Tips Don’t Work Part One

I’ve played tennis my entire life and I can tell you from experience that tips (and drills) alone don’t work. For example, “Get your elbow up higher on serve” or “unit turn on the forehand” and “extend out to the hit” are all reasonable commands in any typical lesson, but they are in and of themselves woefully incomplete – and therefore prove basically useless to most players looking to improve. At worst, the tip is just bad advice. More often, a tip is incomplete, rendering it relatively useless, unless it is in context with the entirety of the stroke – and will not help you with the improvement you’re hoping to achieve.

I can’t tell you how many players come to me after years of lessons and relentlessly looking online for “tips and drills” because they feel they never really move the needle with regard to their game. Throughout the Juniors I latched on to any and every tip imaginable but they never really made any transformative difference. Some tips might help me be a bit more consistent like “throw your left (non-hitting) hand back” on my one-handed backhand, but it didn’t really change my stroke. In fact in many ways, that stand alone tip constricted me in other areas such as power and spin.

You know how players either got it or they ain’t? Well I’m here to tell you that if you “ain’t got it” tips and drills won’t “get it” for you. Natural athletes don’t think – they just do. Thus began the term “dumb jock” or referring to great tennis as playing “unconsciously…in the zone.” Of course the rest of us think, because we have to. To get what these God-gifted athletes have you must understand the essence of what they do. In short, you need a blueprint of the higher balance and coordination of those who “got it.”

This blueprint is finally here and available to anyone open to learn. They are the 3 core  fundamentals of a natural athlete and they can make available to you the strokes of the world’s best players … And yes, you can play that game. Remember: you don’t know what you don’t know.

How can a player do more than make minor improvements that are temporary? How can a player actually transform their game – from being a self-conscious, mechanical-looking participant who tries hard to someone who is graceful, powerful, controlled and seemingly effortless? Definitely not through tips and drills. Just ask yourself. All the lessons and tips (and practice/drilling) how much differently do you play now from several years ago? Until now that higher level tennis was only available to those who “got it”, “the haves” and not the “have nots.”

I’m here to tell you that there is however light at the end of the tunnel.

‍