What I Learned from the Inner Game of Tennis: Part 4

In this series we have been looking at Tim Gallwey’s legendary work–the Inner Game of Tennis. In the last article we looked at one of his major conclusions about ball watching—following the seams of the ball during the flight of shots from your opponent to your racket and then back, and how that idea squared with how the human eye actually works. (Click Here)

In this final piece let’s look at another major tenet of Tim’s work—the idea of using “Bounce Hit” both to time the strokes and improve the relationship between Self 1 and Self 2 that we looked at in the first article. (Click Here)

Bounce Hit With a Beginner

In Tim’s second Inner Game book (Click Here), he gives an extended description of using the bounce hit technique with a middle aged woman who had never played tennis.

Gallwey started with an awareness drill, dropping a ball and asking her to watch the ball and say bounce when the ball hits the court and hit when he hits it with his racket.

Then his assistant started throwing her some balls and asking her to say bounce when the ball hit the court and say hit when she…