How Tennis Myths Get Formed

Get someone who has never played tennis. Put him or her on the center mark. Hand them a racket. Then go to the other side of the net and hit them the ball.

What will they do?

They will instinctively move to a point directly inline with the approaching ball, as if to catch it.

Woops. They aren't supposed to catch it; they're supposed to hit it. But they are in the way of their swing. In fact, they can't really swing at a ball coming straight at them. They can't hit it forehand. About all they can do is block it back with a one-handed backhand.

Now, at this point, what does the instructor do?

He corrects them. In fact, the instructor overcorrects to make sure the student understands that they must swing off to the side of the body, not directly in front of it. "Turn sideways." The next thing you know, he is demonstrating, "See?" and he takes a completely closed stance. "Look, my toes are pointing toward the sidelines."

Ah, now the student sees what he means.

A million tennis instructors do this to a billion students so that the "Turn-sideways" mantra echos round and round the world a trillion times. No one dares blow against that wind. Therefore, soon it's conventional wisdom that the "right" way to hit the ball is from a closed stance. Nobody tested this theory. Nobody even analyzed it.

It became "true" the way most things do (including many false ones) - just by being repeated ten zillion times.

The original instructor hears this and thinks, "Jeez, ain't I smart. That's exactly what I've been telling my students to do." So, what he originally intended as only a bit of overcorrection to fix a problem now become Gospel in his eyes.

But note that all that was needed is for the student to swing off to the side of the body, which means positioning at a point alongside the ball's flight path (as opposed to right on it). This can be done from an open stance too, especially on the forehand side.

But it's so much easier to just tell the student to turn to the side.

That's how it happens. That's how bad conventional wisdom gets going. And this is what creates the myth that there is some precisely "right" way to swing.

But there isn't, not any more than there is some precisely "right" way to walk. Left to our own devices we all learn to do it in a very similar way, but no two people have exactly the same walk. And nobody obsesses about how to do it "right."

Part of the problem is being too quick with instructions. I've taught both in the classroom and on the court. I've taught swimming as well as tennis. Believe it or not, it was in biology labs that I learned to hold back and let students discover as much as possible on their own. The benefits of that are too numerous to mention, but I will mention the big one: SELF CONFIDENCE.

So, here's how that lesson should have gone.

When the student makes that mistake on the first ball you feed, what should the instructor do?

Answer: shut up. Just hit them another ball.

Bingo, you just taught them to do it right.

Through Natural Learning. Because that student isn't brain dead. He or she is well aware of the problem, and the brain is programmed to fix problems like that all by itself. That's how we learned to walk and talk - through trial and error, not by following verbal instructions. Natural Learning is mostly half-conscious and subconscious learning, but it's learning and it works.

By setting up students to learn things naturally, you greatly reduce the number of verbal instructions you have to give; you greatly accelerate learning; and you greatly reduce the chances of giving any questionable advice.

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