Words from the Coach
Hi tennis fans! I have been thinking about writing this for a very long time now.
Through the years of teaching and especially my many years here at The Club at Rancho Niguel, I feel I have plenty to tell. The Club is a beautiful place and I have had the privilege to teach many wonderful people here. When I came here from Sweden, I had played often and worked with girls who were on the women's tour. I knew about the basics but through the years I have learned many tricks from the books and as well as tricks outside the book.
Tennis has evolved since I started as an 11-year old kid. The grips, the stands, the swings and the tempo are quite different. And like everything else in life, tennis is EVOLVING. Thank goodness. But for some of us it might be difficult to relearn some things because once we think we got it, the new things could become a threat to our egos and ourselves.
We need to understand it. The best way to understand it is by doing it. So if possible hit the ball with different grips and in different ways. To have any experience what all these different techniques will have an effect on one's game. Then we would really know and then we could compare what is good FOR EACH ONE OF US. There is a general way of teaching to most of the people that we meet, but there are always exceptions. Then we need to adjust teaching in a slightly different way than we normally would in order to achieve that person's full potential. But as a coach, I don't make that person who is an exception a general rule nor do I stop trying to get that person to use the best possible healthy strokes and to play the best possible tennis game. One may say that that person is an un-orthodox player and he or she should be messed with. It's all about the timing anyway.
If the coach says these things, it could be that he can't teach anything else or he doesn't want to for whatever reason.
But I will explain the reason why I do the things I do. The truth is that I am not the tennis coach I was 10 years and I know I will not be the same coach the next 10 years because I will not be the same person because I choose to grow. Once a person thinks he got it all that is when it will slip away.
Stay hungry, stay sharp and new ways will open up.
