I look for ….(you know, you can’t send a duck to eagle school!)

Great achievers are great students, they are always a pleasure to teach…..they make the lesson easy and are a joy to teach. If they fall over they don’t look around for sympathy they brush themselves off and get up…they don’t stay down.

If I could teach only one thing to every child in the world it would be this-

“Failure is not the worst thing in the world. The very worst is not to try”

There is such a strong habit by some children to quit when overcome by temporary defeat or when something pushes their boundaries. I want to see students who have stickability not quitability….. that is realy all I can ever ask! It is not about talent…it really is all about attitude!

Lack of effort = Failure

If I could teach the perfect  maths lesson I would teach that the only angle to approach life is the TRYangle approach, because teaching children to count is important but not as important as What what counts!

Quote: “To try and fail is at least to learn. To fail to try is to suffer the inestimable loss of what might have been”.

The greatest curse in life is to catch the disease of lazy-itiss!   

“The best defense is active offensive”

Tennis should be an equal  combination of

W - What you Want to do

S - What you Should do

C - What you Can do

What you want, should and can do will have a profound effect on you playing style and preferred footwork selection and contact moves.

Simply put:

What you want to do relates to - tennis playing personality

What you should do  relates to - smart shot selection  

What you can do relates to - what feels comfortable and works for you

If you get a chance to watch any movie that will inspire you about being passionate about your career,  making a difference and backing your beliefs please watch the movie called “Patch Adams” starring Robin Williams

It certainly inspired me….especially the speech below.

Just briefly, the movie is a TRUE story and about a self institutionalized depressed patient (Williams) who while hospitalised discovers he has a gift for helping people. He leaves the hospital, enrols into university and becomes a medical doctor, but really struggles with the way hospital patients are treated and spoken to. He treats patients (with happiness and kindness) in a way that is seen by the powers to be (medical fraternity) as being  radical and damaging, so he ends up having to face a panel of influential doctors to tell why he should be allowed to practice medicine. This is part of his inspirational speech below:

“I want to become a doctor so I can serve other, and because of that I have lost everything but I have  also gained everything. I’ve shared the lives of patients and staff members at the hospital, I’ve laughed with them, I’ve cried with them…..this is what I want to do with my life and as God is my witness, no matter what you decide today….I will become the best damn doctor the world has ever seen!

You have the ability to prevent me from graduating, you can  keep me from getting the title and the white coat, but you can’t control my spirit!!

 Gentleman, you can’t keep me from learning, you can’t keep me from studying, so, you have a choice….you can have me as a professional college, passionate, or you can have me as an outspoken outsider, still adamant…..either way, I will still be viewed as a thorn, but, I promise you one thing….. I am a thorn that is not going away!!!”

 Dear readers,

The movie “Patch Adams” is a about always being true to yourself and that is a great lesson right there!

Enjoy the movie

DB