February 2002 -- You probably read the title of this article and wondered if you were reading a book from the children’s section of your local library. Well, you are not. But I am going to ask you to think like a child again while you read this. Let me explain how this article came about. Tennis professionals teach thousands of lessons and clinics each year, sometimes to the same students, at the same time and same day. This process can result in a struggle to find new ways to teach our game. Once that struggle begins, the most difficult part of our profession also begins. This is the story of a lesson that taught me that every pro must keep searching for that special way to get the point across, however far fetched. Let me introduce you to its eclectic cast of characters:
Kaitlyn: The student, a high school varsity tennis player
The bear: A giant stuffed brown bear
The scarecrow: The character from the “Wizard of Oz”
The fish: They swim in the water surrounding the Statue of Liberty
Me: A USPTA teaching professional
Part I: The lesson
I had been working with Kaitlyn for several months on changing her serve grip from an eastern to a continental grip. With this change comes several other minor adjustments that can be difficult to adapt to. As many pros know, this is one of the hardest things to teach teen-age players due to the low level of initial success, as well as the awkwardness of the change. Kaitlyn was extremely close to mastering this serve, but we needed one more big push to get it down. I had tried everything, yet I could not quite find the best way to put it all together. First we had to work on controlling the direction of her serve now that she wasn’t hitting a completely flat ball. This called for a big target because the spin was making her serve move and she didn’t know how to control it. All of her serves were going to the left and all of the normal targets did not seem to get the point across. We needed something bigger. This brings us to the bear.
Part II: The bear
I brought out a big stuffed bear and set him in a chair in the middle of the service box. This bear is the extra large kind that you might find on the highest shelf in your local toy store. Kaitlyn’s job was to hit the bear anywhere. She did! Almost immediately she began to control the spin from the new grip and consistently hit the bear and keep a smile on her face. Having a target so outrageous and large did two things. First, by making her laugh, it relaxed her and took the stress out of a major change. Secondly, it made her realize that she didn’t have to be perfect with her aim. She could hit the bear anywhere and her serve would be successful. After hitting the bear several times we were able to move on to the next step, which was to get her to relax.
Part III: The scarecrow
The scarecrow came in when I realized that Kaitlyn was too tense with her arms and legs during the swing. She was holding her arms out completely straight with too much tension to allow a free relaxed swing. We began discussing how the scarecrow in the “Wizard of Oz” might serve. We decided that his arms would probably be flopping all over the place and he would most likely fall all over himself. After some laughs, she began to imagine serving as if she was the scarecrow. Her arms became relaxed, her racquet hand began to slowly loosen up and, as hoped, her swing speed greatly increased. She now had a fluid, one motion swing along with a new and fun way to remember the lesson. We were having a great time working with this scenario but we were not quite finished yet.
Part IV: The fish
The final step in getting this new serve to work was perfecting the toss. Kaitlyn was having a problem controlling the toss because she was dropping her tossing arm too quickly. I tried to think of one more idea to tie the entire lesson together. It turned out to be the Statue of Liberty! We discussed the statue holding up the torch and how she never dropped her arm. But, if she did drop it, the torch would land in the water and kill all the fish. I told her to hold up her tossing arm like the Statue of Liberty holds up the torch. Again, we laughed a little and this lesson progressed into not dropping the torch because we didn’t want to kill the fish. I realize that this is completely outrageous and many of you think this is nuts. The point is that it worked. Kaitlyn thought it was crazy, but she understood the point of each lesson. She understood these comparisons far better than the boring, straight and narrow explanation of shots and methods of teaching.
Part V: The message to teaching
professionals
The amazing thing about this entire process is that we now have an unbelievable memory cue to use whenever Kaitlyn is struggling and becoming frustrated with the serve. I just tell her to “hit the bear with the scarecrow, but don’t kill the fish.” This one, short sentence allows her to quickly focus on what she needs to do to be productive with her serve.
This story just goes to show that every student is going to learn differently and it is our job to work extremely hard to find the methods that work best and go after it. Tennis professionals have a difficult task in finding different ways to teach the same basic ideas to our students. That difficult task should also be the most enjoyable part of our jobs; we can make up anything in our imagination that we think might hit the spot for our clients. I have spent hours struggling to find ways to get the point across to players of all levels, sometimes it is difficult, but it is a task we must address head on in order to satisfy and improve our students. The key is to not stop trying to find that one idea that makes the lesson clear to your players. You would not accept your players not trying their hardest so they should expect nothing less from you.
