Thoughts about Tennis Tradition...

[don_budge]

don_budge: Performance Analyst, cannot account for his own performance (cont.)

Back to square one. Maybe square two. I played 18 holes and absolutely sucked at all of the things I excelled at in my "out of body" experience. What to do? Back to the pro...after 18 holes today. Nobody will outwork me. Or outthink me. I have a mission, which I have chose to accept. Copy that again...I absolutely sucked. Am I discouraged? No. Tired? Yes. This is God's gift to mankind in terms of recreation. We test ourselves. Tennis and golf.

[don_budge]

don_budge: Performance Analyst, cannot account for his own performance (cont.)

So then we try some shorter chip shots. A smaller motion and one that is even more difficult to perform as the tolerances are so fine. We work at this a bit and without great results. No problem...no sense on dwelling on it. We go to the bunker. He give me another cue. The track of the backswing again. The flaws in my swing are like a red thread throughout. From the tee to the green. From the biggest swings to the shortest. In short, I tend to life in my backswing instead of turning. I begin in the bunker. It starts with some pretty ok shots. Everything gets out of the bunker relatively cleanly. Then it really kicks in. Lunar power. Extreme focus fuelled by logical deficits. Good reasons why I shouldn't be able to do this. But we spend nearly twenty or thirty minutes in the bunker and it is flawless. He is obviously rather surprised. To say the least. He says, "beautiful" so many times. He cannot believe what he is seeing. For my part...I accept it. It is far easier to accept this little miracle than the dismal efforts I have been experiencing. I remember praying to God earlier in the day...let me get this right. For your Glory. We get out of the bunker and chat a bit. We go back to the original shot. Twenty-five meter or so. This is getting ridiculous. Same basic cue about the backswing track. Now I am threatening the hole with many of these delicate pitches. I know enough to not question what is going on. I am dialled in. We conclude the session with the shorter chips. The most delicate of shots. Limited success. Noticeable improvement to me, though. Leave it for next time.

Andreas left me with a big bucket of balls and trust me...I hit every single one of them. The last twenty or so I realised that I was too tired to continue pounding them so I went back to hitting the pitch shots we had worked on. It's getting late. I had told the wife I would be home by eight-thirty to get the horse in. Here it was a quarter past eight and I just got in my car for the ride home which might ordinarily take 35 minutes or so. Wouldn't you know it? I get behind the slowest of drivers who is going barely the speed limit down this narrow, winding country rode. As I am driving home the full moon is now staring me in the face all the way. I tell myself to be patient. It's like I have a team of race horses in my chest. The experience of perfection in the bunker. The perfect pitching. The promise to be home at such and such a time to my wife. It wasn't life or death. But there is that eery feeling. The lunacy. The full moon madness. The slow driver takes the same turn in from of me twice. Patience. Inside I am frothing at the mouth a bit. I can feel it. It's crazy. Then they turn off and I'm off. Another slow driver. More momentary madness. What's the hurry? I pass and they disappear in the rearview. Meandering through the way home. Sweden. The countryside. A couple of moose off in the pastures.

The full moon hit me in the face the entire way home. Driving out in the open. Farm land to either side. The moon looming through the windshield. Rays piercing me to my Wolfman core. Down the last nine kilometres to the dirt road. Two more kilometres to go. Home at last. Down the driveway to the hidden abode. I swear nobody knows we are there. I saw a wolf out there the other week. A real wild wolf. He was at the end of our driveway in the very early morning. I was out with my wolf. He never saw the other. A most unusual sight. An inspiring sight. A blessed sign. I'm home. Still in a trance. I don't even change clothes. I just put on my boots with the steel toes. In case the horse should step on me. She might too. Very high spirited and sometimes the walk to the stable becomes a bit of a competition. My will against hers. I walk out to the stable with my wife. She makes a comment about the size of the moon. I hear but I don't acknowledge. I am in a heightened awareness state. My focus is only on summoning enough energy to get that horse in the barn. It might come down to me against her. She weighs at least 700 pounds. If she only knew she could toss me around like a bag. After prepping the stall with their food and such we head down to the field. We let the first horse go and she makes a beeline for the stable. My wife cannot control her. But I lead the other one. She gets a bit excited when she sees the other galloping off to the food in the stable but I make her believe that I am the boss. Sometimes she believes me. Last night she sort of did. I got the horse in the barn.

I took a shower and ate. Trying to wind down. I woke at five this morning. I went down to the wolf and the lab. We dozed in the living room. A episode of "The Simpsons" on the boob tube. Strange show. I'm still in my trance. The moon is still full. Strange...isn't it?

I think performance issues are at the top of a coach's list to work on with his athlete. I forgot one interesting detail of my preparation yesterday for my coaching session. I watched this video below of Seve Ballesteros giving a lesson in the bunker. At the 3:50 mark in the video he says..."Ok...let's play the shot and see what happens." I kept the curser on that point and played the shot of him making the bunker swing over and over and over. The short segment following shows him playing the shot from other angles. I kept watching it. I put the timer in the settings on the slowest speed and watched it over and over. I sort of hynoptized myself and all Andreas had to do was give me the proper cue.

As a performance analyst...I study and learn. As an athlete, I do the same. It was a fascinating experience. Almost out of body.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIXjPMYjLPk

[onielrickler]

So many traditions we can see in racquetball sport in our days. I start to play in racquetball instead of tennis and bought Wilson WRT218(review https://warevise.com/best-racquetbal...#Wilson-WRT218). And have a question: If there should be space between fingertip and palm, why aren't racquet grips larger, like tennis racquet grips?

[don_budge]

don_budge: Performance Analyst, cannot account for his own performance (cont.)

So then we try some shorter chip shots. A smaller motion and one that is even more difficult to perform as the tolerances are so fine. We work at this a bit and without great results. No problem...no sense on dwelling on it. We go to the bunker. He give me another cue. The track of the backswing again. The flaws in my swing are like a red thread throughout. From the tee to the green. From the biggest swings to the shortest. In short, I tend to life in my backswing instead of turning. I begin in the bunker. It starts with some pretty ok shots. Everything gets out of the bunker relatively cleanly. Then it really kicks in. Lunar power. Extreme focus fuelled by logical deficits. Good reasons why I shouldn't be able to do this. But we spend nearly twenty or thirty minutes in the bunker and it is flawless. He is obviously rather surprised. To say the least. He says, "beautiful" so many times. He cannot believe what he is seeing. For my part...I accept it. It is far easier to accept this little miracle than the dismal efforts I have been experiencing. I remember praying to God earlier in the day...let me get this right. For your Glory. We get out of the bunker and chat a bit. We go back to the original shot. Twenty-five meter or so. This is getting ridiculous. Same basic cue about the backswing track. Now I am threatening the hole with many of these delicate pitches. I know enough to not question what is going on. I am dialled in. We conclude the session with the shorter chips. The most delicate of shots. Limited success. Noticeable improvement to me, though. Leave it for next time.

Andreas left me with a big bucket of balls and trust me...I hit every single one of them. The last twenty or so I realised that I was too tired to continue pounding them so I went back to hitting the pitch shots we had worked on. It's getting late. I had told the wife I would be home by eight-thirty to get the horse in. Here it was a quarter past eight and I just got in my car for the ride home which might ordinarily take 35 minutes or so. Wouldn't you know it? I get behind the slowest of drivers who is going barely the speed limit down this narrow, winding country rode. As I am driving home the full moon is now staring me in the face all the way. I tell myself to be patient. It's like I have a team of race horses in my chest. The experience of perfection in the bunker. The perfect pitching. The promise to be home at such and such a time to my wife. It wasn't life or death. But there is that eery feeling. The lunacy. The full moon madness. The slow driver takes the same turn in from of me twice. Patience. Inside I am frothing at the mouth a bit. I can feel it. It's crazy. Then they turn off and I'm off. Another slow driver. More momentary madness. What's the hurry? I pass and they disappear in the rearview. Meandering through the way home. Sweden. The countryside. A couple of moose off in the pastures.

The full moon hit me in the face the entire way home. Driving out in the open. Farm land to either side. The moon looming through the windshield. Rays piercing me to my Wolfman core. Down the last nine kilometres to the dirt road. Two more kilometres to go. Home at last. Down the driveway to the hidden abode. I swear nobody knows we are there. I saw a wolf out there the other week. A real wild wolf. He was at the end of our driveway in the very early morning. I was out with my wolf. He never saw the other. A most unusual sight. An inspiring sight. A blessed sign. I'm home. Still in a trance. I don't even change clothes. I just put on my boots with the steel toes. In case the horse should step on me. She might too. Very high spirited and sometimes the walk to the stable becomes a bit of a competition. My will against hers. I walk out to the stable with my wife. She makes a comment about the size of the moon. I hear but I don't acknowledge. I am in a heightened awareness state. My focus is only on summoning enough energy to get that horse in the barn. It might come down to me against her. She weighs at least 700 pounds. If she only knew she could toss me around like a bag. After prepping the stall with their food and such we head down to the field. We let the first horse go and she makes a beeline for the stable. My wife cannot control her. But I lead the other one. She gets a bit excited when she sees the other galloping off to the food in the stable but I make her believe that I am the boss. Sometimes she believes me. Last night she sort of did. I got the horse in the barn.

I took a shower and ate. Trying to wind down. I woke at five this morning. I went down to the wolf and the lab. We dozed in the living room. A episode of "The Simpsons" on the boob tube. Strange show. I'm still in my trance. The moon is still full. Strange...isn't it?

[don_budge]

don_budge: Performance Analyst, cannot account for his own performance

So where was I? Or better yet, where am I? Round and round we go, where we end up nobody knows. If we cannot explain our own existence then what right to we have to speculate about the existence of others? These are questions. ANSWER THE QUESTION...YOU JERK!!! In my best John McEnroe reverberating voice. Is that even a word? Did I just make that up? Reverberating? It came clean of spell check...therefore it must be.

I found myself in a bit of a strange mood recently. Something wasn't sitting well with me. I mean...it could be a whole host of things. Could it be an excess of EMR in the air? Electro Magnetic Radiation? Are we all getting a bit frazzled? But keep in mind...the moon. The moon has been waxing and last night it climaxed in a gushing full moon. Full blown lunacy? That could explain it. A combination...EMR and full moon equals don_budge in a quandry? Eerie. It felt strange. I found myself in the woods with the wolf asking myself...are we real people? Out in nature all these years. Civilisation lives in another neighbourhood allowing me the freedom from the commotion. Out in the country...there is only motion. The birds. The wind. Animals. Peace of mind? Or a recipe for madness? Are we real people? Is this how God envisioned us a couple of thousand years down the road? Cell phones. A trip to the grocery store. Driving around in automobiles. Is this for real? Now we are stuck in our computers, living out a virtual reality. Information coming from all different directions and angles. What the fuck is real? What about that service motion of "The Tsitsipatti Kid"?

Yesterday started pretty normal. Woke up wondering how I do it. Crawling out of bed trying to get the old body in motion. The first few steps and the trip down the stairs are really tentative. Greeted at the bottom by The Wolf and The Lab. Both eager to begin there day. Happy to see me as if it had been an eternity. Puntzie goes out the back door and I go out the front with York on a leash. Breakfast as usual. The very same thing every day for the past umpteen years. You see...I never get bored. A bit of "news" on the internet. Bad news of course. Then to the stable. Led the horses down to their field. Return to the stable to grab a load of hay and lug it out to the field. Return again to grab a bucket of water in each hand to fill up their water. The wolf is howling in the yard as I type now. He's feeling it too. Lunacy...madness of the full moon. Howling forlornly. I could howl back at him. He would understand.

After the water drill, I clean the two stalls. Every day the same. I make it nice for them. Meticulously making their bed for the next night. Once I finished their beds, I came inside and quickly changed clothes and I am off to town for supplies. Groceries and animal feed. Dogs and horses. I changed from my farm chic to town. City slicker. Golf pants and shoes. Golf sweater. I am headed to the golf club on the way home. I get there and it's the usual. Take a couple of hundred swings. My golf partner shows up. Interesting guy. Adopted from Korea by Swedish parents. He's a performer. Tough competitor. Golf, tennis and floor ball. Billiards, fishing...you name it. Business up and running on its own while he ducks out every day to play golf. Quite a guy. A real performer in my book. We are talking and trying to understand just what it is we are trying to do. Making perfect out of imperfect game. Golf is a real enigma. I remember saying to him that the real mystery is in the transition from the backswing to forwards swing. I wasn't even pretending to understand it. But that doesn't stop me from trying. Patrick left and I went over the practice green and more futility. The short shots are even more madness than the long swing. I left the course tired. Knowing full well that I had a session with the coach I hired last week.

What prompted me to hire a coach was the sand shot. Bunker play. The professional golfers prefer to be in the sand than in the thick grass. It is only a technique to them. There is no mystery. But if you don't understand the technique, as I don't/didn't, the bunker is a nightmare. Just waiting to happen. You play the course to avoid them and the more you play to avoid them...the more you find them. Not understanding the technique is the results tend to be disastrous. Turning a routine par or bogey into a multiple bogey. The perfectionist's nightmare. Armageddon. The Apocalypse. It hurts. It wounds the pride. The only thing that saves you is the knowledge that you don't have the knowledge. So I hired Andreas. A child prodigy. He broke and owned the course record at the club when he was sixteen. He shot 66. But then it went wrong. He was afflicted with the yips. A strange malady. Unable to perform simple movements under pressure. Or even no pressure. The pressure comes from within. The pressure to perform. Coming from me...a Performance Analyst. Ask me about the Stefanos Tsitsipas serve under pressure. It didn't work. You wonder why.

I came home after the session at the club. Already tired. Now I was anticipating my session with the coach. Really dreading not being able to perform. The first session was basically a failure in the sense that I was unable to come even close to hitting the ball out of the sand. I could go into the technique but I won't. This little post is about performance. The mystery of what makes us tick. In my anticipation I thought of nourishment and tried to consume something to stabilise myself. I eat the same thing virtually every day. No surprises. I tried to relax and get some rest. But I've been uneasy the past couple of days. The moon is waxing. Full blown working on the tide of my bodies water. Pulling me apart. My mind pulling in two directions. The battle in my brain over my left and my right raging. I'm trying to get ready to do the impossible under less than favourable conditions. Tearing myself apart. I get a letter from the Swedish tax authorities. There looking into my stupid fucking business trying to extract blood from a turnip. I've got the IRS too! They want their portion of flesh. The letter set off another series of action. Calls to the tax preparer in Sweden. A call to the person at the Swedish tax authorities. Get the picture?

So I set off for the course. It's another course in another direction. I drive through the Swedish countryside as if it is another world. I've made this trip maybe a dozen times. It's still not familiar. It is difficult to get your bearings in another country. Another world. The drive is serene however. The drone of American politics in a distant universe. The CD player doesn't work in my 2004 Alfa Romero. The engine is sweet. Humming quietly with the road. The countryside. Full moon visible in my rear view. In broad daylight. Just to let me know he's there. Mr. Moon. I make all the right turns. I have made wrong ones before. You have to be vigilant. A wrong turn takes you nowhere and you might drift for a long time before you realise you have lost your way. But I make it. Billingen Golf Club. I'm early. Trying to get prepared. I buy a bucket of balls. The thought occurs to me how expensive a bucket of practice balls cost at the range. I make my way to the practice green and wonder how to get the parts moving.

I begin by tossing the balls at the bucket underhand as this is sort of the motion and the tempo you should have with the short pitch shots and the chipping. Then I begin to use the club on the balls but my timing is sporadic which means the motion is unsound and insecure. I can feel it. It is like impending doom before you even attempt the shot. I am not even aiming at a target on the green. Ugh. More torture. That spastic feeling in the hands. The dreaded yips. I keep trying with various amounts of success or lack of failure. Depending how you want to look at it. Either way it feels like crap. I'm not going to tippy toe around this. I suck. But, on the other hand, I don't quit either. So I continue. Getting ready for my appointment. Andreas comes over and finishing with another group and we chat a bit about what I want to accomplish. My goal is to get my feel back. No need to be standing over the golf ball thinking about what the hell you want to do. Tearing the swing down into a million moving parts. That is a recipe for disaster. I want to feel. So we begin and sure enough the hands are not behaving. Keep in mind that my fatigue level and the full moon have me in a trance like state. Andreas give me a cue. The track of the backswing. Immediately things start to synch. I am pitching to a flag about twenty or twenty five meters away. Earlier the balls were all over the place. A random dispersion. Faulty mechanics and the inability to produce the same motion twice in a row. But the track of the back swing starts to synch the rhythm of the swing. A delicate swing with a 54 degree wedge. Short grass. You have to pretty much hit it clean. It begins to be repeatable and the dispersion of the balls improves by at least a hundred percent.

[don_budge]

May God Bless America...

[doctorhl]

You guys make we wish I had kept my white, cable, v- neck sweaters. I even bought a canvas bucket hat to replace my old Bancroft one, but I couldn’t find one in white canvas.

[don_budge]

If, for some reason communication breaks down in the next few days...rest assured, we will meet again on the other side. ...don_budge

[don_budge]

Thanks don_budge! Happy New Year to you too.

After watching some of the beautiful videos recently posted in another thread, I'm resolving to play a little bit more like I learnt to in the '80s and to hell with the consequences.

Philosophically it makes sense. The push for the progressiveness takes things to the edge of the abyss. Modernism? When is enough...enough? So take it back a bit when fundamentals were the rule of the day. You've seen some John McEnroe lately. He was even a blast from the past with his reverence for Rod Laver. His one grip for every shot. I saw a bit of that in your service motion. Dial it back. To hell with the consequences? Interesting. I like the sound of it. A certain belligerence for the latest and the greatest. Yes...come to think of it. To hell with the consequences. Well played. Bring back tradition.

[glacierguy]

Thanks don_budge! Happy New Year to you too.

After watching some of the beautiful videos recently posted in another thread, I'm resolving to play a little bit more like I learnt to in the '80s and to hell with the consequences.

[don_budge]

Best of luck to everyone in 2021! I have a feeling we are going to need it. Two days in and how's it feel. A bit iffy?

[don_budge]

As midnight rolls over the planet in a stealth of darkness. As the journey to the end of the night becomes the end of a year. The year was 2020...soon to be in the rearview. Get ready for 2021 as the previous year has not shot its load yet. There is undoubtably more to come. Can you fathom what it will be?

My resolution is the same year in and year out. Stay in motion. Keep moving whenever possible. Exhaust the day and do my best. This will be the year I shoot my age...in golf. Sixty-seven.

Thank you Lord for all of your blessings. Thank you for your Perfect Son. Forgive me.

Happy New Year!

[don_budge]

The Spirit of Christmas is Upon Us...

"'Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.' For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son" John 3:14-18

Christmas Day 2020. What an incredible day. Time to reflect on a year that is unparalleled to those of us living on the planet. Not to be overly dramatic because historically, maybe it wasn't such a big deal. Maybe more like "much ado about nothing". After all...there have been real plagues that have wiped out significant populations. I know this one is not over yet but so far there are at least two sides of this argument. There have been years where wars have decimated entire populations. So what is the big deal about 2020? What happened that was so horrible? People die...we come and we go. That's a thing that I know.

So much has been made of the Coronavirus. Covid-19 they call it. Do you realise that the death rates of both the United States and Sweden have actually gone down from the previous year? It seems incongruent with the fear porn that has been pushed all year long. People die. Seven thousand a day in the United States. Four hundred a day in New York City alone. It is a fact of life...no one here gets out alive. Maybe in the next year we will get some level of understanding out of this experience. Maybe when it is all said and done the numbers will begin to make some sense. The statistics. The devil is in the numbers.

God gave his only Son. His perfect Son. I have been thinking deeply on that lately. PERFECT. Perfect is perfect. It is even hard to fathom. If Jesus had chosen to be a golfer he would score 18 and any golf course in the world. A hole in one on every shot. That is perfect in the world of golf. It's hard to imagine. If Jesus had chosen to be a tennis player he would beat Roger Federer any day of the week and twice on Sunday 6-0, 6-0, 6-0. Golden sets all. Not a single point to Roger. Not only that...but aces on every single serve. Serve return winners on every single Federer serve. That is perfect.

Perfection. In the human form. Never rude. Never impatient. Always kind. Never greedy. Always generous. Never impatient. Always loving. Perfect...it goes on and on. Infinitely perfect. He came for one purpose only. To save the world. The more I think of it, the more it boggles my mind. The more I think of it, the more I realise how far from perfection I am and how futile my efforts have been. I can only think of one thing to say in response...Thank you Lord. Thank you for your Son. Forgive me.

Merry Christmas to each and everyone of you! God Bless you all. Thank you Lord.

[don_budge]

Wow, that's one hell of a recommendation. You had my respect anyway, but I'm still impressed.

Thank you GG. I wouldn't trade this simple letter of recommendation for all of the USPTA certifications in the world. If you only imagine the fun and experience I had in the two summers I spent in the presence of this magnificent human being. I ate breakfast with him at times. Lunch as well. He took the entire staff to a sea food restaurant where I sat next to him where he told me the story of his other worldly match against Gottfried Von Cramm. Falling face flat on match point after he hit a winning forehand that he never saw land.

Tennis....Cerebral Gladiators. Golf.....”No Exit”

Thank you doctorhi. Imagine golf being even more cerebral than tennis. All the time in between shots to think and ponder your decision for the next shot. But such is the beauty of both sports that they test the individual on physical, intellectual, mental, psychological and emotional levels. Toss in a Spiritual level too.

God's gift to mankind in terms of recreation. I see tennis in the realm of the finite. Those spiritual lines. The metaphysical design of the court. From an airplane up above these lines will never change in all the world. To fly over and looking down to spot a group of eight courts your mind starts to wander imagining all of the games being played out below. But those lines. The ultimate line of demarcation. Outside the lines it is out...inside or only partially on the line, it's in. The moral ramifications are huge.

When looking down at a golf course you realise that nowhere in the world is there a golf course that is identical to another one. This is the realm of the infinite. There are no lines on a golf course such as those on a tennis court. Sure there are out of bounds. But there is a obstacle course built into the design. The player plays against the course from the tee to a distant hole in the ground. Anything can happen in between. One begins to think about luck and fate. Coincidence and destiny on new planes.

Ah...in the Kingdoms of Golf and Tennis there lie many a great champion and even more disappointments and dreams crushed. Such is life...is it not?

[doctorhl]

Tennis....Cerebral Gladiators. Golf.....”No Exit”