Improve Your Tennis In One-Fifth of A Second!Written by Steve Smith
How would you like to start playing vastly better tennis ... today?There's a particular “magic” moment in tennis—one that lasts a mere fifth of a second. If you have (or can develop) discipline to fully exploit that moment, you may astonish yourself and your opponents with your new-found scoring ability. The moment I'm talking about is last 1/5th of a second before your racquet strikes ball. The discipline I'm referring to is that of keeping your eye entirely on ball for that super-critical moment. We've all been told many times that we should keep our eye on ball in tennis. But how many of us really know what that means? How many of us really practice it? Keeping your eye on ball doesn't mean watching it until it is a split second from hitting your racket, and then glancing away to look at your opponent. It means watching it until it has hit your strings and begun its rebound. This is not a new secret. Bill Tilden, perhaps greatest player who ever lived, wrote about it more than 80 years ago and tried to drive its importance into heads of his readers. Early on in his classic book, The Art of Lawn Tennis, he cited statistics “to show you how vital it is that eye must be kept on ball UNTIL THE MOMENT OF STRIKING IT” (his emphasis). “About 85 per cent of points in tennis are errors, and remainder earned points. As standard of play rises percentage of errors drops until, in average high-class tournament match, 60 per cent are errors and 40 per cent aces. ... Fully 80 percent of all errors are caused by taking eye from ball in last one-fifth of a second of its flight.” Wow. Sobering statistics, to be sure. But exciting ones, too, because what Tilden is telling us is that it's within our power, right now, to eliminate majority of our errors! And reducing errors we make is surest way to starve our opponent of points and extend his opportunity to give up points to us. Tilden was a great tennis observer as well as a player. He studied and wrote about all of top players of his day, and observed and advised many a tennis beginner. We can trust him when he says that greatest fault commited by novices (and by many more experienced players) is trying to watch too much besides ball. Tilden compared human eye to a camera, noting that neither is capable of clearly focusing on a moving object and its background at same time. “Now tennis ball is your moving object while court, gallery, net, and your opponent constitute your background.” Therefore, ignore background and rather “concentrate solely on focusing eye firmly on ball, and watching it until moment of impact with your racquet face.”
| | First TroutWritten by Marshall Estes
The Magic of My First Trout
I grew up in Iowa fishing for catfish, bass, crappie and bullheads using some of worst smelling baits you could imagine. But my father loved to hunt and fish so I went along. On one summer vacation to Oklahoma, Dad stopped at fish hatchery in Bennett Springs, MO. I can still remember standing on bridge watching a fly fisherman gracefully cast a dry fly upstream to base of little dam feeding a pool by hatchery. On third cast, he hooked up with a nice fat 12 to 14 inch rainbow that leapt out water 3 or 4 times trying to throw hook. The fisherman prevailed and slipped rainbow into his classic wicker creel with slot in lid. (Back in those days we ate a fish once in a while) Turning to my father, I asked what fisherman was using for bait. Dad said, "He is using an artificial fly and not bait." "Does it stink?", I asked. Dad laughed and said "No." Right then I knew one day I would become a fly fisherman. I was about 14 at time. I never touched stinky bait after that. I would not take up fly fishing until 1969 some 15 years after first seeing it in Ozarks of Missouri. I had moved to Colorado to learn to ski and fly fish. Never did learn to ski but I did learn to fly fish. When I was starting out, there weren't a lot of classes, guides or instructors to teach fly fishing. I purchased a cheap rod, reel, line and some flies from a local sporting goods store. Then I read a lot of books and practiced casting until I could do a reasonable overhand cast. My first fish was a 2 lb. brookie caught on a brassie out of famed South Platte river. That was my only fish on a fly rod for that whole season. For next two seasons, I caught exactly one fish a season on a fly rod. I had upgraded my equipment so casting was a lot more enjoyable. In 1972, I was back to drifting salmon eggs on bottom with light spinning gear and was catching fish. But releasing them was killing a lot of them I knew. As destiny would have it. A friend and I ended up on Bear Creek at O'Fallon Park one Saturday. Jerry parked car and said, "Hey, there's Frank Aubon. Frank is one of best fly fishermen I know. He can teach you how to catch fish on a fly rod." (Frank was from Maine and had been fly fishing some 40 years when I first met him.)
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