Tom Stow for Tennis Editor of the Year…?

No, I’m not talking about Creative Writing 101 and how we should edit out all of the garbage that we typically add to whatever it is we write about (I know, I’m as guilty, if not more so, than the next human out there with zero editing skills, but blah, blah, blah…).

But, what I am saying is this.  As a tennis teaching professional, I think Tom Stow had the best knack of helping his students eliminate the stuff that got in their way of producing fundamentally sound strokes.

You know, a tennis editor.  (OK, so it’s a bit of a stretch, but stay with me here…)

Let me tell you just a little about Tom Stow and how he helped me go from an average club slice and dicer to a national senior doubles champ in less than 5 years.

And I’m not doing this to brag on myself, I’m doing this because I want you to get the same picture Tom gave me when he first allowed me on his teaching court.

So here’s the deal…  As 2007 comes to a close, I started doing what I usually do at the end of a year, and that’s to reflect a little on what I’ve learned this past 12 months about my tennis, my students’tennis, and what’s worked and what hasn’t worked in terms of how I try to articulate this game to others…

And the common theme for me at the end of every year always ends up at Tom Stow, the guy who taught me how to play and teach tennis.

To me, Tom was like the greatest editor of all time.

You’d show up at his teaching court and he never really”added” anything new to your game. 

He “edited” your game. 

And I’ll be the first to admit that I fought that concept for quite awhile. 

I was convinced that I didn’t really have the so called fundamentals of the game, that there were some hidden sets of secrets that he was going to give to me and that I was going to have to work extremely hard to incorporate them into my game.

It took me about a year with Tom to figure out that every time I said to myself “it can’t be this simple” was when I should stop fighting trying to re-invent the wheel and to allow this man to show me just how simple the game should be.

He always gave me this feeling that I already had everything I needed to be a decent player, but that I was in fact getting in the way of myself way too often.

He would just take a little away from here, eliminated something else over there, cut down a bit here, scolded you when you tried to show a little extra flair that didn’t do a thing but just show off, and eventually he would leave his students with a foundation of pure (not artificial) fundamentals for strokes and strategies.

So, I want you to think about your game a little for a moment and how 2007 went for you in terms of improvement.

Not that we have to always be working on getting the next huge forehand ripper ever hit at the club, but are you
looking at your game with an eye for becoming more efficient with your stroke production?

Are you in fact trying to “add” another layer of improvement on top of a foundation that is already in need of a little cleaning up?

It’s not an easy thing to evaluate.  But could you begin to look at your game with an eye for eliminating things that inhibit your strokes?

I look at Federer and Sampras and Agassi and think of their brutal efficiency in terms of using their opponent’s incoming ball speed to assist them in their stroke production.

I don’t sense that those guys are rarely ever in need of “fighting” the ball.  They use lots of grips, lots of swing shapes, lots of different racket speeds, and all of those things are based on what’s appropriate for the ball that’s coming into their strike zone.

I don’t get that feeling with Roddick or Nadal. 

I’m going to spare you the agony of me not going to off on a rant about extreme grips, etc., but I really want you to consider what’s necessary with your strokes and what gets in the way.

What Tom Stow gave me was to think about tennis stroke production as “less is better than more”.  And if I worked at improving the “less” part, I would in fact get more.

I’d played a ton of baseball as a kid, and Tom tapped into that by having me imitate specific baseball skills that translated over to the fundamentals of tennis.

To this day I still feel like I’m picking up a short hop in baseball, allowing the ball to come into my glove as I move my feet threw the catch without artifically reaching out in front to make that catch, the same way as I do when I play a half volley.

One of his more common instructions / comments to his students (well, at least to me anyway was to say “That was really artificial”.  Meaning, you don’t actually need this or that to produce that heavy forehand or whatever it was we were working on at that time.

What stroke(s) could you focus on next year, 2008, and think about what things you do that get in the way of what are the true fundamentals of that stroke?

What can you cut away that will allow those fundamentals to work as they should?

So, as I look back at 2007, I come to the same conclusion that I seem to every year.

And that’s to continue to master those teaching skills that will help you better understand what you need and what you don’t need to hit the tennis ball over and over again as cleanly as humanly possible.

(I just read this to Mai and her first words were “That’s kind of a really long article, isn’t it”? 

Like, maybe I should do a little “editing”…!  Too late now. 

OK, here’s what I’ve got for you.  Tom Stow wrote his tennis teaching manual back in 1948.

It’s my Holy Grail for reference.  If this book is not in your libray, it should be.

I encourage you to start 2008 with an attitude that “less is more”. 

There are specific stroke fundamentals, that if not clouded by unncessary actions, will clean up any stroke and make you a better player.

I have reproduced Tom’s book, The Tom Stow Tennis Teaching System, into a PDF file that you can download, print out, and immediately start understanding and applying what are clearly the fundmentals of the game’s strokes.

You can also order the CD version if you prefer not to download.

As with all of my instructional products, you get a 100% lifetime satisfaction guarantee.

BONUS Lesson - That’s right, claim your copy of Tom’s book and I’ll also reserve a copy for you of my newest lesson, “Passing Shot Strategies”, at no additional charge.  Yep, that’s a 2fer, 2 for the price of one.

When you place your order, The Tom Stow Tennis Teaching System PDF eBook will be available for immediate download.  Brent’s “Passing Shot Strategies” will be sent to you on or before January 4, 2008.

Claim your copies of The Tom Stow Tennis Teaching System
and Brent’s newest lesson, Passing Shot Strategies, by clicking here now.

Brent

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My recent post on the Sampras serve tossing motion got lots of feedback.  I appreciate all of you taking your time to write back.  Always gets me thinking about how to best get my points across and to help you better understand how to get better with your game…

And the one thing I want to always make sure you’re considering is that pure swing mechanics can be practiced and improved upon, but in the end, perfecting those mechanics doesn’t always mean you’ll win each and every point when you serve.

Of course you want to insure that there aren’t any major flaws in your serving mechanics, but trying to get them absolutely dead perfect doesn’t guarantee success.

I don’t think you’ll ever be able to serve “just like Pete” did back in his glory years (or probably even before or after!), and that’s not the point, the goal here is to improve upon a few simple fundamentals that allow you to serve with a purpose.

And that purpose doesn’t have to be where you have to serve in such a way that your opponent can never ever return it.

The big thing for me on the serve is to decide what the purpose of the serve is, and I’ve always felt that the serve is just a simple approach shot.

Either I’m going to play serve and volley where my serve is literally my approach shot, OR if I want to serve and stay back on the baseline, I’m going to serve in such a way that I’m hoping my serve can produce a short or weak return of serve that will allow me to then play my approach shot, OR my serve will pull my opponent wide into their alley where I can then play my approach shot into a big open court.

It doesn’t always work out that way where my serve ends up outside of my opponent’s strike zone either because that particular serve didn’t produce my intended result of direction, spin, depth, etc OR because my opponet simply guessed right as to where I was going to serve and was waiting for it.

But I don’t ever measure how I’m doing by each and every point.  I try to keep the big picture in perspective, and just because I spin a serve out wide for example and my opponent rips it for a winner, that doesn’t mean I won’t go out there again either the very next point or later in the match.

Lots of players try one serve strategy (placement, depth, pace, spin, etc.), get burned, and figure that they can’t go back there ever again.  Wrong.  And I’ll admit this to my opponents right here and now that if I get burned on a point that I’ll most likely go right back to that same place the next time because my opponent is probably thinking I won’t go there again because of what just happened the point before.

If nothing else, I want to make sure I’m never fearful of serving to a specific spot in any given situation and I want my opponet to know the same thing.  I want to maintain that perception in their mind that I’m in control, not them, and to keep them guessing as to where I’m serving this next point.

In any case, I’m looking at my serve as the first shot in at least a two shot sequence.  I don’t ever stand up there and tell myself I’m serving an ace, a one shot wonder.

Like an approach shot, I want to play it in such a way that it’s obviously not a complete set up for my opponent, that it’s probably not going to be an outright winner, and that I’m always thinking I’m most likely going to be playing at least one more shot after my approach (serve in this case).

So my mindset on my serve is to feel that I get zero benefit from rushing through the toss, the hit, and the finish in hopes of hitting an all out winner, an ace.  If I aim my serve to a target as I might with an approach shot and it happens to become a winner, then great, but I can’t put pressure on myself to decide that this serve is going to be an ace.

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The point of this little rant is to think of the serve mechanics as what they do to help my serve become what I want it to be, and that’s a simple approach shot.

Even if I’ve decide that I’m going to serve and stay back, I still want to finish a step or two inside the baseline just in case my serve really stretches out my opponent (or my opponent anticipated one direction and my serve went to the total opposite direction) and I can now see that I’ve got a much better opportunity to move forward rather than staying back.

Too many players think their serve has to be this all or nothing weapon rather than as a opportunity that gets the ball out of their opponent’s natural strike zone by either stretching them out wide, jamming them close to their body, and/or getting their serve to bounce up and out of the strike zone.

Let’s be honest and real…  The chances of any us being able to develop a serve “just like Pete’s” is absolutely zero. 

However, a lot of this is relative in that we’re not having to serve to Andre so we don’t need a serve just like Pete’s even if we could develop one.

So, I’d rather see my students think of their serve as a shot that helps them #1 play a ball to their opponent that hopefully gets out of their opponent’s natural strike zone and minimizes the chances that their opponent is going to be able to tee off on our serve on a regular basis.

It’s going to happen from time to time, obviously, when our opponent rips a return that we either can’t handle or is an outright winner. 

But if they’re able to do that on a consistent basis, either our opponent is guessing where we’re going to serve every time and/or our service motion is telegraphing our target. 

You don’t have to have the biggest serve of all time to be able to get your serve consistently out of your opponent’s strike zone.

If I know where you’re going to serve, and even if you have the biggest serve in the western U.S., if I know where it’s coming, the effectiveness of your serve as a tool to get the ball out of my strike zone goes way, way down.

Being able to mix up your serve’s direction, speed, and spin depending on the situation in that particular service game and the set is an art of serving strategy. 

I might show a serve placement strategy early in the first set only to possibly set up my opponent for future points later in the match if needed.

Or later in the match I will remember where I’ve served in this particular situation before and either go back to it or mix it up.

It sort of depends on my opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, and those things such as their strengths and weaknesses may slightly change throughout the match. 

And a lot of it is just a simple guessing game.  I’m trying to think what my opponent is thinking that I did in the past, what I might do now, and blah, blah, blah…

But back to my original point.  We can get incredibly caught up in each and every tiny detail of every mechanic of the serve’s tossing motion and other apsects of the serve.

I can’t tell you that everyone’s serve should look just like the next player’s serve. 

But, there a few specific mechanics that make it easier for you to play your serve as an approach shot or an eventual approach shot. 

And an important result of those mechanics is to be able to “look” the same to your opponent before you make contact while at the same time being able to produce different serve directions, spins, etc. from that same “look”.

A fundamentally sound tossing motion can help you disguise your intended target. 

Pete was a master at that and his opponents would regularly state that it wasn’t necessarily his raw power that made his serve so good, but it was Pete’s ability to force them to guess what kind of serving was coming and where.

His superb tossing motion helped him do that and, I believe, his fearlessness to serve to the same spot even if he’d just been burned by his opponent on the prior point.

If my approach shot (my serve in this case) directions relate to different setup positions, then from those different “looks”, I’m telling my opponent exactly where my shot is about to be played and I lose the advantage.

I want you to think about what Tom Stow used to always tell me about learning the strokes, and that is, you can learn every stoke mechanic by starting from the finish position.

If you know what you want your result to be at the end, then the stuff that happens prior to that will be easier to understand.

For me, the end result I want on my serve is to come out of my service motion on balance and either moving forward as an approach shot or being ready to move forward if that approach shot oportunity immediately presents itself.  I don’t ever think of my serve as if it’s going to be a winner, an ace. 

I can’t tell my opponent what they can and can’t anticipate and force them not to move towards my serve direction.  If they guess where I’m going with my serve and I still hit my big bomb there, it won’t be an ace and I’ll mentally feel like I’ve failed, even if just slightly.  I don’t want that mindset…

Think of your serve grip, your tossing motion, your toss placement, swing set up position, pronation, etc., etc., as how it helps you achieve what you want for your end result, and to me, that’s thinking of my serve as a simple approach shot in either singles or doubles.

Do I always serve and volley in singles?  No, but like I said before, I always want to be ready to take advantage of an unintended opportunity if it presents itself.

If you’ve made it this far in this post, what can I say, let’s move forward, get into the net, and force our opponent to pass us. 

Nice going…! 

Brent’s Current Lessons – Discover how to get up to a 40% discount!

Pick up your copy of Brent’s 3 Magic Moves of the Serve

Did you miss Brent’s analysis of Pete’s tossing motion?

Click this link to see Pete’s Tossing Motion lesson by Brent (Flash video)

Brent

To me, Pete Sampras had arguably the best serve of all time, and the reason I say that is not just because it was one of the game’s all-time great weapons, but as a teaching pro, there are elements of Pete’s serve that are easy to copy and model…

Here’s a Flash video I produced that analyzes Pete’s tossing motion on his serve.

If you’ve picked up a copy of my serve lesson , then you know just how important I think a proper tossing motion is not only for consistent toss placement but also for getting set up into the best possible hitting position.

Click this link to see Pete’s Tossing Motion lesson by Brent (Flash video)

Pick up your copy of Brent’s Serve Lesson