When we were watching the Australian tennis matches, I had a memory and an ah ha. As a child my dad taught me to play tennis. at around age 10, he entered me in a tennis tournament. I completely mentally freaked out - wanting so badly to win to make my Dad happy. and I lost. I was deeply upset. I had forgotten about these early tennis matches....because we moved from this place and no more tournaments. ... until we moved again and in high school I played on the tennis team. I was good, hit strong shots....playing against my Dad who Always won. When I played high school girls, they mostly dinked over the net....I took my regular swing and out the ball went....too long. or I would tense up and try to hit soft and often hit the ball into the net. Also my very volatile Dad would watch, yell, kick the fence, etc ...leaving me a mental basket case. I lost Every single match my freshman year. As I remembered these incidents, completing with being a Loser...I also got the Click of Possibility. The Australian Open showed training exercises and spoke of exercises to help players leave the last shot in the past and move to the current shot....and that even these top players - No 1 in the world deal with nerves and the mental stuff. I realized that Dad and the coach could have created training to teach me how to hit against weak, wimpy balls. (the commentators spoke of this as one of the players was injured and was hitting fluff balls - and how hard it is to adjust to the slow, weak ball)....also the training for the mental game... What seemed important to me in this - is the realization of the Possibility of a different story...not just completion with losing...the real possibility of feeling that given the tools and training, my tennis could have expanded - I can see how I could have been a winner.
Posted on: Sat, 01 Feb 2014 19:42:30 +0000
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