December 1, 2007 
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Just Keep Swinging David Smith, Senior Editor TennisOne
When ditzy Dory told Marlin, the tentative and overly cautious father of Nemo in the movie "Finding Nemo," to “just keep swimming,” she was focusing not on the small minutia of all the problems that faced Marlin in locating Nemo; she was emphasizing the act of not quitting. In tennis, players often are subjective creatures, always criticizing themselves when a shot does not behave in the manner in which they hope or expect. Often, when a shot is hit into the net or out, the immediate subjective response is, “Ohhh, crap,” (or something to that effect!). Or, even when players reach for an objective retort, they often err in their evaluation. That is, they might hit a ball in the tape and think that they did something wrong mechanically, usually looking for some flaw in their stroke. I will often test this theory in clinics and lessons. After a player missed a shot, usually one that was only out by a few inches or in the net tape, I will ask, “What did you do wrong?” The player almost always will say something about the grip, swing path, footwork, or follow-through. “I think I took too big of a backswing,” or, “I didn’t brush up enough” or “My follow-through was weird.” Get the picture? Yet, in many cases, the stroke was just fine. It's just that the student didn’t aim two inches higher! Had the player hit the ball into the court in the desired direction, I could ask the same question, “What was wrong with that?” And the student, of course, would probably answer, “Nothing. It went in.” You can see how result-driven we can become as tennis players. And these results dictate our level of confidence and, as such, affect the way we hit subsequent tennis balls. When Michael Jordan was having a bad night of shooting basketballs, he never quit shooting. He kept putting the ball up over and over with the belief that he could hit ten in a row at any given moment. Magic Johnson was asked after missing a wild, last second shot to tie the game whether he really expected the ball to go in. Magic's response, "I expect them all to go it." Great players of any sport perform with this same confidence: they expect great things. Obviously, we don’t all have the grace and athleticism of a Michael Jordan, a Tiger Woods, or a Roger Federer. However, I have trained enough ordinary individuals and I believe the vast majority of them can indeed reach and succeed at high levels of play. The problem with the many who never reach these levels is, quite frankly, themselves! Too often, we let our emotions dictate our play and we start swinging with the utmost care and tentativeness. Out of fear, we avoid shots that we should be attempting and we become the dreaded “dinker” we wanted to avoid being at all costs.
This does not mean we have to swing big on each and every shot. However, we need to learn to trust ourselves and let our abilities emerge. Timothy Gallwey’s book, "The Inner Game of Tennis," delved into the concept with Gallwey’s discussion about “Self One” and “Self Two,” with Self One being the talker, the subjective evaluator and Self Two being the “Doer,” the part of us that does things without much conscious thought. Self One is the one who trash-talks, saying things like, “You are terrible; you choke on every point.” Self two is the one that executes our movements without subjective appraisal. The point here is that Gallwey, and many others since, have identified that these subjective evaluations diminish our confidence and begin to affect our performance. While the learning processes of tennis are always part of the game, we must not let our inner critic undermine what we are capable of achieving. That can prohibit us from playing well within our current abilities. There are many articles on “mental tennis” in TennisOne Lesson Library designed to help students do just that: play the quality of tennis we are all capable of. Check some of these out and see if you can learn to go out and be like Marlin who, thanks to Dory, learns to trust his instincts…even if her accurate wisdom comes from an inaccurate mind! (Click link to purchase Dave Smith's Book Tennis Mastery, at tenniswarehouse.com.) 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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