Remember your first tennis tournament? Were you nervous? Did you perform well?

Or have you avoided tennis tournaments because of how you feel when you think about entering them? Fear, nervousness, anger?

I remember my first tournament as an adult. I was nervous and played poorly until I got my nerves under control.

To paraphrase the Bard “There is nothing scary, but thinking makes it so”. Whatever your feelings about a tournament, it is your ‘thinking makes it so’.

If you think of a tennis tournament as a way for you to be publicly embarrassed, you’ll play below your best.

But if you think of a tournament as just another match, perhaps followed by another match, you’ll be much more relaxed and able to play your best and enjoy yourself.

A number of my students are playing in their first tournament this weekend – The City of Fernandina Beach Spring Singles Tennis Tournament.

When I was done writing up my pre-tournament email to my list of students, I realised there are some good fundamental tips that could help all tennis players entering a tournament. So here they are.

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My Zen Tip for your first tournament is to focus on process, not outcome. Focus on HOW (process) to play your best, not the SCORE (outcome).

For example, instead of focusing on future focused outcome thoughts such as

“Oh dear, it’s my first tournament, I don’t want to look stupid”

“oh oh, I’m x-x down, don’t screw up”

“I’m x-x up, I HAVE to win this game!”

Focus rather on present time process thoughts such as

“move your feet”

“loose wrist, follow through”

Or our favorite go to present time standard

“Bounce, Hit”

Stay in the present and focus on process and you’ll have a good time and play well.

Enjoy.

Paul

My picks for the possibly exciting games for the first round:

Djokovic / Troiki – Djokovic hasn’t been at his tempestuous best, and Troiki can hit a good ball. I see Djokovic through in 4.

Bagdatis / Clement – Clement is no slouch, but Bagdatis has been getting better and better. Watch his cross court backhand passing shot for perfection, beautiful! Great shot maker, but a bit slow around the court. Bagdatis in 4.

Hewitt / Mathieu. Watching Hewitt is great. He’s such a fighter, and getting better and better after coming off his injury. I see him meeting the Fed in the third round and it being a good to great match. Hewitt in 3 or 4. He likes to get a feel for his shots.

Gulbis / Chardy. Gulbis is ALWAYS entertaining to watch. He’s like a combination of McEnroe and that crazy eastern European guy I can’t remember the name of. He’s got crazy good shots and ability, but his head gets in the way. Once (if) he gets his head straight, he’ll be top 10. This one could go either way, depends what mood Gulbis is in, but I give it to him on form coming into the Open. Gulbis in 4.

Nadal will breeze through to the ¼ finals. Nalbandian and Murray are the ones to watch out for. Mardy Fish (US) could also make a good play for the quarters or even semis if he keeps up his good form. He had Federer on the ropes but failed to deliver the final blow in the Toronto (or was it Cinncimati) tournament.

You can’t play good tennis without good mind control.

That’s one of the reasons I love tennis so much – it teaches you mind control through instant feedback. If you’re not concentrating on the ball when you prepare for a stroke, you’re not going to hit it well.

The first rule of good tennis is to concentrate on the ball. We all know that and we try. But there is subtle interference from the ego that is sometimes difficult to catch and eliminate. It’s what causes you to play so well during the warm up and then tank as soon as the match starts. The cause and solution to this problem is is what we will look at in this article. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the reason’s I like tennis is it can tell you what you’re feeling, who you are, and what pressure you’re not immune to. Your tennis game is like a personal barometer.

There are the days when your game…..well…..it sucks. For reasons unknown you can’t find the court. You wonder why you ever started playing this stupid game.

But if you’ve been reading this site, or books like Timothy Gallwey’s “Inner Tennis”, you have probably accepted the difficult fact that sometimes you can’t get away with blaming your racket, the balls, the weather, or anything external to yourself.

Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and look inside at those shadows in the closet that changed the way you were thinking or feeling without you even noticing it.

But now you have to notice it, because there it is. The easy mid-court ball you put wide. The second serve that just won’t go in. The easy volleys that hit the fence or the net.

Time to take a look inside and see what’s going on there. Something is. And the sooner you face up to it and deal with it head on, the sooner you’ll get back to playing your tennis.

Federer is often mentioned as the best watcher of the ball onto the racquet in tennis. But you can’t be a good tennis player without watching the ball well – lots of other players do it well too.

Watching the ball is such an essential fundamental, but it is not really practiced. Normally the coach just says “Watch the ball!”

The simplest way to trick yourself into watching the ball is Timothy Gallwey’s bounce hit exercise. It’s super simple and it works really well. All you have to do is say “bounce” when the ball hits the ground, and say “hit” when your racquet hits the ball. You’ll probably notice your timing is a little off when you first start this exercise, but after a while you’ll notice more balls go in as your timing improves.

Here’s a super slow motion video of Almagro and his lovely one handed backhand from the 2010 French Open Quarter Final against Rafael Nadal. Straight arm at contact out in front of the body, and watching that ball all the way onto the racquet

As a tennis player, you spend a lot of time out in the sun. So it is a good idea to make sure you’re not doing something that will cause you health problems later in life.

There is a lot of information and disinformation about the effects of the sun and skin cancer and vitamin D. And it is now officially “Sun Protection Month” says the EPA or FDA or something.

I’ve done a lot of research on this topic. Of the many sources of information is Dr Mercola, at www.mercola.com. He is a source I trust highly. He has a large body of strong research and information worth looking at.

I’m not going to bore you with all the research I did.

What I will do is tell you that I have a Bachelors degree in Physics, so I am not unfamiliar with the scientific method, nor with how research can be skewed to prove anything you want. I also throw in some common sense with my scientific research – for example, if the sun is bad for us, how is it that there is no real record of skin cancer amongst indigenous people?

DISCLAIMER: I should put in a boring disclaimer to prevent being sued, so here it is. I am not a licensed doctor, so clearly I am an idiot and you shouldn’t trust anything I say. If you die from getting exposed to sun, that’s your problem. I am not giving medical advice, only a federally appointed agency could possibly know what is best for your health and you should leave it to them and the companies that give them money to tell you what is best for your health.

Ok, enough said. Not sure my lawyers will like that disclaimer, but lawyers are never really happy are they?

Rules for sun exposure.

1. Sun is good. Start out really slow (just a few minutes a day) and build up to 20 minutes of full sun a day. Keep the sun off your face, especially the eye area where the skin is thin and easily damaged.

2. Too much sun is bad. Too much sun is anything that makes you more than a little bit pink the day after. Big red sun burn is a big no-no.

3. UVB is good for you – it helps your body create Vitamin D which is increasingly being discovered to be a major player in MANY vital body functions, most especially the immune system. Vitamin D is actually a steroid hormone, not a vitamin, and affects over 2000 genes in your body.

4. UVA is bad for you. The highest relative UVA radiation is found at the beginning and end of the day, and in cloudy weather. So getting sun exposure is best done when the sun is high in the sky and there are no clouds. Yes, I know. That’s the opposite of what you’ve been told. Also, sunlight passing through windows has almost only UVA, i.e. sun through windows is bad.

5. Sun creams are mostly bad for you. The only safe skin protection against the sun that I am completely comfortable using is micro-fine Zinc Dioxide. Titanium Dioxide is a close second. Clothing is of course a completely safe option. Oxybenzone and all the other chemicals usually found in sun creams do more damage than good. See this article – “Study: Many sun creams may be accelerating cancer”

6. Don’t use soap on your skin for 48 hours after exposure to the sun. It takes your body 48 hrs to metabolize Vitamin D

Summary: Everything the establishment tells you about sun exposure is wrong, except for the part about not getting a sun burn. Getting limited sun exposure and avoiding getting burned when the sun is at it’s peak has many health benefits.

Enjoy the sun, but don’t over do it!

See you on the court.

Paul

Check out my 15 milliseconds of fame in the paper…I’m in the top left.

Autographed copies available for (Dr Evil voice) one meeelllion dollars….

Local Tennis News - Yulee Fernandina

Tennis String News – I’ve been testing the Unique Big Hitter poly strings.

They’ve got rave reviews as being as good as or better than Luxilon, which is the most popular poly with the professionals.

I’ve got to agree! They’re great. Lots of pop, tons of spin, and good feel too. They’re not as hard as the Babolat Revenge and Hurricane Pro and most other stiff polys, which is good news for the shoulder and elbow.

Let me know if you want to give them a try.

As I’ve said in my lessons, when you approach the net you do 2 things.

1. Split step as your opponent hits the ball

2. Stamp your front foot and the racket down at the same time as you strike the ball

But as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, so here is a moving picture of Andy Roddick doing exactly what I told him.

I’ve put it on loop playback so you can visualize yourself doing it while watching.

I mentioned it in my article on tennis elbow, but as I get further through this 300 page book, I’m more and more amazed at how good this stuff is.

If you have any pains or weakness in muscles or joints, it’s worth your while to check this book out, or at least visit this site. The magic word is “Trigger Points”

I won’t go into the detail – it is all on the site above. I’ll just tell you that what happened to me today, and espouse that logic says if the treatment you’re having for your tennis elbow or golf elbow or plantar fascitis or turf toe or whatever is not producing results, then it obviously doesn’t understand the root cause of the problem. I’m all about fixing root causes, not killing the messenger (taking pain pills, steroids or anti-inflammatories)

Anyway, to cut to the chase. Tennis elbow is caused by inflammation of the tendons at the elbow right? WRONG! The painful elbow is most often a secondary effect, not a cause. Read the rest of this entry »

“Love your opponent, because without your opponent you couldn’t lose.” I’m not just talking about tennis….