| UC |
 |
|
photo/courtesy
of UC Athletics
|
Start
with the fundamentals.
Go to a qualified professional and take some lessons. Otherwise you are
just practicing mistakes and grooving bad habits. There is no shortcut
to being good. You have to practice correctly. If you mess around in practice,
that's what will come out under pressure. If you are going to be successful,
you have to be fit, eat properly and be well rested.
Two things
you must do. Watch the ball closely, and get your racket ready
as quick as you can. You can't get your racket ready too early, but you
can be too late. Good players are preparing their racket for the return
as they are running. Then they just have to pull the trigger.
Decide on
the proper racket. Get a qualified professional who has demonstration
rackets, and find the one that feels best to you. When I was playing,
I used a Jack Kramer Autograph Wilson. Wilson made mine to my specs. Nowadays,
with graphite, you have a lot of choices. The size of the head, how tightly
strung, the size of the grip.
Wrist mechanics
are key. Use very little wrist-action for groundstrokes, and
use the maximum wrist-snap for your serve and overhead smash.
Don’t
try to copy a pro. Players are all different. Work on your
own style, but incorporate good fundamentals.
Have fun.
The best thing a parent can ask a son or daughter after a match is, "Did
you have fun?" Not, "Did you win?" The quickest way to
turn kids off is to force them to play. It is like forcing them to go
to church as a kid. When they get old enough, they don't go back.
Tony Trabert won the NCAA singles title while
at UC. He went on to capture three of the four Grand Slam singles titles
in 1955 -- the French Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. He and Jimmy
Connors are the only players to amass such a year in the last 47 years.
He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in '70 and
has worked as a television commentator on tennis for the last 30 years.
LINK: Read more about Trabert on CBS.
Next page l Grave Words of Wisdom | LIST
