Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Tennis, Anyone?

While editing a piece for an author to whom English is a second language, I stumbled on a statistic that shocked but didn't surprise me.

Ready? Forty-seven percent of adults who take up tennis in the United States quit within a year because they are frustrated. Tennis is too hard to learn.

Now, these are adults, so we can assume that they have made a substantial investment. But they cut their losses and quit.

I can see it now – tennis players polishing their nails over this fact. But it is nothing to be pleased about.

Maybe the only reason some stay with tennis is because we are anal-retentive and will waste time and effort just to get a pat on the head from our local pro.

Like I said, this statistic shocked but didn't surprise me. I've always known that tennis is too hard to learn. Needlessly hard to learn.

Yet, when voices in the industry tried to make it easier by introducing the larger ball, they were met with an eruption of hollering from the tennis crowd that wants tennis to be hard to learn so they can wear this feather in their cap.

Go figure. Then they whine that the decline in tennis is due to Pete Sampras not acting up enough. We need another American bad boy, they say.

Baloney. Tennis fans are tennis players. And if there's a lack of tennis fans, it's because there's a lack of tennis players.

And the lack of tennis players is largely due to the way tennis has traditionally been taught.

Timothy Gallwey proved this beyond all shadow of a doubt during the Tennis Boom of the 1970's with the blockbuster The Inner Game of Tennis.

What was the tennis establishment's response to the whole world crying, "Yes! That's it! That's it! That's exactly what happens to me!"

A thundering silence.

I get a kick out of folks who think you didn't say something if they act like they didn't hear it.


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